… by Alex / from Aberdeen / BSc Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics / 1st Year (UG)
Hello! I’m Alex and I’m a 1st year undergraduate student at the University of Edinburgh, studying (and loving) Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics. One of my biggest initial worries about going to university was whether or not my admittedly lacking organisational skills would allow me to manage the workload in the much more independent university lifestyle. However, since beginning my studies in Edinburgh, I have found that there are numerous facets of the typical day to day routine that encourage rather than just allow me and others to keep a grip on our studies.
One such example is the support provided by tutors and lecturers in tutorials and in the MathsBase. There is typically at least one more experienced staff member scheduled in the MathsBase from my extensive experience there, and they have good knowledge of not only the mathematics involved, but also what you might struggle to understand and how to explain it. They’re friendly and you never feel stupid for asking questions on any topic. The tutors are postgraduate students or academic staff, some of which have taken the very same 1st year courses. It can be nice to have help from someone who understands and went through the same headaches with particular concepts. Both tutors and lecturers have experience marking work, meaning they give useful advice for the best way to lay out and construct a solution so that it can be understood.
Another useful, although challenging, aspect is the weekly coursework that takes the form of hand-ins and online quizzes. These small tests make up either a small percentage or none of the final grade for that course, but provide a good incentive to do any required reading and even go beyond if a particular problem piques your curiosity. I often meet up with fellow course-mates to put our heads together and try to solve the problems. These weekly gatherings have become a fun social experience for us and I almost look forward to the next tough maths problem to puzzle over.
I often find that motivation to study comes from the assigned work itself. Perhaps I’m being too enthusiastic about maths – though I doubt such a thing can be done – yet when doing the work the problems are often focused around applications of the mathematics you are using. Particularly in the course Calculus and its Applications where tutorials typically include wordier problems requiring intuition to solve.
If I end up missing a lecture or falling behind on the assigned readings, I always find a way to catch up. All of the lectures in the School of Maths have been recorded for first year undergraduates this year, and I hope they will be in future. While not as good as physically attending the lecture, as you miss out on the discussions with neighbours and the opportunity to ask questions, you can still find and answer the TopHat questions to mimic the lecture’s interactivity.
Tophat is an app we use in lectures that allows students to anonymously answer questions, letting the professor know in real time how many students are understanding the topic. If you come to a offer holder day, you’ll hopefully get to trial the system in a sample lecture.
So even if your alarm clock’s batteries died or your midday nap took too long (things which I hear happen more often on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons) you can still catch up – with almost exactly the same quality of learning.