M347 – 33% through and reflections

I’ve recently submitted the first tutor marked assignment of M347, my final course in the BSc Mathematics I’ve been studying with the Open University.  The third unit of this course was long and quite a slog to go through.  While I’ve been using many of these equations over the past few years, diving deep into the theory and derivation has been fascinating, although frustrating due to the lack of practical application.  If you’ve read my other posts then you may recall how frustrated I was with group theory and the early parts of complex analysis, while the quantum world was far more engaging from the start1.  As with all my maths studies, this exercise of filling in the gaps has revealed that there are far more things I didn’t know I didn’t know than things I knew I needed to know.

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The Oxbridge Myth

Photo of a typical oxbridge college
My College, St Peter’s Oxford. Photo from Wikimedia

There’s been a lot in the news recently about how Oxford and Cambridge are failing young people who are educated by the state system and how they perpetuate the elitist machine that runs the UK.  As ever, I’m frustrated with the polarisation of the argument perpetuated by the media, which boils down to “it’s fine” and “everything is broken”, which no room for focussing on the nuances of the problems.  As a state school student who went to Oxford1, I thought I’d weigh in with my own experiences and where I believe the issues are. Continue reading The Oxbridge Myth