courant orientation

yesterday courant held an orientation for the math masters students. tamar served us bagels, fruit, tea and coffee. about 15 people came. i'm sure there were more who didn't come. i knew 7 people there (includes the people i have seen before in class but never spoken to). sinan is the DGS and he talked about the requirements and answered questions. mostly it was whether to do a thesis or to take the exam. they encourage us to take the exam at least once before deciding. tamar gave out copies of the old exams and i was flipping through them. omg, i feel like i know nothing - like my head is empty. one guy already took the exam and failed, but he's determined.

i think i'm going to try to get a study group together. it'll be hard tho cuz most of the students are full-time and i'm technically part-time because i'm only taking half the number of courses they are. i'm already working on getting people together to do hw with me. we dont have to talk to each other at all, but it's nice to have someone else working on math too so when i have a question, there's someone i can ask. after the orientation, my group joined another group to do hw, and i think it was pretty good. we just bounced ideas around about how to do problems and eventually got it down. i havent finished the hw yet, but i feel better about it.

my linear algebra class hasnt even really taken off yet. we had one class and he cancelled the second because he was in germany. blackboard isnt working for the class so we're not getting updates or hws. i worry that he's going to try to pile it all on this week.

speaking of this coming week... i'm going to be so busy busy. who knew grad life was so hectic! you'd think four classes a week would give you more time than in college, but it's crazyy. i'm working 20 hours a week (half the time i'm just managing the office or desk so i can do my own work at the same time). lots of hw to do... and i spend most of my hw time banging my head against the desk in frustration. oh well...