monologues of a mathematician: third year

hello!!
well, turns out you can't get rid of me for very long. i'm back for the 6th year running, lol

sorry, who are you?
uh so yeah i'm niamh, i’m 20 and i'm from yorkshire. most of you probably know me as protostar. but i wanted a change :tongue:

you're a mathematician?
by definition, i guess i am. i'm a third year maths student at newcastle university, but this isn't my final year as i'm doing 4 :headfire:

. i'm also the publicity officer for our maths society for 2020/21!

what are your grades like?
not as high as i'd like, hence me trying to grow em. because i know people care, my academic history looks like this
a levels: abc
first year: 70.9 overall

by module

second year: 69.7 overall

by module

what are you studying this year?
we chose our modules in august. because of covid-19 they paired up 10 credit modules to create 20 credit modules of which we had to choose 6. january exams have been cancelled and we'll be sitting exams on all of the year's content next june, which is terrifying. the modules i've chosen are:

mas3710 group theory, graphs and symmetry (required to specialise in pure maths in 4th year)
mas3711 linear analysis and topology (also required for a pure specialism)
mas3712 matrix analysis and representation theory

mas3810 methods for differential equations and partial differential equations (required to specialise in applied maths in 4th year)
mas3811 quantum mechanics and classical fields (also required for an applied specialism)
mas3812 advanced fluid dynamics and computational modelling (also required for an applied specialism)

so my year will be 50% pure and 50% applied maths, as i'm currently so undecided on what i want to specialise in in my 4th year :colondollar:

leaning more towards applied atm but i wonder how that'll change this year...

what are your goals and aims for 3rd year?
honestly with covid and everything my main aim is to just complete the year lol. but beyond that i'd really like to push myself back up to a first, not getting one for second year really stung despite all the disruptions

what's this blog all about then?
i'm gonna try and grow my grades essentially. i'll be talking about how i find my modules, all the work i do for each of them and anything extra i do. will also be for how uni is going as a whole, basically documenting yet another year of my life lol. i do love reading these back i can't lie

so join me through this year, or don't, i accept i'll probably be talking to myself a lot in here so i'm okay with that. but yeah if you wanna be tagged just lemme know

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(edited 3 years ago)

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Reply 60

niamhdoesmaths

Original post by Muttley79

I'm pleased to hear you have caught up quite a bit and that you are feeling less anxious.

I think the 3rd year of a 4 year degree can be tricky especially when there is no routine of going to lectures - be kind to yourself and do ask for help in your modules if you need it ..

It's good that Maths Soc and your other activities give you a break from the studying ...

thank you

yeah i'd definitely be going mad if i didn't do any fun stuff outside of uni work :colondollar:

Original post by Sinnoh

In my experience QM made Fourier a bit easier to understand (you'd expect it to work the other way around!) so some good could yet come out of that module :smile:

And yeah I've just gotten on to that topic for DEs and it is dry dry dry

Yes get yourself that nutrition [s]biggrin[/s]

so far i just hate hate hate it so hopefully it does become useful soon!
we finally covered the actual method so now it isn't so bad. but yeah it's boring lol

Original post by The_Lonely_Goatherd

Sorry that it was a tough week mental health-wise. It's good you're noticing it and talking a bit about it. Do you think it might be helpful to contact the Wellbeing Service at your uni for support? There's no shame in asking for a helping hand :nah:

Glad the cocktail event and dance went well :biggrin:

Plus sounds like you are doing well on catching up with stuff :yes:

Christmas tree = :awesome:

TC, lovely, and remember: only ever a message away :penguinhug:

i considered it but i don't think there's a lot they could do! but if i change my mind i definitely will. they were pretty helpful earlier in the year
i'm definitely in the same spot of being behind again now :lol:

but hey ho

Original post by laurawatt

Prsom

hopefully this week is nicer for you :heart:

thanks lovely :hugs:

Original post by absolutelysprout

glad to hear you've managed to catch up a bit :yep:

hope you have a lovely week and i'm glad to hear the mathsoc stuff went well :hugs:

thank you!! :hugs:

Reply 61

niamhdoesmaths

update #7: monday 30th november 2020
productivity? who's she?

morning everyone, hope you all had a good week :smile:

mine's been very unproductive if you can't tell lol

uni stuff
mas3710 group theory - this week i've done some lectures on homomorphisms and isomorphisms, and stuff to do with the kernel and image of groups, all just building on stuff i did last year so nothing too crazy. had an interesting interaction with my lecturer over email on wednesday when she somehow couldn't get into her own zoom and we were all just there waiting lol. eventually she got in and it was a decent problems class, i understood and kept up quite well despite not knowing anything about cyclic groups yet

mas3711 linear analysis - only did one lecture this week and it took me hours and hours. it was all about limits and honestly limits in pure used to go straight over my head but now i get them a bit better. i'm still struggling a bit with all the new stuff in this module but hopefully it'll all click soon :redface:

. we got our assignments back and i got 48%, which i was really gutted about until i remembered i only did half of it. so i actually did pretty well if that makes sense lol

mas3712 matrix analysis - did one lecture this week on normal matrices, it made sense but there wasn't a whole lot of actual content there as i realised when i went to the zoom on thursday and everything covered in that lecture was summarised into 2 lines :redface:

so i've still got a lot of catching up to do. got our assignment marks back and i got 96.67% as i only dropped one mark, so i was chuffed about that :smile:

mas3810 methods for differential equations - did 2 lectures for this and hated them both. both were about the fredholm alternative but at least in the second one we did some examples to actually go through the method so that was helpful. also got our assignment marks back for this and i got 65% which i wasn't too pleased about but at the same time that assignment was horrific so it's not too bad a mark all things considered

mas3811 quantum mechanics - i did 2 lectures this week and honestly couldn't tell you what they were on at all. think it was something to do with wave mechanics but none of it made sense whatsoever so that's pretty annoying. i'm still so behind, i've finished up to the end of week 3 and today marks the start of week 6 + buffer week so yeah lol. fingers crossed it starts making sense soon

mas3812 advanced fluid dynamics - only had the one video for this week and it was on dynamics of inviscid fluids, some of it i'd done before and some i hadn't. we looked at the navier-stokes equation again and i'd forgotten all of that so i'm gonna have to go back to 2nd year for a bit i think lol. other than that it was alright.

mathsoc stuff
the hoodies went live on wednesday!!! my lil project is coming to life and i'm so proud :redface:

we've currently only sold 4 but apparently they never get many sales until nearer the deadline so i'm not too worried. i've got mine ordered lol, choosing the colour was so tough but i hope i made the right choice
the social this week was a quiz hosted by a member of general committee and his girlfriend who refuses to buy a mathsoc membership and it was actually really good fun!! my team came 2nd last so we won an advent calendar each which we should get today and i'm v excited as it means i don't have to buy one :colondollar:

afterwards we had some fun on the zoom, played some games of picolo and among us and it was a good evening!!
this week we've got a "scavenger hunt" type thing, idk i dont think it's gonna be that successful but hey. i still haven't made the artwork for that one yet oops, that's a job for me for today

other society stuff
we finished choreo for the competition dance on saturday!!! so exciting, now we've just got loads of practicing to do and then when we can have rehearsals in person again we'll work on formations and make it look really good. i'm actually so happy with it, there's very little i can't do/struggle with so with some practice i think it'll be fab!!
rag had a quiz on saturday joint with mind the gap (our mental health society) but i didn't go. for a start they charged £3 a ticket and also it was straight after dance and i wasn't feeling it. apparently it was pretty good but still lol, we're charging £3 for our murder mystery which is our big social of the semester. feel like it's a bit much to charge for a quiz but hey

mental health stuff
it's been a better week than last week for sure. haven't had the weird anxiousness i had last week so that's nice, and generally been alright. i've been sleeping a little better too. my focus has been nonexistent though and getting through uni work is proving v difficult but hey i'm still trying

other stuff
yesterday morning we got up super early to go to the beach to see the sun rise. it ended up being too cloudy to actually see the sun but it was still cute, we took picnic breakfast stuff and had fun on the beach at 8am lol. i was zombified for the rest of the day lol i ended up having a 3 hour nap and getting no work done but still, it was a cute morning. my house had a night in on friday, had a mini presentation night which was funny and we ended up getting pretty drunk (and paying for it on saturday :redface:

) it was a fun night but definitely up there as one of the weirdest we've had ahahaha

think that's all i've got to say, got a zoom at half 9 as per so i need to get ready!!

hope everyone has a good week :heart:

tags

Reply 62

absolutelysprout

glad to hear you're doing better mentally :hugs:

your presentation night looked like great fun!! :lol:

Reply 63

flaurie

Volunteer Team

Oooh the beach sunrise sounds awesome (even if the weather wasn’t great ahaha)
Glad to hear that you’re feeling a bit better, hope you’re not zombified today too!!

Reply 64

Muttley79

Thanks for the update -

I think everyone is fed-up with online learning - you'll get there - hope you feel more motivated this week :hugs:

for an Advent calendar - UKMT are doing a easy Maths one :smile:

https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6811176

Reply 65

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Glad you're doing a bit better. Yay for dance coming along nicely, and for sunrise and hoodies! :awesome:

Reply 66

niamhdoesmaths

Original post by absolutelysprout

glad to hear you're doing better mentally :hugs:

your presentation night looked like great fun!! :lol:

thank you

ahaha it was certainly an interesting one

Original post by laurawatt

Oooh the beach sunrise sounds awesome (even if the weather wasn’t great ahaha)
Glad to hear that you’re feeling a bit better, hope you’re not zombified today too!!

hopefully i'll be able to go back when it's less cloudy!!
honestly i think i'm more tired today than i was last monday!!

Original post by Muttley79

Thanks for the update -

I think everyone is fed-up with online learning - you'll get there - hope you feel more motivated this week :hugs:

for an Advent calendar - UKMT are doing a easy Maths one :smile:

https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6811176

thank you :huga:
ooh i'll check it out!!

Original post by The_Lonely_Goatherd

Glad you're doing a bit better. Yay for dance coming along nicely, and for sunrise and hoodies! :awesome:

thanks lovely :hugs:

hope you're doing ok!

Reply 67

niamhdoesmaths

update #8: monday 7th december 2020
christmas came early

morning everyone, slighly later update this week as i was still fast asleep until 10 (i was up until gone 4 this morning, love that for me). but i'm here regardless to probably bore you all to tears lol

uni stuff
this week i have 2 assignments due: group theory on thursday and methods for differential equations on friday. so all i did last week was catch up on lectures for those.

mas3710 group theory: i've done quite a few lectures on this this week, looked at cyclic groups, generating sets, presentations and today i'm gonna look at cosets and lagrange's theorem. everything just makes sense in group theory lol, i fly through the lectures with no issues. last night i started the assignment, my brain decided that midnight was the perfect time to do maths, so i was up til 3:15 this morning doing my assignment and got 4/7 questions done so i'm pretty pleased! planning to finish it and type it up in latex today (and hopefully submit it!!) and then i don't have to worry about group theory til the christmas break

mas3810 methods for differential equations: haven't done as much for this. done a few lectures on solving equations by eigenfunction expansion which i think makes a little bit of sense, we're just about to move onto partial differential equations which is what the assignment is on, so i haven't been able to start it yet as i haven't learnt any of the stuff for it. but hopefully i'll be able to do maybe question 1 after today (there are only 3 questions on this one thankfully)

but yeah that's all i've done cos assignments, fun times

mathsoc stuff
sold another handful of hoodies, they're still on sale for another week and a half so hopefully we'll get some more nearer the deadline! our big social of the semester, the murder mystery, is this thursday. we've been posting suspect mugshots on our instagram story and we're trying to generate some excitement for it as we've worked super hard on it. i still need to learn my script and character background so that's what i'll be dedicating myself to this week.
our scavenger hunt was actually really fun!! i had a great time solving the clues and wandering all around newcastle to take photos with all the places. i got 9/10 right and ended up coming 2nd last again :lol:

(there was a 4-way tie for 1st) but i've won some chocolate coins so they'll just add to the collection of chocolate i've won from mathsoc lol

other society stuff
rag hasn't done anything, dance still going well. rehearsals on saturday were quite short as we can't really work on formations til we can have in-person rehearsals again. the classes are going well too, i can really feel myself improving!!! if i practiced for 1 extra hour a week on top i reckon i'll start noticing massive progress ngl

mental health stuff
been a bit of a rough week, had really bad nights tuesday, wednesday and thursday but not since, so hopefully this keeps up? something is bothering me a fair bit but i don't really wanna talk about it, but yeah. i'll be fine, i always am

other stuff
this weekend was my house's christmas weekend!! we had christmas eve on friday, had matching christmas pjs, watched miracle on 34th street and then played som board games. then saturday was christmas day - we had a posh breakfast, exchanged our secret santa gifts (i got so spoilt! :redface:

) and then later on had our christmas dinner which was luuuuuush. then yesterday was boxing day but we didn't really do much lol just had a very lazy day.
newcastle's in tier 3 which is not fun, can't really do anything but shops are open meaning town is extreeeeemely busy it's awful. literal covid breeding ground

but yeah i think that's all i have to say, i'm hungry so i need to have some food then do some work!

hope you all have a good week :smile:

tags

Reply 68

The_Lonely_Goatherd

You don't bore us to tears, please don't think that, lovely! :penguinhug:

Glad you got some of your work done but please do sleep early tonight if you can :headfire:

Sorry mental health has been difficult :frown:

I hope your house's Christmas weekend may have lifted your spirits a teeny bit, though I know from experience sometimes the last thing you wanna do when unwell is socialise :redface:

I'm glad you got great Secret Santa gifts :ahee:

You deserve to be spoilt! :yep:

Chocolate coins = :teeth:

No pressure to talk about things that you don't want to, but remember I'm always happy to provide an ear if needed/wanted :penguinhug:

Reply 69

absolutelysprout

your flat christmas sounded lovely!! :hugs:

sorry to hear you haven't been doing great mentally, sounds like you've had a busy week :console:

chocolate is always a good prize :yep:

Reply 70

furryface12

Can always message me if you want to, here or WhatsApp (better at checking there!) :hugs:

well done for getting some assignment stuff done though, and dance! Hope the better MH lasts a little bit.

Reply 71

Muttley79

I'm not a massive fan of group theory tbh - hope the assignments went OK

The weekend Christmas sounds a great idea -

I hope you can catch up a bit before next term/semester as being behind will not help MH issues - do apply for extensions if you need them - there's nothing to be embarrassed about

Take care :hugs:

Reply 72

niamhdoesmaths

Original post by The_Lonely_Goatherd

You don't bore us to tears, please don't think that, lovely! :penguinhug:

Glad you got some of your work done but please do sleep early tonight if you can :headfire:

Sorry mental health has been difficult :frown:

I hope your house's Christmas weekend may have lifted your spirits a teeny bit, though I know from experience sometimes the last thing you wanna do when unwell is socialise :redface:

I'm glad you got great Secret Santa gifts :ahee:

You deserve to be spoilt! :yep:

Chocolate coins = :teeth:

No pressure to talk about things that you don't want to, but remember I'm always happy to provide an ear if needed/wanted :penguinhug:

i bore myself sometimes so i wouldn't be surprised :lol:

my sleep schedule has been all over the place this week :hide:

yeah the house christmas was really nice, this week's been horrible though. but i'll get into that
thanks lovely :hugs:

Original post by absolutelysprout

your flat christmas sounded lovely!! :hugs:

sorry to hear you haven't been doing great mentally, sounds like you've had a busy week :console:

chocolate is always a good prize :yep:

it was! yeah 3rd year really isn't very fun atm lol

Original post by furryface12

Can always message me if you want to, here or WhatsApp (better at checking there!) :hugs:

well done for getting some assignment stuff done though, and dance! Hope the better MH lasts a little bit.

thanks lovely :hugs:

Original post by Muttley79

it's the only thing i can do atm so i'm taking that as a positive :lol:

it is pretty boring though i'll admit
yeah i'll have a while over christmas to get caught up and hopefully not fall as far behind next semester, can't be doing with a repeat of this one
we can't get deadline extensions for any coursework which is annoying but if i need anything i'll just ask my personal tutor what can be done

Reply 73

niamhdoesmaths

update #9: monday 14th december 2020
last week of term already

morning guys, can't believe it's the last week already. very much looking forward to the christmas break to be able to chill out a bit but also get caught up before it all kicks off again in january

uni stuff
mas3710 group theory: the assignment took me way longer than i expected as i realised i'd done an entire question wrong so had to redo it. i know what i've done is right but it definitely wasn't the way i was "meant" to do it as it was super long winded, i got what i was meant to end up with at the end but there's definitely a better way to do it. hopefully the marker doesn't get too annoyed by my working lol. but i submitted it on wednesday night and haven't had to do any group theory since, which is quite nice. hopefully i do pretty well

mas3711 linear analysis: did like 3 lectures on friday for this which was horrid, they all take me so long to do. i don't even understand them either, i know i looked at completeness, banach spaces and hilbert spaces but i couldn't tell you what any of it means or answer any questions on them. which is just great since i have an assignment due friday. i started it last night and i can't even do the first question, there's a similar example in the notes but i don't understand it so i've just copied it and hoped that it's just the same. i can't start question 2 and haven't learnt the content for beyond that so that's gonna be fun to do!!!!!

mas3712 matrix analysis: haven't done any lectures but started the assignment last night. i can't do it. i've "done" question 1 but i've definitely done it wrong as the schur triangularisation algorithm only took 1 step when it should take 2 as it's a 3x3 matrix. so idk what i did wrong, i followed the method from the problems class with a very similar question and have got something completely wrong. haven't looked at the rest but i don't think i'll be able to do that either

mas3810 methods for differential equations: did a few lectures, tried to start the assignment and just couldn't. i had enough time on thursday and friday to do it but i genuinely couldn't even find a place to start with any of the questions so i didn't end up submitting anything. bye bye 5%

mas3811 quantum mechanics: haven't done anything for this either, i've looked at the assignment and it could well be in a different language for all i know. feel like i'm gonna not be able to submit this again but i really don't want to throw away a full 8% so i'll try my best

mas3812 advanced fluid dynamics: v similar to quantum actually, i've looked at the assignment and it's complete gibberish, i have no idea what's going on or if i'll be able to do it. if i'm able to submit anything at all for this i'll be surprised

mathsoc stuff
we had our murder mystery!! it went really really well, i was the wife of the deceased and everyone asked really good questions lol. i did break character a few times but i was far from the only one. had a really good time :smile:

this week we're just promo-ing a department quiz instead of hosting our own social as we've all got too much on our plates atm and so will members. hoodies are on sale til wednesday so i need to prod some people (especially committee lol) to buy them before it's too late. then the fun will come with actually buying them but that's not wholly my problem

other society stuff
feeling very demotivated by dance atm. the class on monday was stressful, we learnt 3 different pieces of christmas choreo and i couldn't keep up with any of it so that was great. then saturday's rehearsal went awfully, my mind completely blanked for a large portion of the dance so i had to go through that, then i just kept messing up and was having internet issues too which really didn't help. i definitely need to practice more, i'll be dreadful at the rate i’m going
rag have 2 socials this week but i probs wont go to either as i'm too busy

mental health stuff
lmao i am not doing well atm. my sleep schedule is actually horrendous, been unable to get to sleep until 3am most nights and waking up at like 11, yesterday i slept 5am-1pm and last night 3am-10am. it's really annoying. last night i had a huge crying session about how i'm deffo gonna fail the year. ngl i'd rather fail the year than barely pass it as then i'd get to resit in a hopefully normal environment rather than this stupid online stuff. but then again i can't do any of the content so it'd just be another miserable year. idk. whenever i think about uni work and how stressed i am i just cry. wtf happened to my brain. there's definitely more to say but i can't think of what. 3rd year is just killing me

other stuff
2 of my housemates have gone home for christmas so there's just 3 of us left now. i'm only going home for 5 days over christmas, i've already booked my trains and they weren't that expensive. can't think of anything else to say really

hope everyone has a good week, pls send good vibes my way i could really do with them lol