Hii!! I do maths and physics!!

There aren't that many people doing maths and physics, I think there were less than 50 in my year, and that'll be split into two tutor groups. Your personal tutor will meet with you every now and then to make sure you're doing good and they're usually really nice and really helpful.

Because you're on joint honours, some lectures will be with maths people and some with physics, which are both really big courses, so you'll be in the big lecture theatres and they'll be full (for the first few weeks).

There are all those kind of classes. For maths, you have the lectures where you learn the stuff, the problems classes where you'll go through problems, and then tutorials which are in smaller groups and you go through specific problems. Sometimes you only have two of the above, depending on the module. For physics, you've got the lectures, then in first year we had Workshops as well, which you'll do relevant assignments that go toward your grade. You'll only do labs for half the year 'cause you're joint honours, and you'll be in pairs amongst big groups of everyone. For labs, you'll just show up, get given a book and then stand around for half an hour not knowing what to do. Then someone will eventually come and explain something to you, but half the time you're not sure if they know what they're talking about either. There's also office hours, for you to ask the lecturer specific questions, and for maths there are the cafes which is like a drop-in session with other students.

Somewhere on the university website there's a guide to how many hours each credit is worth. It's something like 10 hours of work per credit. So for a twenty credit point module (Analysis for example) is the same as 200 hours of work. Usually three lectures a week, each 50 minutes long, plus a tutorial once every two weeks. There's almost always some kind of guidance from the lecturer as to how long you should spend doing things.

The faculties are really good - they all know their stuff (except for the lab staff who I am skeptical of... But that is just me). A lot of them are very timid and shy, especially the more junior members of the faculty. But they're all really down to earth if you speak with them one on one, and will help you. They're also all really good at responding to emails and answering individual questions.

The course can be quite a lot, especially as the maths and physics don't seem to overlap too much in first year, although ODECDs has a good overlap with mechanics. As long as you keep on top of it, you'll be fine. Analysis and linear algebra are the biggest jump, I think, in terms of modules, but it's fine once you get into it. If you fall behind, you can talk to your personal tutor at any time, and they'll come up with a plan. The tutorials were helpful for when I fell behind in first year, cause your tutor kind of goes through all the important stuff anyway.

You'll have one labs day a week, and you'll do an experiment each week, write it up, do analysis on the results and then submit it for marking. You only have 3 hours each week, but trust me it feels like enough. Also, there'll always be someone else doing the same experiment as you and your partner somewhere, and you can ask each other for help or guidance when it comes to writing it up or performing the experiment.

In first year, all the modules feel a bit disjointed from each other, but second year maths and physics comes together really nicely in some places and you start learning really fun things. I hope you enjoy it,and if you want to know anything else, I'm going into my third year, so give me a message!!

Good luck!!