one thing students have to understand is despite the how heavily the exams
are weighted they are only three hours and we're not machines. I mean it's not, the
expectation can't be that you get everything numerically correct in the end
Ten mark question the correct answer is one maybe two out of ten right, most
of it is hitting the key dot points that the lecturers want to see and so I guess
part of doing well in exams is working out what those dot points are. You're just
trying to show that you know what you're doing that's what the exam is and so
that's why the answer isn't just isn't a significant.
Still significant if you want to get 100% of course.
In high school it's a lot of I guess shorter
questions so when you do a test in high school you might have fifty questions
and they all have you know, a yes or no answer and there's a right or wrong and
you either get the mark or you don't get the mark whereas in university because
the questions take such a long time to get the answer the answer actually isn't
really very important at all it's the process of finding the answer so it's
more about making a logical coherent argument which I think a lot of students
coming from high school really struggle with because you're used to just you
know you get the right answer you get all the marks but that's not what it's
like University and all you really need to be able to explain things and lots of
students think that you don't need to use language in maths but if you do
don't write any words on your maths assignment you're probably not going to
do very well at university so you need to actually use a lot of words there's a
lot of language and language is really important in maths.
The best practice for a marathon
is to run a marathon right the best practice for doing an
exam is to do an exam and to put yourself in a situation that's going to
be as similar as possible so you know putting all your distractions aside just
sitting down for three hours and going right I'm just going to see how much I
can do of this and the first time you might only get one question done or you
might get two questions done that's okay like if they still building up you know
you're getting used to that situation because it is a quite unique environment
you're sitting down because math exams are generally three hours sitting down
and working consistently for three hours with no distractions that's
you know you need to practice for that so yeah closer to the exam do exams! The
Unimelb library has past exams for a lot of undergraduate subjects so you
can there's lots of resources out there to practice so you could probably do a
practice exam you know two a day in SWOT VAC and you still wouldn't get
through all of them so there's also resources out there it's just you know
making sure that you actually sit down and do it if you're working on your own
I guess the biggest advice I would give is like
don't skip steps so what a lot of people do when they're by themselves practicing
problems is they kind of skip some things and then they get to the end and
they get the wrong answer and they don't know where it's gone wrong but every
time you skip a step you're actually skipping a level of thinking so that
means you're more likely to mistake make a mistake and you're not likely to know
where the mistake was made so the advice that I would give is if you're
attempting problems by yourself or even not by yourself, even if you seek help, do them
slowly you shouldn't be in any kind of hurry when you're doing a math
problem you want to just take your time and work through it and
make sure that every single step makes perfect sense to you before you proceed
to the next step.
Being able to check your own work is really really it's a
really really important skill to have but for some reason it's that extra 10%
of work you have to do that not many people seem to want to do that's
probably the best first step you can make once you you once you think you've
answered the question actually check if you have answered the question and there
are so many tools for doing that if you definitely go to the website Wolfram
Alpha so if you google the words Wolfram Alpha even if you misspell it Google
will figure it out and you can type in any equation or question that you want
and it will give you a solution so if you're just looking for the answer
that's actually really easy to find even that process for me.
I think that learning style suits me most
is like revising the lecture recordings and if I still have
some unclear understanding I will go for the textbooks and the
consultations. I feel like active learning would be
more helpful than the passive learning.
One of the things that really actually
helped me was I started going to consultation hours so for mathematics
subjects you the lecturers put aside an hour or two hours a week where you can
go and speak to them about the subject so I started going along to those and
just having someone to talk with you what it is that you're actually meant to
be doing was really helpful so I think part of the process of overcoming
challenges is not being afraid to seek out help because I feel like a lot of
students in math classes and certainly this was the case for me as well you'd
be so afraid of getting it wrong or not having the right answer so you don't say
anything you just sit there quietly and don't ask any questions and then you
don't learn anything because you haven't you haven't been able to to express what
your problem is to anyone else.
One thing that I do is ask someone else so I found
an undergrad but also particularly even more important now in masters is your
and like the people you're in classes were the people in your tutorials with
are such a great resource if the lecturer
definitely has time like in contact hours that's super valuable but you're
seeing your classmates a lot more often and you know sometimes you understand
something better than someone else and they understand something better than
than you and and even just a really short conversation can like you know
change your thinking and help you understand something better so yeah in
terms of understanding and like learning and maths like other people when the
classmates have been absolutely pivotal for me also form study groups.
I've always found that you know studying alone during SWOT VAC is really
uneffective compared to working without this as well really going through it
because again consultation times are finite but if
you've got a study group that's a lot of time to really work stuff out.
Because for the commerce subjects we do provide formula sheets in the final exam
so if you could study from the formula sheet you know what kind of equations
will appear on the exam and you know how to approach those questions by applying
related equations that would be really helpful.
The kind of questions you're getting have been
asked at every University around the world as well and
it has been asked at Melbourne uni lots of times there's so many resources
out there that you can find so if if one explanation isn't quite clicking or you
didn't quite understand like I always try and look up a YouTube video or find
some some other resources online.
So if I was going to Google something if it's an
equation I wouldn't google it I would go to
Wolfram Alpha but if it's a concept I would Google the words so a key part of
mathematics is knowing the key words so if I know that I needed to Google let's
say linear independence for example that's the word that comes up in a
first-year subject so I would Google the words linear independence and then your
top hits would probably be like your Khan Academy or YouTube I would watch
the videos and actually have explained to me so that way I've had a different
perspective it hasn't just been the lecturer.
You know I had to accept like
in first you just go for a hundred you want to get everything perfect but then
in these later ones you know a hundred becomes you know an eighty five or
whatever because you're just like okay I'm gonna just give it a good shot and
do my best.
What I usually do and I've done this before
if I can't get the answer to the first part I'll say pretend that this is the
answer for the second part and because the logic will still follow so I'll say
okay I couldn't figure out part a of the question in Part B I'll say I couldn't
figure this out but I'm going to pretend that this was the answer which sounds
silly but because you can actually still use that answer to show some kind of
reasoning they still accept at least part of that so if you can't do it just
make up an answer essentially and use that for the following parts if you're
confident you can know how to use them
Doing something that you find enjoyable
for the thirty minutes beforehand before an exam is really helpful so on your way
there or like when you get to the venue you know just doing something that you
like for half an hour so maybe listening to songs that you really like we go for
a walk maybe calling up a friend and like putting things in perspective a bit
just to take your mind off something and I always find that the the exams that
I've accidentally bumped into a friend going into the same exam or the same
building and I've had at further 30 minutes I feel so much more relaxed when
I get in there cuz my my brain has been doing something else for just you know
even a really short amount of time beforehand and obviously like get enough
sleep the night before yeah if you're running on like a few hours sleep
nothing's gonna work yeah even if you do know the stuff ....(laughs)
I also think it's confidence a
lot like in maths everyone feels stupid it it's hard like no one is good at
maths I go to I go to multiple multiple seminars every week and they just some
of them just make no sense and you're like can I can I ever be as good as
these people like it's just basic but then all of them you can tell on days
when they try and learn new things struggles so much I think just trying to
constantly talk to others and say when you're wrong rather than being cocky
about how good you are at maths because no one is good nice and you just really
grow by just keep pounding questions and trying really hard to understand something
It's one of those subjects where it's really easy to get a fixed
mindset like and I and as a math student you here are so many stereotypes like if
you say oh yes I'm studying maths the first thing people say is I was never
good at that or like I was I was bad at that in school but then no one will ever
say that about any other subjects they just they just do it about math so I
think it's it's really easy to get into that mindset of if you don't understand
something straight away like that it's that it's not for you especially when I
first started uni we started in maths I come in for a really small class and
thinking that I was you know pretty good at it and then being this massive
lecture theatre with lots of other people who you know you you perceive as
being so much better than you yeah I'm definite
I felt that like many times I think the answer is just to realize that the
people that you think geniuses they're spending so much more time with it then
you realize like they might either pretend that they're not doing as much
study or yeah well or just don't talk about it but they're actually yeah the
people that understand it are spending a lot of time thinking about it and
working on it and yeah once that once I realize that
it was kind of yeah put put some of those fears to ease a bit but it's yeah
it's definitely still something that I think about a lot
Don't feel like you have to
memorize mathematics or do it just enjoy problems and jump from one to
one I think if you just you just enjoy it and really get into the problems you
won't find it too stressful and and just cut I think just be persistent
keep working hard cuz you'll get through it and you'll really enjoy those