Hello there Mathmo freshers,
Congratulations on getting into Oxford, and Christ Church in particular! We are your subjectreps, Tommy and Sophie. When we were freshers, we received some suspect advice from our subject reps (well@Jason Pilsbury – you’ll meet him soon): “Yeah, just do a bit… It’ll be fine… Don’t worry toomuch... etc. etc.”. That was bad advice. This is good advice: do a little bit of work thissummer before you arrive. Don’t go overboard – it is summer after all – but a little bit of work (couple of hours here, couple there) will be invaluable come the start of term. ESPECIALLY ANALYSIS – what even is that stuff?! You won’t understand it during thesummer, or during Michaelmas, or probably even Trinity (if you do, ignore all the adviceabout working and take it easy (@Kevin Zhang)) but one day it may click (most of us are stillhoping). If you’re a conscientious, hard-working, organized student (@Jessica Wang) thenyou’re going to thrive. If not, it’ll be slightly more difficult but once you’ve perfected thebalance (@Omar Abdelnasser) between working and your other commitments/ prioritiesyou’ll have a blast.
There’s so much more to look forward to than just studying maths at Oxford, of course;freshers’ week, for example, is amazing. Do everything and anything you can, and lookparticularly forward to: (i) meeting us and (ii) the meal with the tutors. Thetutors we have at Christ Church are lovely: Kevin is one of the nicest guys you’ll meet, Chris(loves Tommy and Tommy loves him) has a fantastic knack of pushing you to your limits(@Jack Watson), Sam is an actual geezer as opposed to us second year wannabes, and thenew tutor Gunnar seems very good.
In terms of your schedule, it’s generally two hours of lectures a day (9-11), a tutorial orclass, and five worksheets a week. Going to the lectures is a good idea (@Lawrence Mayne). You’ll also have to complete some work on MatLab, which you may enjoy (@Sonia Kalcina). Maybe. Maths is relatively flexible structure wise compared to most subjects (as the tutorslike to remind us when we try and do sport on Wednesday afternoons), so there’s plenty offree time to do other activities if you keep on top of everything. Some of us occasionally tryto socialize, sometimes.
If you have any other questions, feel free to add us (Tommy Pullan - and Sophie Shakespeare -
) and ask away.
We can introduce you tothe others as well, and have a big old group chat or something (PLS ADD US).
Note: VERY IMPORTANT! If you cannot do the work, DO NOT WORRY. We struggle all the
time, some of us more than others. The important thing is to have a go, and failing that being sharp as can be in the tutorial.
See you soon!! Tommy and Sophie xxxxx