Success

The main reason I titled this blog success was because I titled the last one Failure and I thought the juxtaposition was pretty neat. However, I do have something that I can label as a success, results have come in and am very happy with how I did. I’m glad to say most my exams went well, although there was one exam which I got lower than I expected (but not so low that I am disappointed), and another exam which I thought went terribly which actually went very well (I don’t think I’ll ever understand this).

However, as much as it is nice to do well on exams, for me, I am more interested in how I did in my project. Whilst how well you do on an exam can be dependent on how you feel on a particular day, or hinge on whether or not you have remembered a whole bunch of random things, the mark you receive in your course work, in particular your project work, assesses the work that you have composed over many hours and was submitted when you thought is was satisfactory (unless you don’t know how to deal with deadlines). I say this because I often leave exams thinking I could have done better if it weren’t for arbitrary restrictions such as the time limits. Whilst this is quite obvious: “I could have done better in that exam if I had more time.” or “I could have done better in that exam if I was allowed to look that thing up.”, I don’t think it is a null point. If it were, why would coursework exist? Whilst I understand the real world application of course work , I fail to see the point of exams. It is true that the best students do good in both exams and course work, but it is probably also true that some people successfully pass through the whole education system having learnt only one thing: how to do exams.

Anyway, rant over. I am glad to say my project went very well. The project is split; 30% continuous (your supervisor gives you are mark based on how well you engaged with the work); 20% presentation; and 50% report. Nothing when hugely wrong during my project, and my presentation seemed to go well so I was quietly confident about that half the project, my report on the other hand, I had some concerns. I had created something which I believed to be well researched and well written, however, I had made some possibly risky decisions. Firstly, I really narrowed down and focused my report to just one specific topic: whether embedding diagram have educational value in the understanding of wormholes and black hole. Secondly, my report was only 9 pages.

The former is only really a concern due to the latter. The purpose of the focusing in on my project was to make my report more concise. I had thrown out plots and information I had created because it didn’t feel like it fit in my report. I wanted my report to be concise, simple,  and not boring to read. However, once I had made this decision and finished my report I thought maybe I had made a mistake. The recommended minimum page limit was 12 pages, and mine was 9 page (really only 8 and a bit), however, reading through it there was nothing more to add; anything more would have been waffle. I thought maybe I had gone too far in simplifying my project. Nevertheless, after some contemplation, I decided that I was satisfied with what I had produced and submitted it.

Luckily, I was right. In my feedback I was told my report was “well written, concise and covering a variety of material” and had a “logical flow”. There were no comments about my report being too short, as I had worried about, rather a suggestion that I could make my report even more concise.

I am very happy with how my project went and I am looking forward to the projects I will be doing next year.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”

-Attributed to Einstein