Mumsnet Talk

I am so sorry everyone. Thank you so much, and sorry to have wasted your time.

(Blame the school concert blame the school concert)

JollyYellowGiant, are you doing it too, or are you a tutor? I am far too scared to go on the forum as they are all terribly serious and I am too babyish to let everyone know that I am so far behind. On here, people don't mind so much when you're thick.

X-post. How are you getting on?

I'm studying it I usually go on the forums in the run up to TMAs. If I'm stuck on something there's often a question from someone else that can point me in the right direction.

They are really nice on the forum, honestly! I did mst121 last year. Struggling to find time for this one though. Have studied C1 and part way through C2, but I think I'm going to ask for an extension on TMA03 as I'm not going to finish in time.

It's a shame your tutor is so inaccessible. Mine has given me his email and phone number so I can get in touch whenever I need to. I can't really manage tutorials though so try to do the online ones where I can. Missed this week's due to forgetting it was Tuesday, doh!!

My tutor's really nice, I had him when I was doing MST121 last year! I have his e-mail and have contacted him a couple of times, but tend to get one word replies after a week or so.

I had an extension for the last TMA as I'd been too ill to study from November to halfway through Jan, and was considering giving up. I've only just handed it in....

I did look on the forum but there was no question about this - not surprising under the circumstances. I'm sure they're nice really, but I generally only go on like you, to see if someone else has asked already, in the run up to the TMA. I'm going to need an extension for this one too.

Glad it's sorted.

Which course is it? I finished an OU Maths degree 2 years ago (got a first! ) I got horribly behind on some of the courses - If you start falling behind, check the substitution rules and if you can use substitution for one TMA, then look at past papers and see which topics come up regularly and focus on those. If you can use special annotation (I think!) in the handbooks, then copy out specimen exam questions and solutions which come up regularly into every blank space in the handbook and then, you can use the steps in the exam just substituting in the correct numbers from your exam.

Waves at Galena, my inspiration and Jux from the relative safety of MST121.

I did 60 points a year to start with. That was hard work! Lost the love near the end of the degree, but too bloody stubborn to stop, so kept going and got to the end!

It's ms221.

I'm a bit concerned about the fact there's an exam at the end! MST121 didn't have one until this year, and that's only because last year's course was such a disaster with cheating and plagiarism.
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Jux, I can't believe you've managed to get this far on if you've had to take so much time off! I'm fairly comfortable with calculus but still finding C2 a slog.

I'll hopefully have 60 points at the end of this year, but I'm going to need to take a year off. Sadly, future maths courses all seem to be 60 credits and I can't fit 60 credits worth of hours into my week... Unless we win the lottery and I can quit work... So I'm not quite sure where I'm going after ms221. I just need a degree of any sort so I can do teaching, but had hoped to qualify in maths.

I'm doing 60 credits a year, it's hard going, this time is a lot harder as I'm doing two completely different 30 point courses, my last course was 60 and I found not having to change my brain direction all the time better!

I'm quite enjoying my calculus (although easier than yours obviously) but it is really highlighting the gaps in my algebra. Not looking forward to the exam at all, I get good marks on assignments because if I'm stuck I can spend hours finding out whats wrong and looking at examples, not going to be do easy under exam conditions.

Oh dear. I used to be able to do this very easily some 15 years ago. I'll need to dig out me degree notes I think...

Wrong page? That's a good way to make a tricky problem impossible! Thank goodness that's resolved, it's been bugging me.

Not looking forward to the exam at all either. I'm not going to be doing any more pure maths after this, I'll be doing stats from then on, which I think will be much easier (gulp, hope, cross fingers, touch wood). Looking at the timescale (finish by 2017), I think I'm going to have to do two courses a year after this.

Our tutor has said that the exam questions are actually much easier than the TMA questions simply because there isn't that much time available in an exam. That goes for MST121 too, MrSlant.

I hated matrices etc last year but found them easy as pie this year! Enjoyed calculus last year but this year.... oh boy.

I gather Chapter D is vile. May have to just skip it.

I have only got this far, JollyYellowGiant, because I am rushing through everything, which means I won't actually understand any of it and will spend most of my time in the exam leafing through the handbook looking for clues. I am writing notes and examples on post-its and sticking them in the handbook and will write in the ones I need to keep a bit nearer the exam.

Galena, yes, lots of examples will be written in, and notes. I've just bought two of the past exams but the answer papers aren't included which is a bit of a poo.

I am rapidly losing the love though. I hate evening tutorials as I am knackered by 6pm, the last train leaves at 9.30 so I can't get home, and it's difficult doing the elluminate ones as the only computer capable of it is in the sitting room so I have to turf out dd, dh and SIL, and SIL doesn't go easily.

Anyway, I have actually got almost through C1 now! Hooray!

The (past-student-produced) answers used to be available on a separate website, which was shared nearer the time. I'll have a look and see if I've got them archived anywhere on my computer (although they will be old ones because I did it many moons ago now)... are you sure about MST121 not having an exam until this year? I'm sure I did 2 exams my first year, one for 121 and one for 221.

I would really appreciate that, Galena, thank you.

We didn't have an exam last year, and that seemed to be the way of it. I think because it was supposed to run concurrently with MS221 they probably didn't feel the need to have another exam as the two courses cover the same things, just 221 is harder. If you could pass that then passing 121 was taken as read?

The exam was introduced for this year due to a huge amount of cheating going on last year. We had 2 CMAs zero weighted, and there was a question mark over the eTMA for some time, but they eventually decided that the tutors and cheating-detection programmes could probably pick up whether or not the papers submitted were genuine. I heard that at least 50 students were disciplined. That's one reason why I never go on the FB pages for my course.

Our tutor said you have about 12 minutes per question in the exam, so they've got to be a lot less complicated than the TMAs. Can anyone imagine giving an answer to a TMA question in 12 minutes?!