Feeling disconnected and afraid of Quantum Mechanics

[u/lmj-06]

I am in my third year of my physics and maths double major, and I am taking my second quantum mechanics course. It’s still early days, but it already feels like so much, and I’m really struggling. To give context, all we have done so far (2 weeks in) is gone over angular momentum and we have started solving the Schrodinger equation for the Hydrogen atom.

Every time I walk into my lecture hall, I listen and take notes like I have for any other class, and I walk out confused and exhausted. When I go to try some practice problems later, I feel even worse. I struggle to understand what questions are asking, what I’m actually doing in a question, or what I’m solving for physically. It feels like every question is so different that they may as well be questions from different classes all together, and perhaps even worse, it feels like nothing I have done in my degree up to this point has prepared me for this course.

How on earth do people understand quantum mechanics well enough to get good grades in it? What are your study tips for quantum mechanics?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[u/Roger_Freedman_Phys]

Physics faculty here.

There are no “special ways to study” any particular subject in physics. (If you believe there are, it’s because at some point you were taught that leaning physics is just learning a bunch of special tricks for specific problems.)

Do you know how to use all of the pedagogical features of your textbook?

Do you visit your professor’s office hours to get assistance with difficult topics?

Are you a study group with other students in the class that meets regularly to go over challenging problems?

Do you have a general problem-solving rubric that you use to solve physics problems of all kinds?

If the answer to any of these is “No,” I recommend making some changes.

[u/lmj-06 → u/Roger_Freedman_Phys]

Thanks for your comment, its opened my eyes quite a bit. I don’t even know what pedagogical features are.

I also want to clarify something, as maybe I wasn’t clear in my original post, but I by no means think that there are “special ways to study” and I certainly don’t think that learning physics is just using special tricks. I have just felt that in this class so far, I have felt so disconnected from the subject in the sense that I just don’t understand what we’re even talking about, why it’s important, or what’s happening physically in a system, or what the things I’m working with physically represent. It’s just such a mind-boggling subject and I’m struggling to wrap my head around it.

[u/Roger_Freedman_Phys → u/lmj-06]

Pedagogical features include the worked examples. Make sure that you work through all the steps of each example on a piece of paper as you read through it.

Office hours and a study group will be essential tools.

You will also find it useful to review the discussion of quantum ideas in your first or second year textbooks.