You might be having a bad day, or you are tired and just want to curl on your bed with a good book and escape reality. Perhaps you feel like you were taking advantage of, or slighted in some way by a person who didn’t even acknowledge you.

I’ve often thought about why I enjoy mathematics, physics, and then comics. The first two go together quite naturally. We aren’t surprised when someone who likes mathematics also has an interest in physics. The two are practically overlapping.

When I first started my undergraduate degree in physics, I would get frustrated when I couldn’t understand a concept. This happened when I worked as an undergraduate research assistant with little previous knowledge about the subject. I suddenly had to start learning about more advanced ideas like tensors and general relativity, which were topics I hadn’t ever studied before. At the same time, I had to learn this largely on my own, since there weren’t classes for this during the summer. The result was that my first summer was a bit rough, to say the least.

If you go to a basketball game, it may take you a few minutes to understand the rules, but pretty quickly you will figure out what’s happening. Sure, there might be niche rules here and there that leave you baffled, but you can still follow along. Furthermore, you don’t have to be an expert at basketball in order to enjoy watching others play.