Eunkyo Oh: Investigation 1B

If I were to study something other than computer science, I would choose the following majors.

## Mathematics

What I like about mathematics is that math is fundamentally based on logic. It is a tool to help us further understand the world. Math enables us to ‘see’ the deepest ocean or find a planet lightyears away without exploring. Having a degree in mathematics can lead you to different paths. You can work in architecture, accounting, data services, and finance. You can also go in research, where you publish or contribute to journals and periodicals, or help produce complete publications. You can research from proving theories to optimizing current knowledge. You need endurance and logical thinking of the world around us. You also need love for the field as proving difficult theories might take you days to weeks, to even years.

## Physics

Physics can be seen as a branch of applied mathematics. It requires reasoning and logical thinking to mathematically explain the world around us. As a physics student, you can research in a number of branches, including atmospheric, biological, geophysics, and education. However, the field that interests me the most is quantum optics. In quantum optics, you can learn about the properties of light, lasers, and the fundamentals of the quantum mechanics. To study physics you need to have mathematical reasoning skills as well as critical and creative mind.

## Astronomy and Astrophysics

Seeing the sky at night as a kid always made me wonder about the outer space. Planets and stars were always my interest and I wanted to study astronomy and astrophysics. As a student in astronomy and astrophysics, you can research on the stars, galaxies, and the origin of the universe. Studying astronomy can be very challenging and requires endurance. Again, you need logical reasoning and creative thinking.

## Philosophy

Studying philosophy looks at human existence and reality. You need to have logical analysis and thinking to view at the moral problems and outlooks and argue your opinion. I love having a debate over our different beliefs as it enables us to approach from multiple angles and learn a new point of view. The researches out there includes, philosophy in biology, and study for sensory systems.

## History

History in university is a lot different than history in high school. High school history is seen as memorization of dates, names, and events, whereas history in university requires you to critically think about the past events and now and make connections. As a person studying history you have to make sure you do not let history repeat itself. The field of history that interests me the most is East Asian History. There are number of reasons for this. First, I am East Asian, and grew up with Asian culture. Second, East Asian history is taught very little by the western world. There are often stereotypes and false informations about the East Asian countries because the textbook do not explain the settings in detail even though there had been major events that impacted rest of the world. And lastly, I believe that knowing the history of other cultures will widen the view of the world.

## Sources

http://www.math.toronto.edu/cms/

https://www.physics.utoronto.ca/

http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/

http://philosophy.utoronto.ca

http://history.utoronto.ca/