Question: how long were you in university for and did you enjoy it?

Amy Mason answered on 10 Feb 2022:

I did four years at University of Oxford studying undergraduate maths. Then I did 5 years at University of Bristol studying number theory for a PhD – with some breaks for health, and only part-time & long-distance in the last years.
Then I came back to the University of Oxford to work (part-time) in medical stats for 4 years, and studied statistics in my own time to get a qualification by examination from the Royal Statistical Society. This last meant they just set exams, but don’t do any teaching or homework – you have to do all the learning yourself. Sadly this route doesn’t exist anymore as it was a *very* cheap way to get a degree-level qualification, about £600 if you sat all the exams in one year.
And then I carried on working at the University of Cambridge in more specialised medical statistics, for another 4+ years.
So depending on which bits count as “in univerity”: 4 years, 9 years or 17 years!

I definitely enjoyed bits of it. At undergrad, I didn’t like the lectures but I loved the course and thinking about maths and reading textbooks. I also really liked meeting other people with geeky interests – we put on light operas, read sci-books, watched doctor who in big shared spaces, went to late-night icecream parlors. Your time at university is so flexible, and so is that of everyone else in your year group so there is always something happening and someone you can spend time with.

I’d choose to do some things differently if I did it again, but overall I’m happy with how it’s turned out.