Posted by martin on
Tuesday, 30 June 2009 at 22:42
I got my BA last week, and suddenly my time in Cambridge is at an end. The best bit of the graduation was when all the graduands process in academical dress (including hoods) from the college to the Senate House where the ceremony takes place. Many people, including all the bedders and no doubt a lot of unsuspecting tourists, came out to watch. I don’t know if colleges which are not as central as Trinity have such a procession; and while we got lovely weather, it wouldn’t be so fun in the rain (e.g. Magdalene got rained on).
A week before that, the Part II and Part III Maths results were read out in the Senate House (as last year - the results and graduation make the only three times I have been in the building). It is likely that this will be the last year that this is the first place where people hear their results. CUSU has been campaigning for them to be sent out by email before publication, on the grounds that getting your results in public is distressing for people who did badly. This has some truth, but I think that there is a significant advantage in learning your results along with your friends, as they will be in a better position to offer support than if you learned them privately (and maybe were then embarrassed about sharing them). This advantage applies to a much greater extent to the reading out of the Maths results, which everyone really does hear simultaneously, than to publication on the Senate House noticeboards as happens for other subjects.
Tags cambridge, exams, partiii, tripos
Posted by martin on
Thursday, 19 June 2008 at 14:56
I am now officially a Wrangler (someone who gets a first in Part II of the Cambridge Maths Tripos). The results were announced this morning in the University Senate House - the chairman of the examiners stands in the balcony and reads out the lists of people awarded each class (another peculiarity of Maths Parts II and III; usually the list is just posted on a notice board outside the Senate House).
I will not however be graduating this year because I will be doing Part III Maths next year. This is not a proper postgraduate course - you don’t get a degree at the end of it - and not eligible for postgraduate funding; until recently there has been an exception allowing you to continue to get undergraduate funding despite already having a degree. The government have noticed this year that this is no longer allowed, so now we have to not graduate until next year in order to continue to get funding.
Tags cambridge, exams, partiii, tripos
Posted by martin on
Saturday, 07 June 2008 at 13:11
I had exams for the past week. For the past few weeks, I was doing not much but revising, although I went to Oundle two weeks ago for an IMO training camp and the final team selection. I did another geometry problem session, which was not as good as my one at Trinity because I had less time to prepare due to exam revision and because I had already used lots of my favourite questions on the first sheet.
I had four exams this week. All are essentially the same, and you are free to choose from 38 questions on all the different courses in the year. Of course noone has taken anywhere near all the courses - I took 12 and revised 9. In the end I did an average of five questions on each exam; I might have liked to do a bit more, but that is more than adequate for a first.
With exams over, I have a couple of weeks until the results with nothing in particular to do.
Tags cambridge, exams, imo, teaching, trinity, tripos
Posted by martin on
Sunday, 16 March 2008 at 13:55
Term has finished now, and I am going home to Belfast tomorrow. I took fewer courses this term than last term, in order to have more time. Together with stepping down as TCMS President, this seems to have worked, although in the past few weeks the maths we have been doing has got much harder.
In the past week (plus a few days), I have been to three very different musicals: Kiss Me Kate by Clare College Music Society (with Mary-Ellen in the leading role), Me and My Girl in Magdalene (directed by Maria, a maths friend) and Into the Woods at the ADC. They were all pretty good. Last night there was a TCMS concert in Chapel, featuring the chapel choir singing English choral music, and then the chapel choir joined with the Trinity Singers (TCMS’ big non-audition chorus) to sing Stanfords’ Te Deum and Parry’s I was Glad, all directed by Stephen Layton. It was a great success, and the Singers enjoyed working with Stephen and the chapel choir.
I have also been to three formal dinners: last Sunday in Trinity for someone’s birthday, on Monday in Pembroke with a group of people who bought Trinity Ball tickets for Pembroke mathmos, and on Friday it was the commemoration dinner in Trinity (a grand dinner to which Scholars are invited, at which all the people who have given money to the college are remembered, starting with Edward II in 1317).
Tags cambridge, musicals, tcms
Posted by martin on
Sunday, 19 November 2006 at 09:19
Just to continue a little on the food theme, I thought I would clarify to you how I normally eat. The College Hall does three meals every day, except for Sunday breakfast. Lunch and dinner are cheap - £2.30 for a main course and dessert. Breakfast is pretty expensive. I usually go to Hall for dinner, or sometimes for lunch if I prefer the menu. Normally I have a simple lunch in my room, and a bowl of cereal for breakfast.
I am too lazy to cook for myself - going to Hall is much quicker, more friendly and probably cheaper. In any case, the hobs have been removed from our kitchens last month, because they do not meet recently-introduced safety regulations. The College are looking at what can be done to bring the kitchens up to standard, but say that it does not look likely that this can be done - I think because the kitchens are too small. Such are the difficulties of living in an old building - it turns out it was built in the 1820s, although I would have imagined it was older than that (hence the name “New Court” I suppose).
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Martin
Tags accommodation, cambridge, food, trinity
Posted by martin on
Wednesday, 08 November 2006 at 16:11
I resolved to try not to buy anything in a supermarket this term (mainly Sainsbury’s, which is next door to Trinity). This is because I am concerned by the monopolistic impact of supermarkets - reducing the number of customers of smaller independent shops, and damaging producers by using their buying power to push prices down. So I decided to see how easy it was to do without. For the first week or two this was hard as I didn’t know where any alternatives were. I can buy bread and fruit in the market, and I am sure I have seen a cheese stall there, but never when I have wanted to buy cheese. Eventually I found two shops where I can buy things like milk - one Spar and one independent grocery shop.
I have been entirely successful in not going to a supermarket, except when buying drinks for TCMS. Will I continue with this next term? To a large extent, having developed the habit, it is quite easy to continue although it does mean walking a bit further. But I’m not really sure how much benefit there is - for example, in Sainsbury’s I could buy organic milk which I am now not able to do.
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Martin
Tags cambridge, food, supermarkets
Posted by martin on
Tuesday, 20 June 2006 at 15:40
This week is May Week, which is full of post-exam parties. In particular, a number of colleges hold May Balls which are absolutely massive; last night was Trinity May Ball (£205 for a double ticket). It rained lightly during the fireworks near the beginning but fortunately it was only a little, and the weather was otherwise good. We queued from 7pm but this was worth it as we got in very quickly after it started at 9pm, and stayed until 4.15am (it goes on until 6am, when it ends with a survivors’ photograph).
As for things to do, there were so many it was impossible to keep track of them. There was a main stage with rock/pop bands, a jazz tent, a classical music room, swing/salsa/ceilidh dancing in the Great Hall and a cabaret tent, each with six or seven different acts over the course of the night. There was also a fairground, a synthetic ice rink and an endless supply of food and champagne.
During the fireworks, the Cam was totally blocked by punts who had come to watch - there might have been forty of them, plus some canoes. A few people came in punts in black tie and made an attempt to run up the bank and enter the Ball; these may have been just symbolic and certainly had little chance of success, there being a security guard every few metres.
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Martin
Tags cambridge, mayweek, trinity
Posted by martin on
Monday, 05 June 2006 at 08:36
I am now half way through my exams - two gone and two to go. The first did not go as well as I had hoped - the questions just took a long time. The second one, which I had expected to be the hardest, turned out to be easy and I completed it in just over two hours (out of three). There are two more today and tomorrow. There are some strange things like the fact that the invigilators wear gowns (although in Oxford the students have to wear academical dress, at least while entering and leaving the exam hall), and they began by addressing us as “ladies and gentlemen”.
I was reading that the prime minister, shortly after taking office, has to prepare secret instructions which are carried on the UK’s nuclear-missile submarines; should they be unable to detect any sign of life from the UK for several days, the captain of the submarine on patrol will open the instructions and carry them out (although it’s hard to see who the missiles would be targetted at post-Cold War). Anyway this makes me wonder: politicians probably give little thought to this area of responsibility until suddenly it hits them when they become prime minister, and certainly the electorate don’t consider who they would trust to make such decisions when voting. So I suppose the question is what makes the prime minister better qualified than anyone else to make such decisions, and to have them carried out even after the country has been completely destroyed? I remember a science fiction book which contained a planet who left decisions about whether to go to war up to their military commanders and were astonished at the idea of giving politicians a say.
Tags cambridge, exams, nukes, tripos
Posted by martin on
Sunday, 28 May 2006 at 19:52
Exams are coming closer now - mine are from Thursday to the following Tuesday. Last Sunday I went to Oxford to play croquet against the Oxford Maths society. Croquet is an intensely tactical game and we were thoroughly trounced - there were several Oxford people who seemed quite experienced - although I did manage to be the first person to get my ball through a hoop. Oxford is a strange place: it is far too big a city to put a university in, and they appear to have no equivalent to May Week, which is the period in mid-June when there are lots of post-exam parties.
According to the BBC, someone is to open a crocodile farm in Cambridgeshire. This reminds me of when I saw crocodiles in Australia. Apart from being a bit dangerous, I think they are very farmable animals although I don’t know if they are happy with the climate in England. The article says that he will be allowing visitors on Saturdays, but it doesn’t say if this has opened yet or how to contact the farm; I would certainly go and visit.
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Martin
Tags agriculture, archimedeans, cambridge, oxford
Posted by martin on
Sunday, 05 February 2006 at 12:55
Well this week I had (as I think I mentioned previously) a busy Wednesday afternoon, with three supervisions, and a busy few days before that doing the work for them. David, one of the chaplains, asked me to do the prayers of intercession in the College Chapel for Candlemas on Thursday. (Candlemas is the festival of the presentation of Christ in the Temple, and involved more candles.) That meant both writing the prayers and reading them. We had a brief lesson on how to write them last Sunday. I was very nervous but it went well.
Last Sunday I went to the United Reform Church (what the Presbyterian Church in England merged to become). It was fairly similar to a progressive Presbyterian service at home; one interesting thing they did was to compose a “psalm” during the service by different people in the congregation suggesting a line of praise. There was also a fire drill following the benediction; I’m told that neither of these things happen every week.
This morning I went to a Lutheran Church. This surprised me because the liturgy were almost identical to a Catholic Mass, starting with Kyrie, Gloria, etc, and some people crossed themselves at each mention of the Trinity. However it was a very Protestant sermon, focussed tightly on the text and enthusiastically preached, and of course all the Catholic theology of the Eucharist was dropped. Also they replaced “holy catholic church” with “holy Christian church” in the creed.
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Martin
Tags cambridge, chapel, emmanuel, lutheran, trinity