All entries for Friday 14 January 2005

Degree maths (the 2nd Edition)

Following on from my last entry about Algebraic Curves, I thought I'd just express my anger at the course's lecturer.

He's Russian. This isn't an immediate disadvantage or A Very Bad Thing at all, it's just that it's sometimes very hard to understand what he's saying (especially when he misses words out of sentences or pluralises something that shouldn't be – because the number of things makes quite a big difference in mathematics) and even harder to understand when he writes stuff on the board. Sometimes he just misses random letters out; this I can cope with. It's when it loses all grammatical sense I just can't work out what it means. It might make a little more sense if I knew what he was talking about in the first place, but how am I supposed to do that if I can't understand him? See what I'm getting at?

That's one thing. The other thing is equally silly but easily rectifiable. He told us about the book that he is basing the course on; Complex Algebraic Curves by R. Kirwan, I believe. The library has 2 copies of this book and they're both out. HE HAS ONE OF THEM. Given that he is also in possession of his own Complex Algebraic Curves by R. Kirwan this strikes me as a little daft. In fact, very daft. Who are the library books supposed to be for? Hmmm?

And they still expect me to get a 2:1.

My God.

: 14 Jan 2005 16:01 |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem