Ideally I’d be spending today watching Star Wars (which I still will), but exams are around the corner, and apparently so is another attempt at dealing with them. These aren’t nearly as high-stakes as A-Levels were for me last year, but they still exist, and so does the comparison, doubt, and all the rest of it. Yoda said that fear is the path to the dark side or something. He wasn’t wrong, but he also didn’t have to sit a Linear Algebra paper.
Study & Exams
Ryan Gosling, Revision, and Reasons to Care
Spoiler warning: This post contains spoilers for Project Hail Mary. If you haven’t watched it yet, go watch it! Watching a Ryan Gosling movie and ending up with the sudden urge to revise central forces and orbital mechanics wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. And yet, here we are. Exam season is creeping closer every passing day, so I guess I can’t complain too much, but I will anyway, because that’s what this blog is for.
The Missing First Page of Most Maths Notes
A lot of maths notes feel like they start on page two. You see a theorem, then a proof, then an example. But mathematics didn’t descend from the heavens in perfect notation. It was made slowly, and often painfully, by people who couldn’t leave a problem alone. So here’s a post on why I think every maths topic should begin with four things: the problem it was invented to solve, the person behind it, the core intuition, and only then, the formal theorem.
On the Value of Mathematics in the Age of GenAI
As I slowly but surely work through catching up on lectures and revision, one of the questions I’ve found myself sitting with is this: What’s the value of studying mathematics in a world where GenAI can already solve so many of the problems we’re asked to work through? And what does this mean for exams? … Continue reading On the Value of Mathematics in the Age of GenAI
‘I don’t know. It’s a mystery.’
I’ve recently started playing video games again. That might sound trivial, but for a long time it wasn’t something I felt “allowed” to do. Somewhere along the way, games got under the category of being “unproductive”, and with that came the kind of guilt that lingers even when you’re supposedly relaxing. I’m very grateful to … Continue reading ‘I don’t know. It’s a mystery.’
On Gaining Perspective
Last year, I was rejected from Oxford. No interview, just a flat-out rejection for Maths. In hindsight, that became one of the biggest turning points in my life and gave me something much more valuable than I expected: perspective. You don't always get what you want. Sometimes, you don't even get what you might deserve. … Continue reading On Gaining Perspective
Exams, Burnout, and Finding Balance
You can love a subject deeply and still feel like exams are destroying you. You can work hard, care a lot, and still walk out of an exam room feeling like you’ve failed. With A-Level Results Day just around the corner, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the pressure, the grades, and the system … Continue reading Exams, Burnout, and Finding Balance
Rekindling
It’s been exactly 20 days since my last A-Level exam. And honestly? I thought I’d feel free. But instead, I’ve been left with this strange, heavy emptiness, a kind of grief almost. It feels as if I’ll never be able to enjoy learning again, or find anything that lights me up the way maths once … Continue reading Rekindling
Maths Rant 