This can't be right. You couldn't drop the course. Two years of physics in the freshman and sophomore years, taught from the Feynman Lectures, was a requirement for all Caltech undergrads, including those in humanities majors like economics, history and even English -- there were a few.

The whole two year physics sequence - the lectures where your entire class attended together, always in the same room, three times a week for two years, the homework sets, the sections, the weekly take-home quizzes - were a shared rite of passage, a central part of the Caltech experience for every student. It was difficult for some of us, but we had to persevere - it wasn't optional. A classmate called it 'intellectual boot camp'.