1. University of Melbourne/University of Western Australia
Jedi Training: What it's like to be a postgraduate mathematics research student
Jon Xu
University of Melbourne/University of Western Australia

2. The Cast Prof. Arun Ram, Principal Supervisor, Unimelb Myself
MPhil student from USyd
(-> PhD)
A/Prof. John Bamberg,
Co-Supervisor, UWA

3. The Hunt

6. Some generalized polygons
The Doily
The Fano Plane

7. Meeting Arun Ram

8. Admission and Funding

9. 'Algebraising' Geometry
-circle becomes the graph of x^2 + y^2 = 1
René Descartes:

10. Arrival at Melbourne:
1st September 2012

11. Getting to know the mathematics community
Visitor: Kevin Purbhoo
From the University of Waterloo, Canada

12. Learning to write mathematics

16. Getting Feedback

17. Denmark – March 2013

18. Slowly learning finite geometry

19. PRIMA 2013

20. First Approximations

22. Einstein on the Beach and Repetition

23. Mindfulness Meditation and removing the ego

24. What does my work involve?
Using symbols to study symmetry.
Why do I want to become mathematician?
It's the only thing I can do well that will keep me from getting bored.
But then, why should I get paid?
Curiosity based research has a tendency to progress humanity (amongst other things)

25. -Calculus (along with Leibniz)
Isaac Newton
Discovers:
-Calculus (along with Leibniz)
-Law of gravitation
-Optics
Motivated by:
Curiosity.

26. More specific to mathematics: Finding the 'right' way to do things
~300 years later

27. Euclid's 'Elements' ~300B.C.
~2000 years later

28. Disgust
The 'right' proof might look something like...