15 january 2026
The new semester
Feelings of a statistics lesson
I'm writing this during a statistics lesson that honestly goes way over my head.
The teacher seems nice, but she really goes way too fast for me. But it's not like the lessons where you don't understand anything. I am in this sweet spot where I know I should understand (because I had lessons about these subjects last year), but I lack the fast, intuitive, deep understanding that is required to follow the lesson.
3h about history and philosophy of maths
Quite on the opposite end of the spectrum was this incredible lesson yesterday, called "the mathematical knowledge". It is a mix of philosophy of mathematics and history of mathematics. The subject, for these first 3h, was the notion of actual infinity during the history of maths (and how Cantor claimed he was the first one to really accept it in mathematics, while this isn't actually accurate, because we can see Liebniz clearly saying there is some acual infinity, and we could even find some actual infinity in Euclid's elements).
I loved this lesson so much ! We talked about Aristotle, Spinoza, Liebniz, Cantor... I think I never enjoyed a lesson as much as this one ! I'm looking forward for the next ones, in a feeling that I finally belong in the academia, after many years suffering from not really being passionnate about the subjects I study.
the hesitation between paper and computer for note-taking
I'm still very undecided if I should use paper to take notes for my lessons. Paper has some advantages : It is more flexible, allows to easily draw things, link different parts with arrows, add some side notes...
On the other hand, taking notes on my computer is very cool because it instantly makes a good-looking note, that I can revise quickly (I can fold thing out of sight to get only the important points), and share easily with classmates. More importantly, I use obsidian, so I have many features set up to match my style of note-taking. My handwriting is readable for me, but not very beautyfull when I write quickly... There is another very useful thing about typing : you can't write without looking at your sheet, but you can type without looking at your keyboard or screen. This automation (built by hours of monkeytype training ^-^) is obviously very useful during a lesson, where you want to be able to see while you write.