How tough is it to be a physicist?

I'm considering it as a career, but I don't know how intelligent you have to be to write papers on a consistent basis and be a decent physicist.
In all my math/science courses I'm getting mid-high 90's without trying, but is this enough?

I'm a physicist, I work with chemicals and stuff. It's hard.

>>2
| I'm a physicist, I work with chemicals
| physicist
| chemicals
... THAT'S A CHEMIST YOU DUMB FUCK!

>>3
You are incorrect. gbt high school

>>4
You are incorrect. gb2 MIDDLE SCHOOL

there is no way to judge based on your K-12 performance whether or not your will be capable of independent research.

you may be confused in thinking that talant plays a big role, its really a lot about putting the time/effort into your work, whatever talant you may have only helps with speeding up the minutiae.

somewhere along your academic career, your talent will start paying less and less dividends. at that point, many people that have been skating by on talent will suddenly decide they really aren't 'smart' or 'good at subject X' and that they should stop and go find something they're good at(where they dont have to try hard), the rest will perserviere and start working hard to understand the increasingly difficult material and possibly succeed in their field.

>>6
really? that's surprising.
can anyone else corroborate what he said?

fizzycyst

>>7
What he said is very true for most people. I would say even most of undergrad tells little about eventual research performance(barring actual research conducted, of course).

And the talent part is certainly true. Somebody famous once said that genius is 95% hard work or somesuch. It's best if you learn to work hard before you are forced to, so that you don't screw yourself over.

It was Thomas Edison, who said that genius is "1% inspiration and 99% persperation". But I disagree. Evetnually more or less everyone is going to have to put in some work, but if you don't have an innate ability, then maybe consider something else because work can get you only so far. Especially when it comes to making big discoveries.

>>10
Talent matters, yes, but it too can only take you so far. Very rare is the person who can coast through undergrad physics on pure talent, and the person who can do the same in grad school is probably many times rarer. And I would go so far as to say that the person who could get through a research career with only talent and no work has not yet been born.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while a certain base level of talent is needed, but beyond that, differences in talent matter far less than how much work is being put in.

Lol, as if isn't obious.

Talent + Hard work

And i disagree with the most here.

Hard work is limited (hello time).
You can't do more at a certain point without going into the other direction, so being contra-productive!

Then the talent kicks in.

This story with the rabbit and the turtle is pretty laughable.
I mean, who the hell does go to university for Physics if he/she hasn't got any interests?!

Perhaps you can publish some papers (within a team).

But forget it to become the next Newton, Planck, Einstein,Heisenberg, Feynman and many more just with hard work.

You have to judge yourself if you have the potential or not.

>>12 here to add:

It seems that you can learn pretty fast.

This is very important.

Cause the at university you will face another kind of lecture speed.

You have to have good-very good comprehension skills.

Otherwise you can work as hard as you can, but you will always be some steps behind.
The pressure mounts and you will fall apart.

Okay, thanks everyone.

>>14
NO U