One of the most stressful things about exam season is other people's stress. To an extent, it's good - there's a danger otherwise of becoming under-stressed, and I will admit to a teensy competitive streak when it comes to things like exams. Durham is not like Oxbridge in the respect that your raw mark counts for a lot more than where you come in the ranking for your course, but inevitably there is an aspect of moderation (if everyone does really well on a paper then the marks will be moderated down and vice versa). In something like Maths, the ability range tends to be, dare I say it, exponential - and this means that to do well on a paper you really can't afford to be banking on everyone screwing up because there are some people who will kick ass regardless.

 

Having said that, I reckon I've got my revision technique pretty much sorted. I know how I work best. That involves not getting up 'til 7:30am or 8am, because energy is good. That involves going for a walk straight after breakfast, because pain is bad and certainly does not aid concentration. That involves going back to basics on the material, really understanding it, and then distilling it on to revision cards before even attempting any past papers or the like.

 

So I have to try my hardest not to get phased by other people working by 7am, or by coursemates going through every question on the problem sheets as a way of revising. I know that I'm not good at learning things by rote, but it doesn't mean that I don't get worried when someone can reel off every last symbol in the proof for the Contraction Mapping Theorem; I don't even write essays, but I still start doing a mental tally of my work when my two arts housemates compare the number of plans that they wrote that day. One of the up-sides of not living with any mathematicians, I guess, is that I don't feel like I have to be constantly comparing myself to anyone - I can just get on with it. But I'm still wondering how everyone else is doing.

 

Numerical Analysis is hard. It's conceptually actually pretty easy when compared to AMV or something like that, but the questions are awkward and the first term in particular was not lectured well. Ironically, being good with Maple is almost a hindrance to doing the questions with pen and paper. But never mind. I'm getting on. Getting on. And trying to remember that I have another, as yet unrevised module on Tuesday...

 

Five days. Five days 'til freedom!

 

My possessions seem to be operating a one-in, one-out policy at the moment. About a week ago I lost my first-year Calculus revision cards and my hairbrush. Then I found the hairbrush and lost my doorkey. I have just found the Calculus cards (rather belatedly) and lost my campus card, my student identification and my sole means of access to the library.

 

On balance, the doorkey and the campus card would be nicer to have than the last year's revision cards and the hairbrush...

 

 

Numerical Analysis. Urgh. Roll on a week today.

 

I have about 14 hours to learn the entirety of Codes before tomorrow. Damn prioritising, always gets back at you when you're least expecting it. I can do it, right?

 

(Possibly yes, is the answer, if I can just concentrate. This morning hasn't been good distraction-wise, but I needed the break. Read the college magazine that was posted online - what I really need, it turns out, is to go visit a friend in Southampton :-P)

 

 

20:37 : My housemate told me to stop complaining about exam exhaustion earlier. Yes, everyone is working bloody hard, but yes, I have just had the same amount of exams in one week as the rest of them put together. It adds a whole new degree of intensity and stress. And yes, that count is literal (just about including Eleanor's two as well if you total the hours. Eleanor isn't in the house at the minute.).

 

Stress and tiredness and achyness together don't add to my nice-person vibes. But I'm still annoyed.

 

 

22:40 : My gums hurt where my wisdom teeth are trying to come through. My very first word was 'teeth' because I had teething pain as a toddler and I was appealing to my Mummy to put some Bonjela on to soothe it. I could do with some Bonjela now...

 

 

23:15 : I've managed to get Tippex on my chin that isn't rubbing off. I don't really want to use nail varnish remover (acetone) on my face though, so it may have to stay there for a bit.

 

 

23:20 : Coffee is clearly less caffeine-rich than Coke. So, so tired! On the plus side, drinking it doesn't make my stomach feel like its attacking itself from the inside, which was less than pleasant during my Algebra exam. Codes, dammit.

 

 

23:54 : Onto the last chapter of summary notes, the one with the massively-long, massively-pointless algorithm to learn. BCH decoding ftw! In reponse to Hannah's lovely comment - thank you, I agree, although I am probably wallowing in it a bit. And I'm not a big tea person, but honey on toast is good.

 

 

00:41 : BCH decoding algorithm written out and gone through. Sure, I can work through it, but will I really be able to remember the ins and outs of 's's and 't's and 'A's and 'B's and 'alpha inverse's in t'exam? *sigh* Only burst errors to go now (is it just me or do they sound a bit like abscesses?) but it's a very short topic that we have barely covered and I'll work through a question in the morning. Sleep is more important now, probably, especially given my not-being-good-on-little-sleep metabolism. My gums still hurt, in the same irritating sort of way as a patch of eczema, and I still have Tippex on my chin. This is the rock 'n' roll student lifestyle, eh?

 

I just typed 'roll 'n' rock'. I'm going to bed!

 

In the words of Facebook, "Lucy is going to be sitting today's exam on way too little sleep, way too much sugar and caffeine, and a way too sketchy knowledge of parts of the course."

 

Passing's overrated, yeh?

 

Back at Easter, while bemoaning the lack of course spirit on my degree and the lack of fellow Durham students (or more in particular, the lack of fellow Durham mathematicians) in Birmingham, I created some Facebook revision groups to see if people would use them to, dare I say it, communicate with and help each other. The question that I posted to kick start things got answered, admittedly by someone I'm friends with anyway; I answered a couple of questions for someone else, and there was a comment posted on the wall for Complex Analysis that it should be renamed 'Complex Anal'. Lots of people subsequently came up to me and said, "Lucy, those groups were a really good idea!!", and I don't think that they were just being polite - but when it has come to it, no-one has really used them. Ah well. Some you win, some you lose.

 

But I'm glad that I tried. If I hadn't made a big effort to speak to new people this year, I wouldn't be friends with a lot of the people that I now spend time with. I wouldn't have the group of Maths girlies in the area in which I live (not the main student area) with whom I can go for drinks, and discuss men, housemates, and lecturers in equal measure without worrying that we're going to be treading on mutual friends' toes, and without feeling stupid ranting about inept lecturers to someone who doesn't even know what differentiation is. If I didn't know many other mathematicians, I might think I was the only one with 3-hour, 100%-weighted exams in quick succession - as it is, we lump it together. If I hadn't made an effort to help people, I wouldn't feel the right to ask to be helped on occasion.

 

I may not always have got it right, but hell, I've tried.

 

 

I've been leading a pretty narrow existence of late. Since lectures stopped, I've basically seen my four housemates, Caroline, and no-one else (I'm back in the 'special room' for exams, so I won't even be seeing coursemates then). I did pass Helen about to go into a translation exam this afternoon - but that's possibly the third time I've seen her in four weeks, which given how close our friendship group is says something. Everyone is working stupidly hard, basically. All the time. Student slackers? Ha.

 

One down, six to go. I'm going to bed. In my exam today I drew a freehand circle that Mr Oakley would have been proud of!

 

College/ university/ society clothing - aka 'stash' - gets worn a lot in Durham for some reason. It becomes a game, guessing what the various acronyms on people's backs stand for. Some are obvious (GCBC - Grey College Boat Club), some can be guessed (DUSAGG - Durham University Scout and Guide Group), and some could be anything (DUSCR?). It passes a walk occasionally..!

 

Anyway, acronyms for mathematical theorems go the same way. FTC and FTA (Fundamental Theorems of Calculus and Arithmetic/Algebra respectively) have become second nature. CRT sounds a bit like a medical procedure but is in fact the Chinese Remainder Theorem. The Third Isomorphism Theorem caused great hilarity when our Eastern European Algebra lecturer insisted on abbreviating; older students say that it comes round every year but it's funnier not to tell him so no-one ever does!

 

I have just reached FTFGAG. Answers on a postcard - and no Googling until you've guessed!

 

 

 

So much more satisfying to do than exam revision!

 

(I was about to put 'So much more interesting than exam revision'... but that wouldn't be technically true at the minute. I've been wrestling for the last hour or so with a question on Möbius transformations, a area of Complex Analysis which I really like. To come up with a map between the extended complex plane - including the point 'infinity' - and the standard complex plane, such that crucial properties of the initial region are preserved by the map, and then to say that you can define a unique such map with only three points... and to look at the effect of different Möbius mappings on different shapes and functions... I call that pretty interesting! I'm quite a fan of geometry like that. It makes rigorous mathematical sense whilst having a very visual, very instinctive application. The same sort of reason why I instinctively like matrix transformations.

 

 

I was reading this article first thing this morning about food waste. Although I can't claim to be surprised as such, those are some pretty depressing statistics. The predictable irony is that half an hour later I went down to make myself a piece of toast and found that the top three slices of bread in the packet had sufficient mould on to warrant chucking, joining in the bin the courgette that I'd left in the bottom of the fridge for a couple of weeks and forgotten about. I would like to blame exam distraction, and the fact that I can only routinely shop for vegetables once a week. I would like to blame the questionable quality of Tesco packet bread, and I would love to blame the fact that the giant Tesco in Gilesgate has completely depleted the small-food-shop economy in Durham meaning that we can't walk up the road to a corner shop and buy an affordable loaf of bread as and when we need it. But what it comes down to is that we didn't check our bread consumption, we bought in too many loaves in advance, and we failed to remedy the situation by eating more, subsequently even buying baguettes and rolls to suit our mood in the summer weather.

 

We're so quick in our society, aren't we, to pass the blame. You see it on a personal level, you see it on a political level, you see it on a organisational and coporate level. It's fine - it wasn't our fault that the bread went mouldy, and besides, restaurants waste a lot more food than we do. What happened to taking responsibilty for our actions and instead of always pointing the finger, taking constructive steps to remedy a problem?

 

 

Also depressingly, the housemate who I mentioned it to didn't seem to care. Looks like we need to eat a lot of toast!

 

I wish I had something interesting to write about, some new perspective or a discussion to provoke. I don't. Linear Algebra is slowly destroying my soul, from the inside out.

 

 

For lack of an worthwhile entry, then, I will post a photo of what I had for supper tonight because it was tasty and I was pretty proud of myself. Baked pepper stuffed with lentils and vegetables (tomato, celery, onion, and mushroom), with feta cheese on top and sultana rice. It took half an hour to cook and was well worth the effort! I enjoy cooking, actually, and one of the nice things about being off-timetable is that I have the time and energy and inclination to think of new meals. For pudding I had a piece of 'Chocolate Stuff', baked earlier in the week :-)

 

 

 

 

(The image quality isn't fantastic but you get the idea?!)

 

Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh, oh dear. 

 

The world has gone mad. And I double and triple my bid never to live or work in London.

 

(I have one more reason to go to Norwich, however!)