The Mathematical Experience: A degree that lives up to expectations

A postgraduate student reflects on why he has studies mathematics from GCSE upto PhD….What exactly a mathematics degree entails is perhaps considered one of the mysteries of the modern world; not only for the public at large, but also for the majority of the cohort of students who every year embark on a degree programme with ‘mathematics’ in the title. Paul Wakeley looks back on his expectations before starting a maths degree and the reality some six years later. Mathematics must have done something to impress me; I recently found an old ‘career plan’ from when I was at Secondary School, which had my career as a meteorologist mapped out in meticulous detail. Well now, as I sit researching for a PhD in Applied Mathematics, something between the age of sixteen and eighteen switched me on to Mathematics and made me decide to choose a Mathematics degree above all the other hundreds of subjects….