catching up

It's April, and it still felt as if I was in the middle of the semester.

As "expected", the list of things that I should/must do is growing at a much larger rate than previously, and this means free time will be a lot harder.

What I recently noticed is that whenever I'm reading or studying, I prefer to do it in a "free" mood rather than being forced upon, because I can explore things and understand things more deeply, rather than the "surface" understanding that I get from studies and revisions.

And this is why I often take longer doing math and physics homework - I need to understand it, because rushing over a problem, just like glossing over a book, is not helpful. It's a lot easier to forget if one only has a surface understanding of the subject.

But when time is scarce like during these periods, I often don't have the time to slowly work on things... and this would only affect my understanding of the material.

I don't think I can "catch up" my studying after semester, because by then I'd have little incentive to do so.

Perhaps this also explains why I don't seem to understand my modern physics class as much as my classical dynamics class. They are different in that the modern physics class is just an introductory class - things are often presented briefly, and I have to know a whole sleuth of equations that seemingly have no origin (I'm quite certain that most of the derivations would be too complicated for this level); in the classical dynamics class, there is a more in-depth perspective of things, with derivations and stuff, which makes it more interesting to understand.

My mind works on linking things together, and when new things are added, it always takes a while to chew over them. On the other hand, if it's just an improvement or generalization over something I learned previously, it's a lot easier to grasp.

And perhaps I should attend to my homework now.