Go to deparment events

A day full of maths and economics based events

Today I had to go to lots of events laid on by the separate departments I was studying in. The economics department and the maths department. The first event was an introduction talk for maths and computing science students in one of the big lecture theatres. The talk we were given seemed to be nothing to do with maths at all, and seemed to be solely provided for computing science students. I spent the first few minutes frantically looking through my freshers guide trying to work out if I was in the wrong talk or not. It transpired I wasn't, but I still didn't get told anything related to maths.

After a while a new lecturer from the maths department started talking to us, and even though he talked about one of the courses I was talking it still seemed aimed at computer scientists. So when the lecture finished me and another maths student sitting near me (Katy who was taking maths and finance) where a bit puzzled. She wasn't even taking one computing science module, so the talk seemed almost totally pointless for her.

One thing I did wonder about was whether I should have attended the earlier talks on computing science and whether I needed to do anything with that department. All departments had their own individual handbooks which needed to be picked up, and honour roles which needed to be signed - did I need to do this for computing science, it wasn't really made clear. After the introductory talk I went and asked this question to the lecturer, and he said I should speak to the computing science departmental office about it.

Next there was a slight problem I was now timetabled to go for an economics introductory talk, but during that there would also be a maths introduction, and I wasn’t sure which I needed to go to. I went up to the maths department with Katy to ask about this. They couldn't really tell us which to attend, they just said try to go to both, which wasn't really much help, but they also gave us a departmental handbook and let us sign for it.

The next departmental even on my timetable was an introductory talk for economics, which was much more straightforward than the maths one. The lecturer just told us about the courses we would be doing, the fact that we needed to pick up a handbook from the department and sign the honour role (which was like a contract saying we would abide by the departments rules) and stuff like that. The talk finished much earlier than it was supposed to, which meant there was time to get to the maths introduction meeting.

The maths induction meeting was more like what I though the original maths talk should have been like, except it was much more informal with people just sitting around on chairs in a circle. After a short talk from head of department we sat around talking to the tutors and students for a while before people got bored and wondered off.

The last departmental event today was the economics meeting, which was similar to the maths one. It was just a chance to meet students and lectures from the department and make new friends. There were much more people here than at the maths event, so I ended up staying much longer and met lots of people.