Personal Blogs

As ever I walked to and from my exam, which this time was a wee way; I reckon about eight miles (round trip), perhaps more.

The Hibees ground: Easter road, I haven't been there in a while, it's changed a bit. We were in the West stand where there was a good view of the pitch, but felt too hot. Still, it was plush enough. If I had a gripe it was that, obviously hired [as a janny who hires-out] examination desks were on the small side; I had to store various bits-and-bobs on the floor.

I was the only one doing M336, so I was the only one who failed last time, which I'm not sure whether to be happy or sad about.

On my right were geologists, who had a wee bag of rocks to open; on my left were M263ers, which piqued my interest as it is a course that I've done myself, I'd have liked to know what they thought. But after the exam I could muster neither the energy nor the courage to ask any of them about it.

The exam, for me, started shakily, literally. Despite making sure, I thought, that I had lots of blood sugar, the walk and the adreneline-kick made me shake badly. I made this worse by heading for a question that, although I knew that I could do it required some accuracy. I wasted about twenty minutes before I gave it up as a bad job.

Fortunately by this time the lemonade was kicking in. Yup that's right I've changed my drink; I'm going for high-sugar. I think this worked.

By this time we were about thirty minutes in, the shakes had stopped and I had gotten into the groove. I did about seven of the part I questions pretty quickly. Enthused I tackled my two group theory questions; the first was OK, the second asked something that I had not jot one of a clue about for the b). So I went back to the question that I'd tackled first, this time I saw what was required and did most of the question well, I think.

Now I had about forty-five minutes to go [did I mention that the clocks were visible from anywhere?] so I tackled a couple of question where I could make a good guess about the structure of the answer.

Now I had fifteen minutes left. So I tackled the lattice question.

What I didn't do was to make a diagram. Five marks a-begging, I will get none. If five marks are important I will kill the hat that I don't have lest I eat it.

You walk home the, three-or-so miles with, regrets in your head. In fact there was a moment where some street-performer seemed to have arranged some group of tourists to cheer passers-by when people walked past. He must have been disappointed by my utter unreaction because I heard him doing it again. And such things amuse only a certain amount of times.

Tomorrow the numbers and similar woes.

on the long march to redemption has been planned

I manage to get a review of the topology course together.

Neither good nor bad. The good thing is that I think I should have passed, the bad thing is that the summit of my ambition is a grade three. Still that was always the plan.

[I'll write a proper post-mortem of this year's courses tomorrow.]

Now it's on to number theory and something about software. Time to gather some real marks. I now know that I can potentially do it at this level, all that's left is to show that I can.

I only have the specimen exam to go by but I think that I won't go too far wrong if I assume that the six part two questions will be based on the three blocks of each stream.

My plan is rather reliant on there being a counting problem in the geometry part. If there is, fine. If there isn't here's my plan B.

I think that I'm fine with the part two groups stream questions, maybe, I'll tackle these first, it worked for the topology exam. 30 marks; about an hour. No, I'm going to bump that up to an hour and a quarter. In the topology exam I'd prepared for questions coming at me in a certain way, which didn't happen. Things took longer than I'd thought that they would, I need to add in thinking time into my calculations.

Then it's all minds on deck, I'll have to garner all the groups marks that I can. I reckon that there are 30 on offer in part one. Say another hour and a quarter; I'll try to be non-sloppy, to be exact maybe?

Then it's just get what I can from the rest of the paper.

I should get over 40 with the possibility of a 55.

If there is a colouring problem? Then I need to squash the times down. This will work because I'm going to have more marks to play with, so I can drop more for individual questions.

I grade three should be manageable methinks. We'll see.

Just realistic.

I have a plan, let's go...

Two and a half units of the surfaces left to go. Did I miss these units the first time round? I don't remember anything about them. I have a marked TMA, so I must have done them [I can't remember getting someone else to do it for me] ... have I finally lost the ability to remember anything at all?

The smart money is on the surfaces being the place where the marks hang low. I'm not so sure, that might just be me.

Tomorrow is the first day of getting sober for the exam, I'm not looking forward to that but it has to be done—I have a real shot at this one, a shot that I probably shouldn't have. I need a me that I haven't needed for a long time: un-pissed, focused and rested.

There's a chance he might turn up to my exam.

And some thoughts about where and if it all went wrong.

Revision woes, or not.

I've been reading a biography of Steve Jobs and it's having an effect on me. You should struggle for perfection, in your own way.

Or last TMA away? Much the same aren't they?

The song danced to. [Although I wasn't doing much dancing today.]

I had to take a day off work-work today. Not because I had OU-work to skivve off for but because I was bona fide ill. I started to dress on the edge of the bed, and became aware that I couldn't.

I lay in my bed or in the hottest of hot-hot baths reading a maths book. [When I wasn't sleeping.] The maths book? An introduction to analysis. [of something!!] I read the groups bit.

Too often, as we move on, we forget what we have learned.

Tonight as I tackled my TMA I saw the basics that I'd forgotten.

And realized the depths of my ignorence.