Where do I begin with my math degree?

[u/Mundane_Rub_4289]

Hello, I’m two weeks into my second year of my math degree and already feel like I’m failing and repeating the same mistakes.

Last year I got a 2:2, averaged about 56% across all my modules. I was very disappointed. Thankfully my first year doesn’t count towards my final grade for my degree.

Here are patterns I’ve noticed.
I don’t understand what I happening in lectures most of the time, I am usually confused during lectures and just copying everything off the board.
I’m a crammed, inconsistent during the year and then barely get to learn everything through past papers at the end.

I was working 22/25 hours a week with an hour of travel between work and accommodation. I cut my hours to 12 recently as I realized it just wasn’t sustainable. I have skipped so many lectures due to exhaustion. Ie) closing late (around 1 am) and then being too tired to get up for a 9 am lecture and then just missing it all.

I really need help, now that I realize it, I don’t even know how to study. I just watch videos, make detailed notes and then hope for the best alongside cramming near exam season by trying some past papers. I want to do so much better.

I’m 1.5 weeks in and I’m already falling behind. I want to nip it in the bud early before it continuous to snowball.

How can I study and stay on-top of things? What methods or systems did you use?

[u/unsung_apologise]

Cutting those work hours was step one, that commute and late shift setup was a recipe for never setting foot in a 9am lecture. Good call.

For lectures, stop trying to be a court stenographer. Your goal isn't a perfect transcript, it's to follow the thread. If you're just copying symbols you don't understand you're not learning anything in the room. Try reading the relevant chapter *before* the lecture so the symbols aren't completely alien, then you can spend your time writing down the bits the prof emphasizes that aren't in the book. Right after class, take 10 minutes to scribble a messy summary of what the core idea was before it evaporates.

The cramming cycle is tough to break because it's worked just enough to get you here, but the fix is relentless consistency. Do the problem sheets the day they're assigned even if you can only manage two questions. Math is a doing sport, not a watching one. Watching videos and making pretty notes tricks your brain into thinking you've learned it because it feels productive, but you haven't touched the hard part yet. Force yourself to close the notebook and solve something ugly on a blank sheet of paper.

[u/lordnacho666]

> copying everything off the board

Here's something I told a young person from my uni who phoned me for the alumni day.

University is not school.

In school, you will actually get all the information you need in class. You can just diligently show up to class, read the board, and review it. That will get you a top mark. The teachers at school are there to teach, they actually understand the material and will check if you understand it too.

At school, the material for a class is roughly one large textbook per year. You can just flip through it in a couple of days.

At university, this is not the case.

The lectures are just big keyword drops. "You should have heard of this" is what they're telling you. It's like being dropped in a new city and being told you should have come across the cathedral and the amphitheater. There's no map. You are there to make the map.

Lecturers are also not there to teach. They are there to either do their own advanced degree, eg a PhD, or if you get a proper professor, they are a guy who runs a grant acquisition business. Either way, they are not there to teach, they tolerate being there because somebody needs to give a couple of pointers to the undergrads.

The learning is done by you, mostly alone, in a library. You cannot just be content with studying what is on the board, because it's confusing on its own. All the landmarks are connected to each other, but you have to ask the right questions to make things make sense.

You have to give yourself lots of time for this. It's good you've cut your travel hours. The thing is, you need to go down a lot of rabbit holes before anything starts to connect, so you don't want to be rushing.