Dusty Pink

So this is the final week of examinations taking place and then our summer holidays begin. I only have one exam left which I will be sitting on Thursday morning. My final exam, I think is the toughest exam I am going to sit so far out of all my exams. Thankfully I have achieved good coursework marks for this module so I am aiming for a high outcome from the exam and the module overall.

After my final exam I just plan on relaxing and chilling out. Some of the many things I do look forward to is one of my cousins hen night (mehndi party) which is taking place this Saturday evening. I am looking forward to it as it gives me a chance to relax and enjoy the company of my cousins and other relatives. I think this party will be quite interesting as the dress code colour is dusty pink. Traditionally colours such as greens, yellows and oranges are worn on the mehndi night, but obviously this bride and her family are quite unique having chosen a completely different colour.

For some us dusty pink is quite easy to get right, however it will be very interesting to see how the mature women get the colour wrong. Of course there some people who just wear whatever they want completely ignoring the dress code colour. I however think there is no excuse for this as the invitation card clearly states the precise colour so people should follow the instruction and just attend the function wearing the specified colour.

Unfortunately due to the wedding taking place the following Tuesday (why couldn’t they have picked Monday, I wonder?) I don’t think my mum or I will be attending the wedding ceremony, because we are both going to be working on that day. Even though the ceremony starts at 8pm, by the time I reach home from work it will be 7pm and I will be so tired from a long day (bearing in mind that I wake up at 6am), I don’t think I will be in the party mood and wanting to socialise with relatives. At least my brothers will go to the wedding with my dad, as they won’t be doing anything during the daytime due to them having the summer holidays. Although one of my brother’s already said to me that he wished that he had a summer job just so he can get out of attending the evening weddings. I told him, ‘What a reason to want a summer job?’ in my sarcastic voice. As my brother opened his mouth to give me a reply, I told him that it was a rhetorical question. He quietly nodded and went upstairs to his room. Ah well, that’s funny brothers for you.

Looking forward to the end of the month

This month is quite a busy time period for students as they have final pieces of coursework and/or dissertations to complete and exams to sit. So far I feel that I have done quite well. I do have 2 more exams left and then I will be free. I can’t wait to alternate my current lifestyle which just consists of studying and revising for my upcoming exams.

I do feel that I do have the hardest two exams to sit last, as the first two exams were quite straightforward and I didn’t have any major problems with them. The one thing I do hate about exams is that after completing an exam, regardless of the paper, my friends and I get together and always go over the answers. Some people just want to forget about and put it at the back of their minds, but some of my friends were quite persistent about going through the exam questions in detail and comparing answers. For some of the questions a group of us got one answer and a few of my friends got some different answers. Obviously this can be confusing and sometimes frustrating for some of us, but at the same time we do not know who is right.

Something else which I find quite funny about exams and revision is that even though at the beginning of the year, our lecturers do give us the time to actually go into their office during their specific hours in which students are allowed to ask the lecturers questions (for help) regarding the topic covered, hardly anyone goes during term time. As soon as we come back after Easter, all students are eager to arrange meetings and contact lecturers requesting help on particular questions. Why do students leave things at the last minute and not deal with them as soon as they arise?

Personally, I did go to some lecturers during the term to ask for help on certain tutorial questions, but even so I did find myself arranging to meet up with my lecturers to discuss some questions even after Easter.

One of the good things about revision, is that even though revising by myself can be helpful because of the peace and quiet, I do also like revising with my friends just to see how other people revise and it’s also wise to help friends with questions they may have trouble with and my friends also help me with any questions I do have trouble with.

Spring Time

Spring time is such a beautiful time of year with flowers blooming. This season makes me appreciate all the beautiful colours within our life. However this spring my time has been spent studying for my second year final exams which I am due to take next month.

Thankfully all my coursework is out of the way and I have handed everything in. I am just awaiting a couple of coursework marks so then I can work out my average and find out how many marks I need in my exam to do well overall for my second year. The second year of my studies counts towards 25% of my final degree, so even though I am not in my final year, my second year is personally important to me.

Even though I am currently on my Easter holidays, I feel like the days are just passing by too quickly for my liking, especially when I really want them to slow down. I can’t believe I’ve only got a week left before I have to go back to university for my final revision classes, before my exams.

Overall this academic year has flown by quite quickly. It has been great fun, no matter how busy it has been. I am just looking forward to completing my revision and exams and not having anything else to worry about and I can then enjoy my summer without worrying about my studies.

Apart from my studies I have managed to attend two weddings with family which was good fun. Although my family are not particularly close to the groom or bride, a lot of my cousins and uncles did attend the wedding so we did get to catch up. One of my cousins who I am particularly close to did also attended the wedding. I haven’t seen her in almost a year because she works abroad, so it was particularly interesting and exciting to get to spend some time together.

Easter holidays are here!

Wow! What a busy month it has been for me. I had to submit 4 pieces of coursework this month, each piece for different modules of my programme; mathematics.  The deadline for my final piece was last Saturday at 3am in the morning, needless to say that I was up till the early hours of Saturday morning finishing my coursework off. This coursework is quite important as it counts towards 30% of my final mark for one of my modules called numerical methods. I may have mentioned this in my previous blog. What a way to end the term.

As I submitted this coursework at the end of this term, I suppose it will be quite a while till I receive my marks. Hopefully I shall receive all my coursework marks at the beginning of next term, if not then at least before my exams. This term has been quite strenuous and busy, especially compared to the last. I just can’t wait till the exams are over and then I can enjoy my summer holiday peacefully with no revision or studying bugging me.

Although it is the beginning of the Easter holidays, I will be very busy as I have 4 exams to revise for and they are all very important in ensuring that I do well overall this year in my studies. I can’t believe that there is only 4 and a half weeks left till I sit my first exam left. Such a short amount of time and so much to do. Luckily I have made sure that all my notes are up to date and I have made some photocopies of some notes from my friends just to fill in any minor gaps in my folder. So hopefully, it’s just a case of reading trough my notes and answering past paper questions under time conditions. Luckily I do have two revision sessions for 2 of the modules left after the Easter break. So if I do have any questions, I can ask my lecturers then. First I just want to have a thorough read of my notes for myself just to find out what I do and don’t understand, and then I can go further from there.  

Aside from that, over the last few weeks I have been making frequent visits to the careers library to find out what’s going on in terms of job availability. Turns out not a lot. It’s quite tough to get a graduate job nowadays. There is a lot of competition and approximately 30 people are competing for just one vacancy. The number of vacancies available has decreased as the years go by and the job market is extremely competitive.  So I am now looking to do some postgraduate study after completing my degree. I’m not sure what kind of postgraduate degree I want to do at the moment; I’m just doing some research and looking at my options.

Anyways that’s enough for now. Hopefully I will be able to write again soon. Until then, take care.

Information Day

I had my information day yesterday and it was quite interesting to say the least. My year group and I received lots of information regarding different courses. Basically, what we have to do is choose separate modules of what we want to study for both term 1 and term 2. In both terms there are five courses to choose from and from those five choices we have to pick three. I suppose the good thing about this is that, even if we fill in this application form, we can still change our minds, if we want after completing our exams.

The course tutors leading the course all gave presentations on their specific modules. We received information about coursework and exams. For third year courses we mostly get 1 piece of coursework which is worth 50% of the module and 1 exam which is also worth 50%. Some modules are 100% coursework and no exams. So I predict that those courses will be quite popular. The only negative thing I would say is that all those modules that carry exams will all be sat in May. There is no opportunity to sit an exam in January even if that specific module was studied in the first term, i.e. from September to December.

Some of my friends have already filled in the application form and submitted it to our personal tutor.  For me personally it takes some time to actually think about what I want to study. I remember that after the talk, I was talking to one of my friends about a particular course called, ‘Advanced Algorithms’. I considered applying for the course, but she called me a bit crazy. She was a bit put off because of the word ‘Advanced’. I told her that all 3rd year modules will be harder compared to our 2nd year modules. I still won’t let that put me off, because at the end of the day, I know that not all my friends and I will pick the same modules. Some of us will choose different modules, so we will be taking different classes next year. The good thing is at least that we have 2 weeks to submit the form, so I can think about my options and choices over the next week or so.

In terms of my coursework assignments, I have one more price left which is due next Friday. The good thing about this piece of coursework is that it can be submitted electronically, which works to my advantage as I can work on my coursework at home after attending my lectures and tutorials. Although this coursework can be complicated sometimes, I am determined to do well in this coursework and achieve high marks, especially because it is worth 30% of the overall module, so this coursework is very important.

I have a strong feeling that this weekend is going to be filled full of completing my coursework and doing some revision for my other modules. From listening to the talk on Information Day, I am more determined than ever to get really good marks in all my second year modules.

Plans for the weekend

I’m really looking forward to this weekend. On Saturday, I am working at the Greenwich maths master class.  I have already worked at one master class a few weeks ago, but I am especially looking forward to this one. This is because it is about how Google works. This seems like an interesting topic to complete a presentation about. The presentation will be carried out by a senior lecturer from the mathematics department. It would be quite interesting to see how he combines mathematics and computing together.

Since starting my degree in mathematics, I have become more aware of the link between mathematics and computing. Is it any wonder that my school is called; Computing and Mathematical Sciences? Studying mathematics incorporates many things like computing and data analysis. Next Monday, during one of my lectures, some people from GET will be coming in to give us some advice and guidance on placement and internships for next year or the following year. This depends on how many of us want to do a sandwich year. Personally I don’t want to do a sandwich year only because i want to complete my degree as soon as possible.  Also my course leader for operational research will be giving a talk based on what options we can take in our final year. It seems too early to be thinking what kind of courses I want to study next year, but nevertheless my tutor is insistent that we start to think about it now so that we don’t rush our decisions come August/ September. For some people making options can be quite exciting, however I do find it quite nerve wracking.  Some of my friends have already planned out some of the modules they want to study next year. But I still remain clueless. I mean, there is a total of 20 options to choose from, and we can only pick seven. Ah well, I think the best thing for me to do is take the advice of my course tutors and make some decisions later. I suppose i could talk to some of my friends and see what options they want to do and ask them why they want to do it and what they think they will benefit from by doing this module.

On Sunday, I am going to be attending my cousin brother’s birthday party. He turns one on ~Sunday. Aaw, so cute, innit? It’s just going to be with close family at my cousin’s house. My aunt called my mum up on last Sunday and asked her to come early this Sunday to help set everything up. My aunt and my cousin sister are really excited about the party, so I’m really looking forward to it. It’s been a while since all of us cousins have actually met up; I think the last time we met up was during the Christmas holidays, so it has been quite a while. It looks like I’ll be having a jam packed weekend at the end of this week. I hope all my readers/followers also have an enjoyable weekend, whatever you’re doing. Take care.

Busy times ahead!

This week has been stressful in terms of coursework and catching up on tutorial assignments. I do have my operational research coursework to hand in the following Tuesday. Thankfully, it won’t take me too long to complete. I did have a class based on the coursework on Monday, which really cleared up the misconceptions I had with regards to the level of difficulty of competing the assignment. With any luck I should have it done by the weekend. I do plan to have a quick glance at my work on Monday evening just to check for any errors I may have made and quickly fix them up before I hand it in on Tuesday.

I also have another assignment to complete; this time for numerical methods. Although this is a computing assignment (definitely not my area of expertise), I am quite confident that I can achieve good marks in this piece of work, of course it may have something to do with the fact that I have 5 weeks to complete the coursework and also the fact that I am allowed to submit the work electronically all through the comfort of my own home. Another positive aspect of this coursework is that my lecturer is extremely helpful and offers our class good advice and guidance on how to complete our assignment to the best of our ability.

I also have 2 other pieces of coursework coming out at the beginning of next month; one for linear algebra and another one for statistical methods, so needless to say that the following six weeks is going to be a pretty stressful time for me, but I won’t let this put me off. I do have to say that actually attending the lectures and tutorials do build my confidence as I can ask the lecturers questions based on the coursework, during that time.  At the end of the day, doing all this coursework enables me to plan ahead for my future. I am sure, after I graduate that I will face even more difficult situations compared to completing two or three coursework assignments at the same time.

Honestly, it feels like I spend most of my time at uni rather than at home. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t normally go to the library, I do however use the computers quite often especially to do my computing coursework as well as to do my statistics tutorials. Compared to last year, the courses I currently study are quite practical; it’s not all about paper, pen and calculators. We do actually get to use some pretty cool software packages which helps us to generate some amazing graphical models like the one shown above.

Aside from my studies, I am quite envious of my brothers, because they are currently on their half- term holidays. Not Fair!!! But saying that I am sure that they must also be completing their school/ college assignments and any other outstanding work they may have. Well at least they have the luxury of doing all their work at home.