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Exams are coming up. 

And not too soon, I can tell you. 

I have five days to organise myself for the S383 The Relativistic Universe exam, which I will open at twelve midnight on Tuesday night. There are things for which I am prepared, things for which I am not prepared, and things for which I will never be prepared even if I studied for another year. 

I hope to pass; I am desperate to pass. But I will never get a distinction - I'm not clever enough. And people say, "You're only as clever as you think you are!" But I don't think that's true. I know I have my limitations. I wish I were special at these things, but I'm not. There are people who are special; but I'm just not one of them. So I hope to pass, and I hope that we are given the questions which I can happily answer, such as those about tensors, and those about Schwarzschild metric, and those with simple plug and play equations. If I were keen (which I guess I am, but need motivation and inspiration to come from somewhere right now), then I'd sit down and work through the following: 

• Special relativity - I'd work through several past paper question ones. 
• Connection coefficients - I'd work out how many some metric or other contains - I'd work out why they equal zero in flat spacetime metrics. 
• Riemann curvature tensor - I'd work out the derivation - I'd work out the manipulation. 
• Einstein field equations - I'd work out some manipulations of these. 
• Accretions discs - I'd brush up on knowledge about these.
• Gamma ray bursts - I'd brush up on knowledge about these. 

I suppose that's only six things to work on. When it comes to actually doing the past paper exams, I know that this is what most students are doing: They are working through questions and honing their knowledge. I have not done as much. But nevertheless I feel almost ready. I feel that my mind will change, and my motivation will kick in the second I click onto the iCME81 link. I do feel ready, in a way, but I must take heed of these things I have written above, and spend Sunday, Monday and Tuesday thinking about these things. 

But this evening (Thursday 1 June), and Friday and Saturday, I must do my utmost to get on with writing down some equations for the MST326 exam which takes place in exactly one week. I must work through: 

• Statics - by doing some past paper questions, or understanding their answers. 
• The Chain rule - there's a section of a question, a step that I know I'll have difficulty with. 
• Navier-Stokes equations. 
• Div, grad and Curl. 
• Some water waves. 
• some other things. 
• Mainly the chain rule...!!
• Separation of variables and Fourier series. 
• Fourier series actually!

Those are the main things to work on. Actually, as long as I have down the chain rule step that's been bothering me, I think I'll be alright. 

I have a revision session tomorrow in town, with two students from the module. We're meant to meet at Foyles in Charing Cross. But I'm not sure I'll make it. I woke up at eight o'clock this morning, had a cup of coffee, some breakfast and a cigarette, then fell back asleep until four o'clock in the afternoon. If I don't sleep tonight, there's no way I can wake up to go there tomorrow, now is there? But I do want to go. I want to ask them about these steps. 

So that's it then! This evening, and Friday, and Saturday, I will work through some past papers, writing down some answers, getting a feel for the questions, then Sunday to Tuesday I'll work through some Relativity, and that's that. 

There! What's to worry about!? 

Daniel
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