letters to Part III

I do remember, I did promise one more, on the ever more pressing theme of revision.  I hope it will be a completely unnecessary post, because I hope someone has told you about revision tactics (and convinced you of the sense thereof).  Some points I feel I need to make, just in case nobody else did. Study past papers. Believe in bookwork. Study a lecturer's form. Take careful note of what the lecturer might have said about the exam. Do not allow an essay to monopolise more than its fair share of time. Pace yourself - write relaxation into the schedule. This is mostly stuff most MMath students know, or they would not have survived through Part II with sufficient distinction to enter Part III. Nonetheless, at the risk of repetition, herewith my thoughts. The study of past papers .  MMath students are brought up on past papers.  One famous Director of Studies assigned past tripos questions from the first week of IA. He would give a short lecture on the material needed

It's about the Part III Seminars again.  If you are doing an essay (and of course you are), and if your essay topic did not depend critically on topics covered in the last four weeks of a Lent term course, then of course you are going to give a talk.  Never mind the fact that it is a fantastically inconvenient time, that you haven't really understood the paper yet, (but would have time in the Easter hols  study period to get a lot further with the subject),  that you haven't had a full night's sleep since sometime during the early part of January, and that you are nearly four weeks behind in copying out your lecture notes for this term. Actually, we did think very hard about the timing of this seminar series, and every time we thought about it, we came back to the conclusion that it was the right time, inconvenient as it might be. Here are a few of the thoughts behind our inconvenient choice. Giving a talk is a really important "first draft" for any paper

This matters a lot to me.  It matters a lot to me because it really really matters to you.  I will explain why below. For those who have no time to read through, just do the following: Go to the Summer Research website. Browse through the projects offered . Sign up for the e-mails. Go to the talks (Tuesdays 13:00 MR3 this term; *free lunches*) at which those offering projects, both from other departments in the University and from industry, will be giving short presentations on their projects. Talk to those presenting projects. The longer version. Particularly if you are doing Part III now, if you are intending to do a PhD, if you have never done any work in a field outside mathematics that uses your mathematical abilities and a smidgen of coding,  regard this as a must, rather like putting on a parachute. Put it on before taking to the skies, particularly in this instance, as you will be flying in a home-built glider of uncertain airworthiness piloted by an undoubtedly

Conferences.  If you stay in the trade, conferences will be part of your life, and December is a popular time, if not so popular as mid summer.  Musing back to memorable conferences, I find it is not the mathematical thrills that have stuck in mind after several decades, but the human aspect.  Scheveningen, swimming in the sea, Utah, a toe curlingly embarrassing experience consequent upon severe jet lag and a minor conflagration in the hotel, Salamanca and the missing luggage, Hamburg, pleasant accommodation in a comfortable B+B when we (the only two women at a conference) were excluded from the rest of the group at the Military Highschool, which had no accommodation for women, Utah, again, getting lost in choke cherries in the mountains. So many to choose from.  Happy days.  But if I were to choose one, it probably has to be this story.  Children lend such colour to life, and to the experience of conferences. ----------------------  December 1985. The plane was late.   Standi

When I was doing things for Part III I started giving a talk on revision strategy.   My reason for doing so was part of my humiliating experience on the first occasion of attempting the MSc exams at Warwick. One contributing factor to that disaster was a complete failure to understand the style of exam I was up against, and complete absence of any strategy to prepare for it.   Perhaps I should explain. My undergraduate training compressed four years worth of courses at Smith College, a woman's liberal arts college in western Massachusetts, into three years. At the end, my level of knowledge was not up to Part IB standards, and significant parts of that had been self-taught. Don't get me wrong, I learned some stunningly important things at Smith; I learned that I liked doing mathematics research, and that I was good at it, and I learned to read. And I resolved that no one was going to bully me out of being a mathematician, and I had excellent support in that decision, but i

Write.   Do the essay.   Why? Part III needs to be a year of transformation, you start as a student, you need to end up as an (inexperienced) researcher. Part of the training undertaken in the year therefore really ought to include some attempt at learning to do research. In allowing you to do an essay in lieu of an exam the Faculty has done its best to provide this opportunity and encourage you to take it. You get credits equivalent to a 24 hour course. Generally speaking it is a safe option - people generally score well on essays relative to their performance in other course. You get a chance to interact with a member of staff on an individual basis - rare in Part III. It’s not actually all that much like being someone’s PhD supervisee, but it’s closer than listening to lectures and it's an opportunity for conversation. Particularly if you take advantage of giving a talk on your essay in the Lent Term Seminar Series, you are given a reasonable framework guiding you through