A form of self-motivation, a daily diary!!!

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Reply 20

Crammyandcrabby

This thread is really interesting, reading about your day is nice.
Keep up the detail and good luck

Reply 21

GothicPanda

Original post by Niyi Aderounmu

I'm gonna sub to the thread since it's interesting.

You guys have any ideas for tackling knowledge for when you get into the exam? Sometimes I find myself reading through my notes and finding that all the information isn't going into my brain.

Well upon completing a CS test today and being able to recall the entirety of the Fetch-Decode-Execute Cycle with the different registers and buses from simply writing out the seven steps on a flash card an hour before the test, I'd say colourful flash cards seem to do the trick for me.

Essentially when I write one, I'll do it in two ways:
a) If there's lots of terms or steps or a sequence then I'll write each term/step in a completely different colour one after the other and get a friend to test me on them.
b) If its something that doesn't include lots of different terms or steps and you are assessed on things like advantages/disadvantages or features or things of that nature then I'd write an explanatory paragraph using a different colour for each aspect you need to know.

Hope that helps! :smile:

Reply 22

GothicPanda

Friday 26/02/16

Well today has been a day of...relief...I guess (I wasn't mauled to death by my EPQ supervisor if that makes it more relieving...).

Form Time - My sixth form is currently holding debates between the different form groups about various current issues. Unfortunately, I'm involved for my form and have my debate next Friday... :dry:

The debates that were on today weren't particularly good though and none of the forms actually provided sufficient points or evidence which both me and my friend (who's fortunately on my side of the debate next week) identified. And also with my Politics skills hopefully I can help my form win. :boxing:

EPQ - Fortunately for me, my supervisor didn't question us on the essay and has presumed we've finished it so I'm just going to stay quiet about it for now. We're now creating our presentations (which I actually kinda enjoy doing) and we have a mini-mock presentation next Friday so I need to have a sufficient amount to talk about for that. I also know my real examined presentation is on March 18^th which is scary...
Though presenting isn't something I find too harrowing.

During lunch, I revised with my programming friend (who is also technically my frenemy) for the CS test. I can confirm that the flash cards most definitely worked, as I hadn't looked at them since Thursday evening and I was able to recall nearly everything I had written, word for word. :h:

Computer Science - Well we had the test, and unlike Maths where I can only educatedly guess as to whether or not it went well; I can say with relative confidence that the test went well. There was questions on schedulers, interrupts, fetch-decode-execute cycle, storage devices & binary arithmetic that I could do fairly well. There was however, a couple of questions where I had to kind of skim over the answer as I couldn't really go into detail; for example there was a three mark question on the Control Unit which kinda stumped me too an extent. But otherwise it went fairly well.

Then I printed off a couple of resources for my Japanese and have pretty much relaxed since getting home.

For the weekend I need to:
Maths (S1) - Need to revise for my test on all sorts of probability distributions. :s-smilie:

Politics - For Monday's homework, I need to create a comparative sheet between the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
EPQ - Need to work on my presentation...and the essay...and the source evaluation...and the mandatory documents...and I need to edit a video to put into the presentation...which means I need to add more to the mandatory documents... :yawn:

Spoiler

Reply 23

GothicPanda

Saturday 27/02/16

Can't say I have too much to write about considering I woke up at 2pm but here goes.

I did some programming with my programming friend over Skype for a couple of hours. We continued on the Eurovision score board simulator thing, still haven't finished it but that's because we encountered a problem that I had no idea how to fix and he didn't know what was wrong. Apparently he's fixed it which is good, so I'll probably be doing more of that tomorrow. :h:

EPQ - I edited some videos to put in my presentation...that was all...I'll fill in a few more slides tonight though hopefully...maybe... :redface:

Maths (S1) - I made a flash card on binomial distribution which is the topic I think I understand the most out of the whole discrete random variables unit. Will make another one for using cumulative binomial tables and finding the E(x) and Var(x) for binomial distribution and perhaps, if I feel like it I'll start doing some on geometric distribution. I feel like I've said the words 'binomial' & 'distribution' too much on this blog... :s-smilie:

And that's all really...guess I should do more maths and EPQ then...

Reply 24

GothicPanda

Sunday 28/02/16

Well today just flew by...I feel like I've done nothing yet I've been sat at a computer for the majority of the day...hmm...

Politics - Made a comparison sheet comparing the House of Commons and the House of Lords. To be honest I didn't exactly put much effort into it considering 90% of the page was images and print screens of Wikipedia but regardless, I did it.

Maths (S1) - Did a lot of revision on geometric distribution but after the C2 test, I'm gonna presume tomorrow will go poorly.

EPQ - Did some organisation of my presentation...yeah...that productivity...

So yeah tomorrow is bound to be fun, S1 test & I'll probably get that Politics test I gave up on writing half way through...oh... :colondollar:

Reply 25

GothicPanda

Monday 29/02/16

Ok, I think I've decided what I'd like to do with my life. I've been looking around the top universities and I'm really interested in the 'Computer Science and/with Mathematics' courses. So I'm gonna aim for courses in that area, however I will keep an open mind still when it comes to viewing universities.
Slight problem however, I need to ideally have both an AS & A2 in Further Maths (unless I take STEP or AEA, which I'd rather not do) to be in with a reasonable shot at the top universities. I'll elaborate more at the end though, first my day :h:

:

Maths (S1) - We spent the first of my two hour stats lesson revising for the probability distribution test and then we took the test...hmm...
To sum up my experience, I essentially panicked and started doing the first question wrong, then realised. Then I forgot what E(x) & Var(x) was, and then remembered half way into the test. I then proceeded to panic about the different methods of geometric distribution and ended up guessing. In fact I can sum up the whole experience with the word 'unsure'. I kept second-guessing myself, so I'll just have to pray that the test went ok. The rest of my class seemed to really struggle though, so I know its not just me at least.

Maths (C2) - In the third hour we went over the C2 test (which it turn out, my mark went up because my circle question was marked wrong and I gained 3 marks putting me dead on 50%. Apparently that was a C for the paper so I'm a bit happier with the result, though I still would of really liked to reach 70%). After we did that, we did a bit more work on radians and that was it.

Politics - We looked at the different roles of the House of Commons, House of Lords & the Monarch in Parliament. Was all pretty straight forward, a bit dull in all honesty. We also got back the first 40 mark question we ever did (back at the beginning of January), in which I got 25/40 (which equates to a C, nearly a B). Not too bad for my first attempt, unsurprisingly my criticism was that I needed to write more. :s-smilie:

Also got homework on the different roles and powers of Parliament due for next Monday.

Then when I came home I did some C1 revision on indices. I'm just trying to keep them fresh in my mind, I've decided I'm going to hold off from doing a C1 paper a week until I've revised the few areas of weakness (which is mainly remembering how to do inequalities and working out tangents and turning points and stationary points and all those kind of things). I also completed the first half of my C2 homework on the Sine & Cosine Rule. I've also been unintentionally neglecting my Japanese and Spanish as of the last couple of days which I need to sort out tonight. Tomorrow I'll get my Computer Science test back tomorrow as well which will hopefully be positive.

Spoiler

Reply 26

GothicPanda

Tuesday 01/03/16

For some reason, I haven't felt too great today. I keep feeling kinda floaty and losing track of what I'm doing. :erm:

Nevertheless, school happened today,

Computer Science - For the first hour we marked our tests from last Friday. I got 62% which puts me 8% behind my programming friend :unimpressed:

. Most of the class (I say most but really I mean 3 of the other 4 people) got scores in the 40% range so in comparison I did rather well. Need to look back over data structures at some point though as I completely failed that part of the test.
Also on a side note, the mark scheme for CS is super strict... :s-smilie:

For the second hour we learnt about the Bubble sort algorithm which was fun (I enjoy doing the maths'y side of CS).
And for the third hour we then wrote a program in python that sorted random numbers into ascending order. I needed help from my programming friend but after it was finished I understood a majority of what was going on.

During lunch I didn't do anything productive apart from print out a tonne of revision notes for my Maths modules from a website I found while perusing the internet after programming.
For anyone who does Maths, I recommend this site - http://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/maths-revision/

In my free period I completed a majority of a homework sheet we got in CS about logic gates and truth tables. Not sure if I'm doing the sheet right but it doesn't hurt to try. :yy:

When I got home I completed a couple more slides in my EPQ presentation and started teaching myself logarithms (which seem pretty straight forward).
Tomorrow I'm going to go to the A level Maths revision/help session to finish my Sine & Cosine rules homework and I also intend for finish teaching myself logarithms tomorrow. :smile:

Reply 27

GothicPanda

Wednesday 02/03/16

Whenever I look back on Wednesdays I always feel like its an empty day. Like not much happens on a Wednesday...maybe its because I only one subject on Wednesday and no free periods...regardless;

Politics - Today was rather boring sadly. We looked at the different types of governments for two hours then did exam technique for the other hour. I can't wait to be finished with the topics 2.2 & 2.3, in fact the only unit I have a real interest in for Unit 2 is topic 2.4 about the judiciary and civil servants which we won't start for another couple of weeks. :frown:

I also got a 40 mark essay question homework on prime ministerial and cabinet government.

During Lunch I worked through more of my Sine & Cosine homework which I'll complete tomorrow morning. Also played more secret Hitler. :h:

Opted to not attend my Year 9 in-lesson support class because...yeah...

Then at home I did a bit more on logarithms and added more to my EPQ presentation which is fast approaching. :pika:

Reply 28

GothicPanda

Thursday 03/03/16

Wow, I feel really bad for skipping this blog for a day but I was literally busy the entire night prepping for Friday. Lets hope it never happens again... :redface:

In my free period I continued the CS homework sheet on truth tables and logic gates which in all honesty is confusing me a little. Hopefully my teacher will go over them on Tuesday. :s-smilie:

I also finished most of the Sine & Cosine Rule homework for the afternoon lesson (there was a couple of weird questions that I was a bit unsure of but I attempted them).

Maths - My teacher was out for most of the lesson and we were given trig cover work which in all honesty is boring me now, I really want to learn about integration... :frown:

[I could just teach it to myself as I think I'll pick up logarithms fairly quick...]
We went over how to do trig questions involving bearings though, which was useful.

At home I went into panic mode and finished the entirety of my EPQ presentation. :proud:

I also prepped for the debate on Friday, and that was it.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 29

GothicPanda

Friday 04/03/16

Apparently I was very antsy today. Probably because I had to participate in a debate and then do my Mock EPQ Presentation within the space of two hours of one another. Regardless, both were experiences I doubt I'll ever forget.

The Debate - So I was pretty nervous before the debate. I had never gone onto a stage before with the intent of effectively arguing with a group of people before.
The debate started atrociously for my team. I was first to speak and completely lost track of what I was saying and felt really embarrassed. Fortunately my fellow team mate was able to hold her own against the other team and we re-cooperated afterwards. And then I started to get really passionate about the topic and started to find my groove if you will. Eventually we were able to collectively put pressure on the other team and came out on top ( :nyan:

) but as we're through to the Semi-Final we both need to step-up our game...BUT WE WON!!!!!!

EPQ - So my adrenaline was already pumped going into my EPQ session. I managed to get through half my presentation before my supervisor stopped me because she didn't want to see the entirety of my presentation before the 18^th . Apparently my presentation was great, I just need to present a more balanced argument.

Otherwise I really didn't do anything productive for the rest of the day. My CS teacher wasn't in so she left cover work that I'll do over the weekend and yeah that was it...Hope your day was as...fun[?] as mine. :smile:

Reply 30

GothicPanda

Saturday 05/03/16

I slept for most of the day...literally all I really did was sleep...and Politics homework...and when I went to write up my new post, it was 23:45 and unless I finished it within 15mins It would of been moderated and visible to all at about 11am...so... :colondollar:

Politics - Completed the homework page on the Roles of Parliament. I couldn't find anything to differentiate the powers and roles of Parliament though so I combined them into one topic.

I'm going to Clacton on Sunday to see my Great Nan so I doubt I'll do much tomorrow...(as if I wouldn't know already)

Sorry for missing my posts twice in a week... :s-smilie:

Reply 31

GothicPanda

Sunday 06/03/16

So as previously alluded to, I had a day trip to Clacton today and hence not a lot was done. I did however purchase 300 flash cards from WHSmith, which is actually kinda intimidating. :redface:

Computer Science - I had some time while I was there to try and learn Karnaugh Maps but with just the textbook I couldn't really understand them so I'll try again tomorrow.

Otherwise it was nice to leave the house for a day and do something a bit different. Tomorrow's post is probably going to be a long one as I have a lot to say about my personal concept of Meaningful Procrastination but until then I hope you've had a good weekend. :smile:

Reply 32

GothicPanda

Monday 07/03/16

Well I didn't go to school today because I didn't sleep and was still completely drained from the day before. That and I had a headache kinda defeating the point in me even going. Otherwise I found out that for everyone else in my S1 class the test went quite badly (which certainly isn't reassuring) and that instead of doing statistics they did geometric sequences for C2. From what I can tell my Politics class did something on committees (I'll have to look into it).
Once my headache cleared I did a bit of school work.

Computer Science - I re-attempted to learn Karnaugh Maps and I'm still completely confused so I'm going to have to wait until tomorrow to find out how to do them. I also ordered a book off of Amazon that should help me with my Python. :h:

Maths (C2) - I watched a video on geometric sequences and made a flash card going over how to find the n^th term and the sum of a set amount of terms. Our homework was to do a certain amount of questions from two exercises in the textbook and to learn about convergent sequences.

I'm actually looking forward to tomorrow. Not only will we learn a new algorithm but for the first time, I can say that there's been something in CS that actually challenges me and that I need to be taught. I'm hoping though that the rest of my class is at least somewhat confused otherwise it'll hurt my reputation a little (as if I had one). I do also have to write that 40 mark Politics essay though... :frown:

Contained in the spoiler is my tangent on meaningful procrastination:

Spoiler

Reply 33

GothicPanda

Tuesday 08/03/16

So my meaningful procrastination plan hasn't really worked, but I'll keep at it for a while to see if it eventually does. Also I want to become a vegan now...

Computer Science - Well it turns out that I actually knew the most about Karnaugh Maps going into the lesson and that I was confusing myself for no actual reason. There are actually pretty straightforward once you get the hang of them. Still need to make flash cards for them though, as well as for boolean algebra expressions.
In the second hour we learnt about the insertion sort algorithm which is also rather easy. According to my textbook bubble sort is easier though which I really don't comprehend...
In the third hour we wrote a program for insertion sort which followed a fairly similar method to bubble sort.

I spent most of my lunch helping my friend track down white card so he could re-print 'Secret Hitler'.
And my free period was spent mingling...I think I've come to the conclusion that free periods don't really work for me much...

When I got home I started my Politics essay but encountered a problem where I couldn't find any evidence for my points so I'm going to try and track down my teacher before the lesson starts to discuss this with him.
Otherwise that was it, I'm a little disappointed that I can't find the evidence for the essay and that my meaningful procrastination didn't work out very well on its first day but nevertheless, gotta keep trugging along (Bits and Bobs reference). :proud:

Reply 34

GothicPanda

Wednesday 09/03/16

The EPQ presentation continues to loom ever closer as we fast approach the 18^th March... :s-smilie:

Also we have a trip to a university the morning of the 18^th so I'm barely going to have time to prepare for the presentation when I get back.

Politics - We learnt about the power the PM has and the types of PM there are and identified which PM is what type...yeah...

Couldn't attend in-lesson support because I needed to print out some forms for school trips.
At home I added more slides to my EPQ and taught myself how to work out the sum to infinity for a geometric sequence (which is fortunately quite easy).

Reply 35

GothicPanda

So......

The word neglect comes to mind when I read through my own blog...
Basically, forgot to do an update on the 10/03/16, and then felt bad because I didn't do much after for like a week in which it would of been me simply crying about the EPQ. And then I kinda just forgot... :s-smilie:

Well lets see if I can summarise the past two months up into a couple of paragraphs.

Maths - Well I've completed two of my three maths exams, those being C1 & C2 and I still have S1 to go.

C1 was a complete nightmare, people are complaining a load about the Edexcel paper but the OCR one was just as awful (possibly more). I'd revised a tonne for it, getting between 90-100% on every paper by the time of the exam. And then its like OCR wanted me to break down in tears in the middle of the exam and start stabbing myself with a compass, writing my answers in my own blood. After looking at all the unofficial mark schemes and what have you, I've established I've gotten around 40 marks which is a far cry from the 60+ I was achieving before the exam. Looks like I have one extra exam next year... :cry2:

C2 however, went really well. Don't know whether it was down to it being an easier paper, me preferring C2 content or the questions being more suited to my better areas but overall I think I've managed to get around 90 UMS from the exam (presuming the grade boundaries are similar to last year).

So this puts me in a precarious position going into the S1 exam. If I managed to scrape a C in C1 (60 UMS) and I'm right in thinking C2 went really well (90 UMS) that gives me about 150 UMS points. You need 240 UMS to get an A in AS Maths so that means I need to get about 90 UMS in S1... which prior to the C1 exam I thought was my weakest module. I have till the 08/06 to try and become as prepared as possible and maybe, just maybe I can get an A still. And even if I got a B, I could still push it up considerably next year so no worries.

Politics - Not gonna lie, haven't really begun preparing for this yet (too many math). My exams are on the 06/06 & 09/06 which means I have half-term to prepare myself. Its not the content I'm worried about with Politics, I need to refresh my mind on it but it shouldn't be too difficult re-memorising the content. It's my ability to write everything I need to write in time. My belief is that if I'm fully prepared knowledge wise then I should be able to rush into a question knowing I know the content already and not be too caught up on time because I'm sat there thinking about what it wants me to write about. Well we'll see, starting my revision tomorrow though.

Computer Science - I actually feel good about this, we have like these Mock AS exams which will basically dictate which grade my school will send to my university choices when it comes to applying. We're revising in class now by ourselves (so I'm making flash cards) so I don't feel bad for not doing any revision outside of lesson. My exams are on the 21/06 & 24/06 so I have plenty of time to prepare for them as well.

EPQ - ITS ALL OVER NOW!!!!! :yay:

The presentation went well and I got all my bits and bobs done in time so yeah. I got 35/50 in the end which is by traditional grade boundaries, a B. To be honest though even if it drops to a C, I'm not too fussed its an extra thing anyway and next year I'll be doing Further Maths (presuming S1 doesn't end up a disaster like C1) anyway so I'll have another thing in the background anyway.

And yeah that's it for individual subjects. Half-term begins after my CS lesson ends tomorrow which is good. I have a lot of Politics and Stats to do though but a week after half-term and all my actual exams will be over so that's a relief. We start our Year 13 teaching on the week starting 13/06 which will be good as well.

I hope you all have been well and aren't dying from exams. :redface:

Guess I'll be back tomorrow to provide another daily update and to continue to fill you guys in on what you missed while I was away. :h:

Reply 36

GothicPanda

Right I'll cut to the chase, kinda forgot about the blog after that post in May. I need to seriously knuckle down this year and make sure I nail all of my subjects because otherwise I won't end up in the sort of university I want to go to. So my AS results were neither amazing or horrendous.
They were:

Computer Science A - Thank God...

Maths C - Got an A in C2, C in C1 (better than i expected, will retake it next year as I know I can get much much higher) and somehow I got a D in S1 which was the thing that upset me the most out of all my results. Just today I ordered the paper back so I can see for myself (along with one of my teachers) what happened in that exam as I felt it had gone well. Regardless it's one more retake I'll be doing next year...

Government & Politics D - I should have revised... I really should have revised...

EPQ B - Pretty content with that, would have been nice to get an A but it is an extra thing I did on the side.

So my results weren't great but it could have been a lot worse. Well I mentioned earlier on in the blog that I wanted to do Further Maths next year and somehow I managed to negotiate with the A Level Maths teacher to let me take up both AS & A2 Further Maths this year. I expected that this would result in me dropping Politics but as of this moment I'm still doing Politics as well so yeah... RIP me.

I really would like to do well this year (ideally getting at least AAA) so I'm going to make a blog for this year. I'll update it every other night as I seriously need to get on top of all my work and actually revise this year.
I'll post a link once I've established it.
I hope you were happy with your results :smile:

Reply 37

Crammyandcrabby

Hi, do you have any tips on doing EPQ? I'm starting it this December.
Also well done on your results and wish you all the best for next year

Reply 38

GothicPanda

Original post by Crammyandcrabby

Hi, do you have any tips on doing EPQ? I'm starting it this December.
Also well done on your results and wish you all the best for next year

Well my first and biggest tip would be to pick a topic you actually care about. And when i say 'care about' I mean something that on a daily basis you do or look things up about it. I mean I care about the quality of education here in Britain, but I don't look things up about it on a weekly basis. So pick something you actively enjoy learning about, not something you have a mild interest in.

Secondly, you'll be told to find sources. Find as many as you can in as small amount of time as possible. I was still finding sources when I was finishing my essay. The quicker you can move onto the essay the better.

And thirdly, make sure you meet whatever deadlines your teacher sets you. It'll help you in the long run.

Hope this helps, good luck !! :smile:

Reply 39

GothicPanda

So for some reason I'm unable to start a new thread and therefore I haven't been able to begin a new blog for this year. I have started a Studygram though as the alternative:
https://www.instagram.com/thatgothicpanda/

It forces me to present the work I've done which is good. If I am suddenly able to start a new blog I will be sure to come back here and inform you guys (should probably look into why I am unable to start new threads...). I hope you will check my studygram but if you don't, have a nice life! :biggrin: