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It's one thing to read these 'Ultimate Universe' type books and another to actually understand the theory behind it.
I'm taking Engineering Physics at my University (I'm in Canada remember) and we basically eat the honours physics students for breakfast there and I was interested in string theory and such before I took my first quantum course and actually did the math behind it. For those who want a good picture of the difficulty just be aware that the easiest examples require all of the mathematical skills a third year undergrad would have. The course was hell. Three or four problems would take the better part of the weekend to do. By the time I finished the course I had been completely turned off of quantum mechanics and string theory. Even though I've never taken a formal string theory course I would assume that it would be much more difficult than even quantum mechanics and wouldn't be suprised if it were only offered as a graduate course.
That's the best way I can describe it. I must say, Cobalt, you've got a pretty good idea of what's going on. Good luck in your quantum class. Hopefully you'll still have interest in it after it's over. I just hope your comfortable with your integrals of e^(x^2) because they're used quite often. Another thing that we used extensively in the second half of the course was the matrix operators when we dealt with spin and angular momentum. If you cover those topics, you will get very comfortable with the matrix operators. Anyways, good luck.
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