Personal Blogs

I'm just about done with unit 4 now which puts me a third of the way through the module in terms of content.  I'm tracking just over a month ahead of schedule which should give me plenty of time to tie up the loose ends from M140 and should cover what will probably be slow progress during my 3 week holiday in April/May.

Unit 1 was a nice recap on MST124 condensed down into 1 unit.  I was pleasantly surprised working back over some of this content and even found that I understood it a little better this time round. 

Unit 2 was all about typesetting maths and since I've been doing that for my previous 3 modules I'm already pretty competent at it and whizzed through the content whilst managing to learn a few nifty tricks that have increased my speed.

Unit 3 covered number theory and mainly focussed on congruences.  I really enjoyed working through this unit although I'm still a bit unsure about why we learnt this, I understood the content OK but I always find it much easier if I can understand what the content is useful for.  Maybe that will come later in the module or maybe something will click when I revisit the content during revision.

Unit 4 is all about conics and focusses on ellipses, parabolas and hyperbolas and specifically in the normal position.  Again a very interesting unit although due to the length of it, I found it hard work towards the end.

I've got a few unit 4 related questions to answer on my TMA and a few little bits left to tidy up and then I'm going to move onto unit 5.  Hopefully by the time I've finished this, the remaining assessments from M140 will available and I can get them knocked down.

Oh and I've just completed iCMA41 and was pleased to see that we get an indication of our grades straight after submitting again (green ticks or red crosses) and was even more pleased to see that I'd got green ticks across the board.

The iCMA 41 results came through last week and I achieved a score of 100% which I'm delighted with.  It was really easy and I would have been disappointed to drop any marks but it still feels like a big deal!  Its only worth 2 percent of the whole module yet I was eagerly checking the gradebook page every few hours to see if my marks had arrived yet.  It amuses me when I think back to turning up late after a night out to pick my A-Levels up and not even caring what was inside the envelope.

iCMA 42 came out this week and it was predictably more difficult that iCMA41 but I still feel like I did well in it.  There was only one question that I wasn't 100% certain on so hopefully that is reflected in my marks.

I finally made the decision to take on an additional module.  I'm still well ahead of schedule on this course and have found most of the content fine.  The course I chose was MST124 and it was really easy to get enrolled on it, even with the added complication of the student loan.  I have had various advice on which course to take on next with most stating that M140 would be the best choice.  Having spoken to my tutor at the tutorial however, she explained that this was due to MST124 assuming all knowledge from MU123.  Since I feel confident with the majority of the content of MU123 and I will be very far into the course by February I don't see this as a blocker and decided to leave the (probably) easier M140 to work on next academic year alongside a more difficult module.

Fairly sure I've made the right choice, just hope it doesn't overload me during the period the courses overlap.