My qual was intense!  I spent the first five minutes panicking, but then managed to calm down.  Here are my thoughts:

  • As expected, Prof. Bell gave a reasonable qual - his past quals were very predictive of this one, and I'd recommend studying from them for future students.
  • I should have spent more time on harmonic functions!
  • On problem 2 (contour integral problem
    $ \int_0^\infty \frac{\cos(8x)}{x^2+1} \, dx $
    if I remember right), I totally drew a blank, so I wrote that I was whiffing on this one but explained my ideas for solving it if I could just get the inequalities to work.
  • I'm glad we practiced so many problems - it helped me to get into a rhythm during the qual.


Alumni Liaison

Basic linear algebra uncovers and clarifies very important geometry and algebra.

Dr. Paul Garrett