chazza-studies-mphys

Anonymous asked:

hi!! congrats on finishing your exams!

i'll hopefully be starting a similar physics degree this september. is there any advice you have for the first year of uni physics?? :)

thank you and have an amazing summer!

Hi anon, thank you!

I think the best advice I can give is not to get too caught up in each piece of work. There might be questions you can’t figure out or concepts that not understanding makes you panic that you can’t do physics, but freaking out never helps (said from experience!) and knowing when to come back later / hand it in incomplete was an important learning curve for me. That said, the fact that everyone will be finding things tough is good to keep in mind – I had points where I felt like everyone else was breezing along and I was alone in struggling, but if a module/concept is hard you won’t be the only one feeling that way. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for help – I’m not good at admitting when I need it, but asking a friend how they tackled a topic or trying to find similar questions with explanations online can be helpful. I tend to catastrophise, so if you’re prone to that, work on being able to do what you can for a piece of work and let it go afterwards – one horrible question sheet ≠ being a failure at your degree.

Something that also helped me was knowing who I could go to with problems, be it a flatmate that I could talk to about academic struggles or calling my parents during a rough day. You might feel alone whilst you’re adjusting to uni – I made a couple of friends quite quickly, but it took a while to open up and to feel that I had a group of people that liked/cared about me. How that social aspect goes depends on how outgoing you are and what kind of events you go to, but try to find at least one person that you feel you can confide in – that did me a world of good over the year.

In terms of physics specifically, being comfortable with the fundamentals is important and will help your confidence. You’ll pick up different topics at different rates, but if you’re confident with stuff like vectors and integration (depending on what you’ve done before, this might be stuff you know already or it might be first term work), that’ll make things easier. Physics becomes more interdisciplinary at uni, with different modules referencing each other, so thinking about ideas themselves rather than being specific to a module is a good mindset to adopt. Having said that, taking things one day/task at a time will stop it from becoming too overwhelming – the workload for me was quite intense at first, but try to focus on what you need to do now rather than worrying about the rest of your to-do list. Also, you might find yourself doing things closer to the deadline than you’re used to, and that’s fine! As long as you plan enough to give yourself enough time to get it done, it doesn’t need to be days early. That said, do look at/start things before then, because there’s nothing more stressful than needing to step away from a piece of work and come back later, but feeling that you don’t have time to.

Lastly, as far as exams go – number one, don’t panic! I was terrified for my maths exam in January bc it was my first uni exam, but it wasn’t a much different experience to doing A-levels etc. One thing that was different is resources; there were loads of textbooks and question sets at A-level, but your revision resources at uni will be fewer (the main thing I used was old problems sheets and exams, plus finding some generic questions on the maths stuff online). This was another learning curve, but remember that no-one has any more than you – plus, if your lecturers are like mine, a lot of exam questions will be similar to ones you’ve had before so they might be better resources than you realise. I would also advise, if you have time, to make your own (writing up notes, flashcards if you use them, etc – flashcards are a lifesaver for me, so I’d recommend putting formulas and key concepts on them which is what I do) as you go along, which is what I’ll try and do next year. Spending most of the Easter holidays on those meant my “actual” revision (going through flashcards, past paper questions etc) started later, and feeling like I hadn’t done enough and didn’t know anything was a big source of stress! That said, you probably know more than you think you do, which was what I found in my exams (though I’ve yet to get my results, so maybe take this which a pinch of salt, haha).

That’s what I’ve thought of off the top of my head; I hope it’s helpful and feel free to send another ask if you want to ask anything more specific. Enjoy your summer and good luck next year! :)

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.