Joining the OU blog club

Hello and welcome!

I've spent the last two and a half years studying maths mostly on my own. I made it to the tutorials for MST121 which conveniently were just down the road, and to a few for MS221 and M208 over in Leeds. But generally, it's been a very solitary game. I don't mind of course; I like to work on my own. If I didn't, then becoming self-employed and working at home would not have been the best career move.

However, after dabbling with the fora for a while, I started last year, spending time reading OU blogs by people variously doing the same courses as me, or closely related subjects like physics and computing. I realised that it's nice to see what other people think about these courses, to read how they did on the exams, and to learn how the OU student mind ticks in general. Not to mention, how motivating it can be to read  the comments of someone a few weeks further along through the schedule! Anyway, as a result, I decided to join the club.

I'm not convinced I'll have a lot of interest to write. But I'm certainly passionate about the topic, and can happily talk about it all day (and argue - as my future-father-in-law found out at Christmas). That is however, once I get started! Both my work and study suffer a great deal from my inability to get going in the first place. Once I am started, fine, but it usually takes me hours to get that far. I tend to get up bright and early (actually I have to, as I have emails from the other side of the planet and an 8-9 hour time difference to contend with), but rarely do I manage to begin work before twelve. It probably sounds quite nice if you're a nine-to-fiver, and it would be, if it didn't mean working late to compensate. For instance, I often also think "Oh look, I can have today off, as long as I do twice as long tomorrow, and stay up until 4am to meet my deadline". Crazy! I've not bothered to set a New Year's resolution to fix these problems, as I know I won't do so!

So where am I now? Well, I'm currently waiting for my course books for this year to turn up: M337 Complex Analysis and M381 Number Theory and Mathematical Logic. (Last year's first delivery had long since arrived by now!) After my M208 exam, I printed out the first few modules of the new courses in A5, using the neat 'Print as Booklet' feature on our printer. Shortly after I did though, a huge amount of work turned up (which, to be fair, I desperately needed what with tax due at the end of this month), and managed just a few pages of each. I'm also slowly working my way through Euclid's Elements, having received a very nice hardback version containing all 13 books at Christmas.

I'm ready to go basically. My stationary is bought, my new blackboard (2xA0) is up, my desk is even moderately tidy. Maybe in two or three hours, I'll even get started again on the intro to M337 Unit A1!
Hopefully by the next time I post, I'll have actually done something!