Module 4 · Career, projects and honesty Lesson 12 of 15
Build the portfolio project: a worked-solutions file for one exam
Take one paper you are sitting — placement aptitude, statistics, a university unit — and build a file of thirty problems with full working, the common mistake, and a one-line summary of the method for each type. It is the thing you will talk about in the interview, so it has to be small enough to finish in a fortnight and concrete enough to show a person in one minute.
The concept
Take one paper you are sitting — placement aptitude, statistics, a university unit — and build a file of thirty problems with full working, the common mistake, and a one-line summary of the method for each type. Finish it before you start the next one. A half-built idea shows nothing; a small finished thing shows that you can finish.
Use the tool as a collaborator, not an author: ask it for a plan, a critique and a checklist, and write the work yourself. In the interview the questions will be about the decisions — why this, why not that — and only the work you did yourself has answers.
Write one paragraph beside the project: what problem it solves, what you used, and what you would do differently next time. That paragraph is the interview.
Worked example
Finished, it is a revision document you actually use, plus a short note of the four method mistakes you personally kept making.
Your practice task
Solve ten of them from memory a week later and mark yourself against your own working. The ones you still get wrong are the chapters to reread.
Do this before moving on. Reading a solution teaches the shape of it; typing it teaches you.
Key takeaway
Take one paper you are sitting — placement aptitude, statistics, a university unit — and build a file of thirty problems with full working, the common mistake, and a one-line summary of the method for each type.
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Finish every lesson to unlock the certificate. Each one ends in a practice task — do them and the final project brief writes itself.