I knew I would pass, so I was alright; but I also assumed I would get some corrections and/or minor re-writes because everybody does (not least because what might be clear to someone who has been reading your work for three years might need further clarification for others), so I had priced in having to go away for a month or whatever before re-submitting it. Actually passing on the day was mega. I had to rush around getting it bound and submitted to the library and all that, and it meant that I was the only person from my entry group graduating that summer. I bet some of them are still at it.
I had about three hours worth of corrections to make, which I knocked out the next week. I passed with no problems, but I don't know how anyone could ever feel confident walking into a defence. It's not like I've had a dozen before and knew basically what to expect. I was pretty much clueless.
At the time, I thought it didn't help that my examiners were probably two of the top half dozen applied mathematicians in the world, so I was absolutely petrified about having to face them down in an adversarial examination. But it turns out that worked very much in my favour, because they had nothing at all to prove, and didn't need to me to explain any of the broad details, as they already knew it all. We spent about ten minutes tops on all the background stuff before diving into the real content.
Submitted the final version today. All done.
I was confident because my thesis was literally the first study of its subject, so it wasn't really possible for any examiners to question its originality or where it sat amongst the existing literature (I know everything has to meet a level of originality, but some claims are debatable). With that in mind, and having been told by other people that it was well written and researched, I figured - short of some weird unforeseen failure - that I would just be pulled up on were minor interpretations and mistakes I might have made.
My supervisor also put a bit of stock into getting established people to do it for the reasons you mention (I did my upgrade with two people who weren't specialists [him being the only one in the department] and it was painful). His additional theory was that having an internal examiner with a more established reputation would provide some sort of home advantage under normal circumstances, but you can only really test one at a time.
Someone in my year has to do their written papers again because (he does his papers on pc due to dyslexia) an invigilator accidentally deleted one of his papers.
I'd have burnt the fucking med school down.
thinking about doing a pgce
'I bet you didn't think I'd like Crowded House, did you? Well I do. I like them a lot.'
Don't dream it's over is quality, alright.
More like Failmouth if he's turning up.
I'm going to use this thread to vent occasionally about lecturing.
I set the world's easiest mid-term exam today. I told them precisely what week each of the two questions would test. I made the questions practically identical to in-class examples, with some small tweaks. And I let them bring in a formula sheet. At least a dozen of them forgot to bring in the formula sheet entirely, and the sheer range of wrong answers I saw when going through the scripts was dire. It truly is one of the worst things I've ever seen from a class.
Maths seems like one of those degrees you would only do if you were right into it (and therefore likely good at it), unlike humanities stuff that people do because they sort of like it, so people fucking it up feels like it should be unusual. Is that fair?
It's all signaling anyway so who cares, right?
just use a calculator losers
How many books sold is that?
No idea.
It's a bit different here. Basically everyone in science, engineering, finance, etc., has to take first year maths. It's considered such an important skillset that it's not optional for most students. Which means that most of our teaching is actually to people in different degree specialisations, which tends to lead to a little bit of laxity in study. After all, they're "not here to study calculus"; they just want to build bridges.
But this particular class are meant to be the smart ones, so I have no idea what went wrong. Even an utterly basic amount of revision should have done the trick. They clearly didn't revise in any way.
Have you considered the possibility that you're just a shit lecturer?
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Who knows. Maybe some other class had something in a close time-frame which distracted them. Or maybe they are a particularly lazy bunch. Some classes do seem much better than others. You'd imagine that they should all average out, but that doesn't seem to happen.
What's the class specifically about? Maybe dreadfully easy to you isn't so for others
It's first-year linear algebra, but the first mid-term test is supposed to be a freebie. It's nothing they didn't see in high school. And given that good high school grades are a prerequisite for doing the course, it's reasonable to assume that they've seen basic vectors and complex numbers before.
The crazy thing was the number of students who didn't bring in a formula sheet, after I told them about it in every lecture leading up to the test, and in two seperate announcements on the course website. I don't know what more I could have done for those kids.
That’s the sort of Zinger you don’t see on many Forums.
Shit, looks like I will be asked to teach Fluid Mechanics. That's the one I am a bit crap at. Will have to brush up on my Navier-Stokes.
I failed first year maths because I was high all the time. I think I failed exams that were exactly like the one you're describing. I imagine it's fairly common amongst first years everywhere.
In hindsight it's pretty embarrassing that I didn't ace the entire first two years of uni, a good part of it is an open goal.
I finished my first year at McGill. Everything went pretty well and I enjoyed my classes even though some of them were really big.
I feel like that fake James Milner twitter posting like this.
Pepe.
Didn't even have to pay the $2500 I owe for health insurance.
Resits this Friday and next Friday.
I'm a million times more prepared than last time, but fucking hell it's still so nerve-wracking. Especially given it's basically do or die now - either I'm a doctor in a month or I've got almost nothing to show for 8 years of effort.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
I'm sure you'll be fine. Good luck though.
Well resits are done and I finished my last half day of catchup placement earlier today. I will never attend anything as a med student again - one way or another it's all over. Results the week of the 9th apparently.
Fuck me it's been a long old journey but I'm proud I managed to stick it out to the end whatever happens, although obviously I'd really like to pass.
Congrats dickhead.
Hope you passed.
Well done, RL. Hope you passed. How do you feel it went?