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- I'm Adrienne, and I'm a master's student at
Oxford, studying Mathematical Modeling and
Scientific Computing.
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- [Adrienne] I'm in Corpus Christi College, which is where
we are right now.
Yeah, I've been doing lots of fun things at Oxford, like
mountaineering club, football team, which is actually the
soccer team, but yeah, there's lots of fun things to do here
aside from the maths.
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- So a typical day in the life here, try to go for a run
in the morning, there are a lot of really beautiful parks
around Oxford, so.
And actually, the weather here is much better than people
will tell you, usually really sunny.
So then I usually have a couple of hours of lecture for the
day, work on some math problems with my course mates, no
day is complete without at least two breaks for
tea and biscuits.
Then, generally come back to Corpus for hall, sometimes we
have formal hall, or a friend from another college will
invite me to their hall for dinner, which is really fun.
And then generally, I try to do something fun in the
evening, like, I go climbing with friends or maybe go see a
film or a show, they have a really great symphony here.
Lots of different types of things to do, but no day is ever
boring, that's for sure.
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- So, you are doing a master's program in
Mathematical Modeling and Scientific Computing?
- Exactly.
- What does that mean?
- That's a great question.
So, it's a really project-based course for people with
background in something like math or engineering, physics,
that type of thing.
It involves modeling and computing, so on the modeling side,
it's like taking a complicated problem and windowing down
to the most important parts and trying to get a feel
for how you would actually be able to solve it.
And then on the computing side, most of the time these
problems aren't actually solvable analytically, so we have
to know how to use different types of algorithms and
software and coding, we chose to be able to actually find
the answers to these problems that we're looking at.
- Amazing.
So it's a one-year program?
- Yeah.
- What structurally does the program look like from
beginning to end?
- That's a great question, too.
So, it's three terms here at Oxford.
The first term is called Michaelmas, second is Hilary,
and then Trinity.
So ours is a full 12 months, so we go through all those
three terms, and then the summer afterwards.
So the first term is almost completely taught courses, so
like lecture courses then you take exams at the end
of the break.
And the second term is like that, a bit fewer courses, but
then more projects, hands-on work with faculty, small
research projects, some group work.
And then over each break, between those terms, we do our own
little mini projects on the electives that we took the
previous semester, or the previous term.
And then at the ...
In the third term and the summer, we work on our own
dissertations with a faculty member, so that's like a four
or five month long mini thesis, basically.
- Great.
Do you know what you want to do your dissertation about yet?
- Yeah, I actually just decided yesterday.
- Okay, congrats.
- So, it's a bit different than in America where most of the
time you maybe work with a faculty member to come up with
your own project, here they actually presented us with the
project ideas, so we got a big packet full of lots of
different topics.
A lot of them are super interesting, tons of different types
of work, actually.
Everything from biologically related problems, to super
mathy, just looking at the methods themselves, a lot of
fluid dynamics, physics, that type of thing.
Some things focused on networks.
But, so what I decided to do is work on a model of the heart
and look at the two interfaced between the
electrochemistry and the mechanics of the heart,
because it's not actually that well understood how the
mechanics affect electrochemistry, even though we do
understand well how electrochemistry affects the mechanics.
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- [Adrienne] This is the Corpus Christi Chapel.
Every college has their own chapel, but ours was actually
just awarded the prize for the most beautifully adoring
chapel at Oxford.
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- You're involved in mountaineering club and football, is
that all centered around the college, or is that sort of
Oxford more broadly?
- So, the football is centered in the college, I'm in the
Corpus Pembroke women's football team.
We don't have enough women for our own team, so we joined
with another college, which is also pretty small.
So that's centered at Corpus.
We're actually in the semi-finals, so in a couple of weeks
we'll hopefully make it to finals.
And that's super fun, I'd never played soccer before.
- And so what's the commitment like with
mountaineering club?
- It's whatever you want it to be.
I go about once a week, usually around Thursdays after I've
finished all of my math work for the week.
And usually we try to convince a few of our math friends
to come, too.
But then every Wednesday, there's a pub night.
Every Monday, they do more bouldering, and then on
Thursdays it's more rope climbing, top rope climbing.
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- So overall, how would you sort of rate your experience
studying in the states and then moving over to
study in the UK?
- I'm having a great experience with it.
I think that the way that student life is here in
comparison to college in America, it's a really good
transition almost into real life.
It's a bit more laid back than I think college was, but
still so much to do, so many different activities, so that's
been really, really great.
I don't think there was such a huge culture shock or
anything, Britain's not that different from America.
It is in many ways, but nothing that's too much to handle.
It's really, really nice meeting so many international
students, that's been one of my favorite parts of it.
About 50% of the grad students here are international, that
includes Americans, but.
So that's been great.
I mean, it's kind of difficult to categorize what ...
If the differences that I'm seeing are between undergrad
and graduate school, or between studying in America and
studying in the UK.
So I mean, I'm not sure on that level, but yeah, overall
it's been a really good transition.
- And overall, why did you choose Oxford?
- I really loved this program, so I was looking for
something to do to help me narrow down my interests a bit,
and I knew I really liked math and I really like certain
areas of science to which I could apply my math, but I
wasn't sure exactly what, and I thought that this would be
a really good way to be able to try out a few different
application areas before applying for PHDs.
And yeah, that's what I found it to be.
It's a shame that applications are in the winter, because I
still have so much left of my course to experience.
- So you're sort of doing double duty a little bit.
- Yeah, exactly.
And I also wanted to have an experience abroad, because I
never studied abroad in college.
I've traveled quite a bit, but I wanted to experience really
living in another country, so those were the main reasons
I chose to come to Oxford.
- What advice would you give to someone who's interested in
either applying to a master's program like this, or
interested in studying in the UK?
- I would say just go for it.
I mean, why not?
I think that sometimes people don't really consider the
possibility of going abroad for grads school, but it's such
a great experience.
The life of a student is so great anyway, and to have that
experience in another country, is really awesome, so I just
recommend that.
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