Studying physics and computer science in New Zealand

>studying physics and computer science in New Zealand
>the whole teaching system is completely fucked up, each course doesn't even seem to properly regard its own curriculum let alone properly build on other courses (first two physics courses are a repeat of high school physics)
>New Zealanders are friendly but socialisation is difficult
>nothing to do for fun here
>what little there is costs a fortune
>only possible job is as a cashier

I don't think I could live like this for another three and a half years.
What do?

...

don't take phys101 u dip

They made me because I fell very slightly short of the prerequisites to skip it, slow writer so I wasn't good at NCEA exams.
But the two prerequisites that I didn't have weren't even needed at all in the course, and I already knew all the course material.

Which uni?

Victoria.
Not actually 101, 131.

Don't go to a shit tier uni then

How do you tell what's good and bad?

Nah first year physics is always shit

Maths and computer science though?

where the fuck are your from?

100 compsci is python tier
1st sem maths is maybe a bit more than y13 sem2 should be harder

I went to an American uni so I'm sure there are minor differences because that's what my first year was like. Just high school 2.0. I think it's partially to weed out the people who barely squeaked through admission and have no possible chance. I didn't feel like I was learning anything of substance until my 4th or 5th semester and after that I was sufficiently challenged. Just hold in there.

As for work, have you considered working for the university? I worked at an elementary school my first 2 years but my second 2 years I was working in the university's research department which not only paid fairly well but also taught me a lot. With the physics/comp sci combo you should be able to contribute something.

Talk to your advisor and look around for positions of substance at your school. Fucking work as a cashier and volunteer until they decide to pay you if you need to. Worked for me.

Are you retarded? Phys 101 and Phys 131 are not first year physics. That is courses Phys 114 and Phys 115. You're taking the courses for retards without entrance requirements, so of course they are hgihschool stuff.

How could he not find anything? My gf has a degree in communications and just had multiple job offers when switching work, all of them over $80k a year.

Do. Not. Focus. On. Mathematics.

I've known several Math majors who have degrees and every single one of them either works as a bartender or as a "therapist" for autistic children. You can't make this shit up.

Who /former retard/ here?

First year drop out to Phd Student desu lads

This

I did math in undergrad, getting an MS in computer science now

They are either retards who got poor grades or socially retarded. Maths and in particular Stats is one of the most employable majors.

Are you unironically Chinese?

I'm white. I studied Chinese out of interest.

nice

Good job then matey

kek

The best 3 jobs every year for pay/satisfaction/job security are always Actuary followed by Statistician and Mathematician.

If you're a retard stay out of math because only the smart ones go far. Otherwise it's an amazing discipline.

>believing the STEM meme
T&E sell in the private sector. S&M keeps you in the bondage of academia if you want to stay employed.

>STEM meme

?

I never said all of STEM is good. Physics is a fucking horrible degree if you don't do a PhD. Math isn't though. You learn a lot and it opens you up to pretty much any quantitative discipline. Trading firms for instance prefer math grads instead of finance or business grads.

It's also to allow them to broaden the intake requirements which is easier for university administrators and high school testing authorities because you don't have to compare curricula between different high schools and jurisdictions.
Protip for underage banneds who see this post: If you do well academically and don't want to be bored shitless in first year, look into Enhanced Studies Progams with your local universities. It will help you to formally knock out part of the coursework requirements for a given course so you can start on second year stuff in first year or knock down your first year course load.

They weren't retards(social or otherwise) but honestly 3/4 were fuckarounds. I stuck to engineering because OH HEY we have programs that do 90% of the math for us, we just need to apply it correctly.

Never met or heard of a person with a B.S. in Mathematics succeeding in the outside world.

Why the fuck would mathematicians go into engineering? The successful ones land jobs as traders/statisticians/actuaries etc.

Generalised linear models is a 4th year course??

When did I claim to be a mathematician? I studied mechanical/industrial engineering, we still need to take advanced math classes.

It goes into a lot more depth than just doing glms in R or SAS. I agree it's cabbage though. I'm more interested in stochastic processes/time series. Got a scholarship to do a PhD at Amsterdam Uni starting next year in financial mathematics.

I did 131 and now I'm doing 115, and even 115 is highschool stuff.

You have to take a bunch of calculus, which is basically the easiest version of math except perhaps logic lol. What I mean is you said "all our programs do our math for us", and I mean it's irrelevant because no one who knows advanced mathematics would do engineering.

BTW I should say, I think all undergrad math is cabbage as fuck along with engineering/physics. Postgraduate math though is not useless and will make you a lot of money provided it's not analysis or something useless like that.

Over here if you're average at mathematics and you get an undergrad degree in maths you'll probably get a job in programming or software engineering.

If you're good at mathematics and professionally motivated and you get an undergrad degree in maths then you'll get a job as an actuary or job at an investment bank or trading company

If you're good at maths and not professionally motivated but academically motivated then you'll do a PHD and either become an academic or still have the option of going into computer programming or finance or operational research.

I don't know why it's different in your country. Maybe you are simply not aware of things?

It is definitely more than high school later on, but still straight forward. You'll enjoy Phys 221 when you do general relativity, special relativity, quantum physics etc. It's a lot more interesting.

The reason 1st year courses are dumbed down is because of our mandatory NCEA entrance requirements. When I'm tutoring classes the most basic shit some of them can't understand a word....

Did they teach time series in terms of dynamic linear models or did they just present specific time series models like ARCH and GARCH?

Stochastic processes are cool but man measure theory is the gayest shit in the world :(

My shithole has no IT and education is backward - not even trying.

It was more theoretical than specific models, doing proofs and a few projects/simulations.

Stochastic processes is the most interesting shit though, especially when you start delving into advanced probability theory.

Always thought it was funny, in high school I thought calculus was hard and probability was easy. Now calculus is easy as hell, while probability gets extremely complex lol.

Also looking at your sheet I'm not sure how much analysis you've done.

It's not so much needing to be familiar with pre-requisite knowledge from analysis in order to do advanced probability that is the problem, it's getting the pure Matgs/analysis mindset.

If what you like are questions like "what is the probability" "what is the expected value of " "what's the maximum/optimum" then having to do pure maths shit like proving something forms a sigma algebra might be aggravating and heavy going.

I shied away from advanced probability because of that and stuck with things that could be thought of with probability density functions.

Which sucks because a lot of the coolest stuff like optimal stochastic control comes after that measure theory hurdle.

I never did it at University because I was running out of classes I could take (really wanted to take Geometry because of the lecturer, one of the most amazing courses I've ever taken, and the guy just passed away a few weeks ago). Read up a lot on it though. One of my professors is a famous statistician who grew up in the soviet union, gives me a lot of stuff to read. When you do a lot of probability you are forced to pick up analysis along the way as tedious as it is.

>financial mathematics
>using your math powers for evil and personal gain
Don't do it lads! Research all the way!

>The best 3 jobs every year for pay/satisfaction/job security are always Actuary followed by Statistician and Mathematician.
You aren't looking at the right stats. In the 70s, 50% of STEM Ph.D.s got tenure track jobs. Now it's around 10%. Yes, if you get tenure as a math prof, you will have good pay satisfaction and (duh) job security with tenure.

How do you tutor though?
I've found that in lectures that when things are explained with English and common sense, the students (and me) are fine, but then you get the lecturers who do nothing but spend 50 minutes scribbling out maths while muttering and every 5 minutes they throw in a new variable without explaining it.
I don't even try to follow the latter type of lecture.

Become a nz citizen and move to Australia (a real country) through the trans-tasman travel agreement

>What do?
Become a vassal of your rightful Australian overlords.

I do problems with them on the board. Normally do an example slowly explaining what I'm doing, making sure they understand the terms used, then do a problem where I ask them what they think we should do.

delet.

>tfw your lecturers will never teach properly like this