It’s the first week back after Easter and students in the library before 10am and the smell of highlighters in the air can only mean one thing: it’s exam time. Although I don’t know anyone who enjoys exams per se, it is nice to start to see a conclusion to some of the work you’ve been doing throughout the year. There were a couple of presentations and essays towards the start of the term but these last few weeks are when most of the assessment takes place. There’s a couple of weeks to go before the final exams, but there are also a lot of essays due in around this time.
I myself have been working on three big essays recently. One was on autonomy as an argument for euthanasia, while another was for my Philosophy of Mathematics unit and discussed a position known as structuralism, the idea that maths is one big structure (it’s a bit difficult to articulate well in a brief blog-post but you can read about it here on the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy if you’re interested). The final essay was probably the one I found most interesting. It’s on a topic that you might have heard of called ‘Zeno’s paradoxes’. The idea is that if you’re trying to run from A to B, you must first go 1/2 the distance from A to B, but before you do that, you must first go 1/4 of the distance, but before that,1/8 of the distance, until you find that you can never actually begin your journey as there is no first step. It might sound like a bizarre thing to be able to write 2,500 words on, but responses to the paradox have big implications for mathematics, infinity and all sorts of other areas and finding a solution isn’t quite as simple as you might think.
The end of second year is also the time we’re beginning to think about third year Extended Essays. When you’re in final year, you can opt to do one or two extended pieces of work instead of more typical lecture and seminar-based units. It’s a daunting task to come up with a unique idea and then write thousands of words on it, but it’s also something that I’m quite looking forward to. As well as near complete freedom to write on any topic you want, you also get the opportunity to get really detailed one-on-one discussion and feedback with a lecturer who specialises in your chosen topic. At the moment, I’m thinking of either writing about decision theory or a game-theoretic approach to utilitarianism. We don’t have to confirm fully until September, but who knows, maybe I’ll have a finalised topic when I see you back here my next (and final) post after exams.
James 
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