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	I got a Third.
	The editorial being the last part to be written, of course [1], I'm
writing late on the Wednesday night after the deadline. Tonight the results
of BA (Hons) Mathematical Sciences were posted in the Examination Schools of
Oxford University, and my son-of-a-PM tutor Robin Wilson rang me up to tell
me that I had been awarded Third Class Honours.
	It's taking some time for this to settle in. Two weeks ago (er, 7*7*7
hours, give or take 7 minutes, as I type) I finished my last academic exam,
perhaps forever, the snappily-titled "o3 Functional Programming and Algorithm
Design", in the East Writing School and strode out victoriously into the rain 
to be greeted by hordes of my friends eager to celebrate the fin-de-siŠcle of
the Finals rite of passage. Well, nearly. Thanks, TurboNick [2]. For over the
previous ten days I had sat 25 hours' worth of depressingly difficult papers
which would decide whether the last three years I had spent going to lectures
and bashing my head against problem sheets would count for nothing or not.
Gratifyingly, it didn't.
	Mathematics at Oxford University and I didn't get on all that well
together. I really enjoyed the A-levels I sat in the subject, back in the old
days of Sixth Form when I knew no better, so I sat the entrance exam, passed
with hovering (is that the next best thing to flying?) colours, and found
the offer of a place at Oxford too hard to turn down. And, as they say, it
all went downhill from there.
	Sometimes those who don't know the truth think that university
mathematics is just a harder version of what they did in school, and that we
spend our days memorising 197 times tables and solving quadratic equations
with seven-digit numbers. University maths is all about understanding the
processes behind what you've been doing for years and tests you in ways not
touched before by traditional schoolwork. There's an extent to which either
you can do it or you can't, and I... couldn't.
	This was really the first time that I had been faced with a daily
routine of work too hard for me, and I didn't (or, rather, haven't) coped
well with it at all. I started off coping as well as anyone else with the
majority of it, but as time went by, things started slipping away, and my
work was getting worse and worse. In the formal exams at the end of the
first year, I got a third, which was a horrible shock to the system. To
put it in context, about seventeen or eighteen out of every twenty students
got a second or better. It could have been worse - at least I had achieved
some sort of result - but for someone used to consistently high achievement
it was a painful wall to hit.
	Over the last two or three years my self-confidence has gone. (More
or less.) I've had the feeling that life has been passing me by, that I
haven't been able to cope, that my course has been going on around me and
despite me rather than because of me. When I haven't been actively doing
things to keep myself happy, I've been quite miserable at times. Several
times I've thought seriously of quitting, changing course or worse. Didn't
happen, though. I sat my course out to the bitter end. I went into the exams,
I stayed in each one to the end and did my best. Though most of the time I
felt that I wasn't going to pass (let alone get honours), I stuck at it.
	It's all over.

[1] This is a lie. I'm all but starting after midnight on Wednesday night when
this thing has to catch the Thursday evening post at the very latest. Oops!
[2] And to repay you, I'm doing this issue of GIT in your "favourite" font!