Guess What?

by mauro_roberto__

What she says: I’m fine

What she means: How come Rene Descartes is only remembered as a philosopher, and the guy who said “I think therefore I am”? The Cartesian plane is NAMED after him and still only hard mathematicians know that he invented it. Also, the whole Newton/Leibniz argument completely ignores the fact that Descartes allowed both of them to discover calculus, because of his theories/ideas and invaluable work with exponents - he literally laid the foundations of calculus but no one mentions him when discussing who invented it. He even invented the modern notation of writing powers as superscripts as well as the convention of using x,y,z for variables and a,b,c for constants. Most importantly he INVENTED ANALYTIC GEOMETRY and pulled everyone’s collective heads out of their collective asses. He was one of the greatest mathematicians. But yeah, a cool philosopher too, let’s let “Cogito Ergo Sum” be his only legacy.

25/05/2021

I'm gonna try and take this day slowly.Yesterday I could not do anything at all because my anxiety decided it wanted to take over my day.So today I'll try doing the following stuff

Duolingo (I'm learning French) ☑

Groups Revision ( 5 subtopics)

10 Problems

Group theory Problems

Catching up with Differential Equations ☑

I know its a lot but not pressuring myself to complete it.Just an outline and ample amount of stuff to choose from.

Day 1

Assignment: Classwork of Vector Calculus

[11.32 am]I have ODE lab viva soon and I am terrified but hopefully, it will be over soon. I have given myself the task of completing 20 problems of vector calculus.

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[3.20 pm] I did start but there has been a dip in my motivation.So I guess I will just take a nice bath, cook some snacks for myself and my parents and then sit and study again.

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[9.45 pm] I am done for the day.Today I did some problems on vector calculus.I don't know why but I felt tired in the evening and just could not sit and solve stuff so I did not force myself.There is some kind of peace in calculating the angle between two very complex surfaces don't you think? Only if I had more energy to go through it.But now I remember also loving the concept of directional derivative.It is not done yet so gotta continue tomorrow.

222 days left to go..

Hello! If you don't mind can you tell me how you organised your journal for your academics.I am a maths major and I wanted to do that for my proofs as well.I did try searching on the internet but I didn't get anything good.

Thank You in advance xx

It was a really basic format honestly ! So these are all the journals I kept during my whole undergraduate degree.

The black ones were for course and module information, lecture notes, to do lists and essay plans.

The dark and light yellow were a reading journal and a dissertation journal. I wanted to separate my own impressions of texts and I wanted to keep all my dissertation research and planning in one separate place as obviously I was conducting it by myself.

Black Journals

At the start of every year I would write down all the essential information from each of the four modules I was taking. This is an example (I have whited out the name and email of my course convened and lecturer for privacy reasons). But it includes contact information, lecture and seminar hours and locations, learning outcomes and assessment criteria (the things you will be assessed on, obviously paying attention to these helped me get top grades), assessment information (how many essays or exams I had that year and how much they contributed to my final mark and how many words they were) and finally the primary reading list.

This is what a spread of my lecture notes looks like. I always hand wrote my lecture notes because I couldn’t retain information and didn’t enjoy using a laptop. In my first two years I used a rough notebook to write them down then wrote them up neatly later, which was too time consuming for third year. But by that time I had developed my note taking skills and felt confident writing them up as I listened in the lecture. I just wrote the name of the module and the text we were studying and the date for reference. I would change to a red pen for anything I felt was key information. I know most people won’t like this method but I write fast and quite neatly !

My to do lists, essay plans etc didn’t really have a format obviously. I just wrote down what I needed to do, did some rough mind mapping, occasionally put a little doodle in. My essay plans were sort of all over the place but this is where I did my essential planning and then rough work tended to be on scraps of paper or on the draft essay document. The first is a checklist at the end of the year and the second is one of the essay plans/brainstorms for an essay I got a first in.

Yellow Journals

(i.) Reading Journal

I kept a reading journal throughout university, which I wish I had used more. It’s literally just a brain dump of all my thoughts and impressions of what I was reading and any quotes I found relevant. I included secondary reading in this too in my final year. It’s something I’m going to carry on with because I love having somewhere to keep my stream of consciousness about literature. It was so helpful for me to read over this when I was writing my essays because there were some really insightful bits of analysis or key things that I had forgotten and needed reminding of. Highly recommend everyone doing this, if not on paper then on a document on your laptop !

(ii.) Dissertation Journal

There was very little method to this journal. But having it all in one place really kept me organised. It was a place of messy but very important brainstorming, figuring out and rough work. It’s the sort of thing that’s probably only coherent to me. I just wrote down what I needed to do as I went along. So in the early stages there was a lot of trial ideas, there was pages of information about how we should structure and deal with our dissertations from lectures, deadlines etc.

The first image is the first page where I started writing out some vague ideas about the topics I wanted my dissertation to address and which literature that worked with. The last two are just an example of what some of my working out looked like, how I was deciding to structure my argument, and which secondary materials and theorists I would use for each chapter. But there were all sorts of things in there, random tangential points and ideas I needed to note down, tips about how to write an effective dissertation etc. It ended up being my highest grade so this definitely worked for me !

31/05/2021

Heyyy

I hope today treated you well ❣

So today I did the following stuff

🖤Studied Chemistry

🖤Solved some problems on Group Theory

🖤Submitted my law assignment( I'm taking an extra law class this semester)

🖤Revised chem for some time

🖤Completed 30 days on duolingo haha 🙈

Quote: It's a slow process but quitting won't speed it up

[3.06 pm] I have not yet started my day.I watched a movie in the morning (Mona Lisa Smile) I am in love with Julia Roberts Help Me!!!.I am feeling so good about myself and my situation right now.I love these days.

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[9.57 pm] I finished two chapters of Differential equations and revised previous week's stuff.I put a face mask on, lit a candle and just chilled in the evening after the work.I am thinking of switching my moisturising cream so hunting for a new one.I'm thinking of ordering some more candles as well because they are helping me in reducing my study anxiety lol.

I hope you guys had a nice day.

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216 days left to go...

Will I make it?

The Mayuriit Project, Stay tuned on the Tumblr blog near you.

Most of the time when I'm reading a mathematics textbook (currently studying Topology by Munkres) I feel like I will never understand what it is talking about.But the truth is I just have to take a deep breath and go ask for help near a prof or a friend.

#rambles #I know the sol but I get discouraged easily

[8.08 am] Just finished revising all the vector calculus that I have done so far. I will do 10 more pages of vector calculus today. Just praying to God that this day goes well.

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[12.29] I studied vector calculus for an hour and so done with it for today. I will later check out Paul's online notes to see if I can use them for my next two chapters. But for now, I'll watch a movie.

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[10.18] I completed three chapters of analysis 1.Omgggg.I was listening to some om chantings in the afternoon because I was getting stressed. It did help and made my day go so much better. I still haven't figured out how I will remember the proofs. I understand them and only vaguely reconstruct them. I just have to remember that I don't need to stress about it. I'll eventually get to know about it. If you guys know how to do it then please let me know <3

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217 days left to go...

Will I make it ?

The Mayriit Project.Stay tuned on a Tumblr blog near you.