My sixth form journey - all or nothing

Update:
Really enjoyed this week, I have been studying for 3/4 hours everyday extra as our recommended amount of revision time. I work through break + lunch and two hours after school, so when I go home I don't have to do anything. My biggest problem now is sorting out my EPQ project. Now that I want to study Law at University, I'll need to express an interest in the subject and besides from getting an internship - my personal statement will be looking very weak. As a result, I will be discussing a potential solution tomorrow with my supervisor - perhaps a law EPQ? Any suggestions?

Update: will do my EPQ analysing Britain before joining the EU and afterwards - therefore, I will have lots of secondary and primary literature to draw upon during my essay.

Hi Mr Taylor,

Sounds like everything is going great at the moment! Keep it up! You'll be on As and A*s for sure.

As for a law EPQ, I could come up with possible suggestions. A friend of mine who went on to study law at Bristol Uni did his EPQ on the works of Cicero and his impact on the law (or something of that sort).

Many people - according to the examiners reports - do an EPQ on the death penalty and whether or not it is feasible within our society, so I would avoid that if I were you.

One suggestion I would recommend came from an actual Oxbridge Law interview question I had a look at with my sister (who also wants to study Law). For an EPQ, you could phrase it to the question "To what extent can the Law be considered just and effective?" Really interesting question, but if your worried its a bit 'broad', you might want to consider using a specific form of legislation, e.g. (I know this is not a great example) the Immigration Act 2016. So an EPQ question might go like "To what extent can the Immigration Act (2016) be considered a just and effective law?" Or, you could select a couple of pieces of legislation to talk about.

Hope it at least gives you an idea of what to do your EPQ on!

All the best,

King Haribo

We don't start EPQ till after half term next week is assessment week so i am very scared!!

We're still at the 'initial ideas' page and we have to get our ideas approved before we can continue (don't worry)
Assessment week already? We have mini exams etc during lessons and for homework, but our formal assessments are coming for another four weeks! What subjects are you studying?

Just wanted to say good luck! I hope everything goes well for you

@Marshall Taylor


Yo g

How did your AS go?

are you doing the LNAT

Yeah, it's to check that we are doing the right course, ive already had two of my exams today! And I'm doing english lit, history and politics x

Oh I get you (kinda) we have already had 'meet the tutor' and we will have 'effort checks' soon. We mainly have essay questions as homework etc to allow our teachers to get a gist of our essay writing so they can help us tweak it in the future, but nothing formal yet.

Nice A level subjects! What are you planning to do afterwards, for example university and if uni, what degree?




Thank you!!

Thank you and I want to do LLB law at a London university- if not that, then Liverpool or Leicester

Ah that's excellent! Aim high - my Sociology teacher did Law at Liverpool and loved it!

Update: I will try to break down my little blog into subjects, extra circular and general wellbeing henceforth. Anyways, so here we go!

My week started out without the presence of my head of year bellowing at us the student bulletin this week, instead that was reserved for Wednesday morning, as opposed to Monday morning (thank god!) To be frankly honest, I'm not too sure what to write in this update. A levels have seemed to slowly drain me throughout the week and I seem to feel like a car engine without any fuel... stuck! I feel like if I break this down into subjects, perhaps it will become easier for me to write?

Business Studies:
Well this subject was one that I really disliked from the first lesson (the teaching had no influence on my decision, so let’s not point fingers and hear me out!). I had seemed to convince myself that business studies was the easiest A level in order to get an A* in and it certainly did not challenge me as much as, let's say Economics for instance. I feel like business studies was a vision that I had once held, but no longer. I greatly respect how my teachers attempted to fully engage with us and invite us into business discourse. However, with the tedious work set (literally completing tons of short-medium answers (1-16marks) I was extremely fed up. I felt like we were given the mark scheme and no structure/format on how to answer the questions. With no surprise, I got 4/9 and 9/16 on my 25 marker, with almost no feedback. This really shocked me and hit me hard. In comparison to all of my other subjects, I felt like others courses were much more clear, what we are studying was clear and what to revise + how to complete further proactive study was also very clear. Whereas in business, after having one of our main teachers off on jury service - it was too much. I experienced a nightmare, where the exact same treatment of business studies that I experienced in my previous school (having no teacher during the whole of year 11 and not learning any content for my exams) had profound effect. On Wednesday, I went to the very kind admissions officer who helped me into the right direction for dropping the course. I took up Philosophy & Ethics, my initial choice from the introduction days and now I have 6 weeks of philosophy to catch up on - a decision that I will soon become to love or hate! (but probably love, since I love a challenge!)

Sociology:
The study of society, or as normally people call it, ‘Sociology’. This subject has not failed in grabbing my full attention during every lesson. My two teachers are great at their profession. Now the sociological theory is significantly harder than the research methods, but nevertheless, both are very interesting. I have been finding the lessons very simple to understand, my only difficulty was writing a 6 mark answer on consumer cultures, which was hard because there is very scarce amount resources available online. We had two questions set in my research methods lesson, one four and six markers respectively. I found them relatively easy, picking up full marks in both. This is absolutely not because I am clever at all, however, the reason I am getting these marks is because I am putting in hard work and long hours every single day across the board. What is frustrating me at the moment are people in my class who attribute my test grades, for instance when I got 38/40 and they only got 14/40 to my ‘innate intelligence’. I feel like it is important to state now that I did not take sociology at GCSE, I did not even get good GCSE’s… the one difference being is now at A levels I am taking year 12 as seriously (if not) more seriously than year 13s and this hard work is what is showing through my test results.

Philosophy & Ethics
Depressing? Yes. That is exactly what I thought when I first took this course and read over the pages. So far, I have only had one lesson in Philosophy & ethics, literally I had no idea what the hell (pun intended) was going on. Everybody was debating their ideas and getting shut down by somebody else’s rebuttal, honestly it felt like a war zone. But then I realised… this is nothing like old, relaxing and laid back business studies. This is exactly what I was looking for. Of course, I am talking about honesty. People in this class will honestly express their opinion and extreme examples, no matter how painful they maybe to others. Philosophy is all about debate, arguing and justifying your logic with examples - an absolutely pivotal skill required in a skilled profession such as law. Although I have six weeks to catch up on, (feels like a whole year of paper work) and about seventy pages to read, I am determined to catch up and am already cracking on with it. This subject will be attacked my Marshall’s wonderful and great studying mind! Bring it on philosophy!! A massive thank you to my admissions tutor, head of humanities and everyone who organised the shift! (I get that they will most likely never read this, but credit given where credit is due!)

Economics:
Economics is to me one of the most fascinating and interesting subjects I have ever encountered throughout my academic studies. The study of how micro and macro economic theories impact individuals and economies as a whole is incredibly exciting. I am loving economics especially the depths we explored about unemployment, product possibility frontiers and inflation! Next I will be self learning, ‘supply’ throughout the new economic textbooks (which are written at undergraduate level). There is not much more I can say, as I cannot fully justify any criticisms that I have about economics. It is a subject for the curious and intrigued - one that I somehow strangely fit into.

Extended project qualification (EPQ):
As a result of dropping Philosophy, it is very unfortunate for me that I have had to change my EPQ class & supervisor. My previous supervisor was amazing, I valued, respected and developed on her advice given. It is sad now that I have a teacher, who I have no idea who she is, no idea what subject she teaches or if she even can make eye contact with me. If I am being honest, I find the new class and teacher very scary. I feel afraid to even talk to this teacher, so looks like I will have another challenge to overcome over the next two weeks. On the bright side, I am reading two books at the moment on economic history and law. I am looking for any key historic points that I can analyse fully in detail, therefore, allowing me to narrow my essay question down once more into answerable form.

Social wellbeing:
Every week we have key note speakers in our ‘social well-being’ timetabled lessons. Now, if you read last week’s update, will realise that I proudly disagreed with everything the key note speaker said. Whereas this week, for the first time in this new school - I sympathised with this speaker. She is HIV positive, her lover who gave it her had died with her by his side and her life changed every since she got diagnosed by accident (condom breaking). It has forced me to reflect on how suddenly life can change for the individual on a micro level, however while observing her talk it was clear that she has recited this for a long time (later she revealed that she has been talking about this for twenty five years!) her complete awareness talks all about the safety of sex et cetera and how her very micro, individual experience has actually lead to a macro level of response. Her talks have helped relieve stigmas around HIV, that HIV is not an STI spread by only homosexual men, but by heterosexual people also. This women was diagnosed twenty five years ago and was given 10 years at maximum to live. Her doctor’s only advice was to, ‘go out and live advice while you still have some left’. She is still alive today, thanks for modern medicine and fight. The speech was very comical, with very serious parts at most points and if I remember correctly - her email address was [email protected]? Don’t quote me there, it may be awfully wrong - but if you want to really hear some amazing inspirational stuff, give her an email (if it is the right one) and I’m sure you will be amazed (and inspired)!

Young Enterprise:
Our school offer the young enterprise scheme or project, this essentially entails creating our own business in order to make a profit. I have been appointed Financial director, a role that I have mighty confidence in. Our product will be producing colouring books aimed at children! In order to raise some capital, we all have invested personal amounts of money and all possess equal shares. Our next course of action is to fundraise sufficient enough internally within our school to being producing our product!

Conclusion:
I do all of my work at school everyday. I wake up, 6:30am, get into school by 8:20am - my school finishes at 3pm. That does not for me. I stay until 6-7pm every night doing reactive work (completing homework etc) and proactive work (taking my independent studies into my hand through extra extra questions + going over my notes etc). I also work through break times and lunch, as I see making lots of friends in a big school incredibly difficult and by cracking on with work - I will have less for after school and less to worry about in the long term. I am finding familiar faces, who I often do work with during break/lunch times. I feel like the biggest failure within school is that break and lunch times are used unproductively. Every single day we are given a set maximum of five lessons and one hour ten minute of accumulated break time. By avoiding break and lunch time by working through them, I am able to total nine to eleven hours everyday of pure academic work. I feel like this is not enough at the moment, because I have been resting and catching up on sleep during the weekends. However, this weekend I will be catching on Philosophy work and making my extra work hopefully toll over thirty hours this week. If I can sustain this approach, I feel like A levels will become much more easier and I will not have to cram anything into the last minute - a big failure and fault I did during my GCSE’s.

Hope you can respond/take inspiration from this short blog of me!Thanks!!! XOXO, MT xD

Well, Mr Haribo I immediately went to rep you when I saw your reply and couldn't because of some limit! Anyways,I had one of my best Economics lessons today and I absolutely loved it! It explored similar issues raised and I realised that Economics will definitely be one of my subjects that I can express my passion for (just need to work on doing this through essay writing)! For my EPQ presentation (date set in stone for mid March) I am planning to do something really creative like separating the room into 50/50 - similar to how close the Brexit vote was.

Business will be a long slog, especially now that it's linear (no coursework to kill time) so I will have to stick with it I suppose. At the moment we have been advised to make our in school time as effective as possible, so when we go home and relax, we can do so in peace. The Headteacher did mention doing three hours addition everyday, but that includes utilising free periods, which I am using very efficiently at the moment! For example, most of my frees have been used reading up the Economics specification and course materials, which has enabled me contribute wider context during a debate today about unemployment rates between 1970-2011. This weekend, for instance, I will be finishing up Sociology notes, doing my Sociology homework and completing Chapter 1 of Core 1 AS maths (and catching up on much needed sleep!) So, at the moment I am feeling pretty good and adapting well. The workload is much higher than GCSE, but bearable, I am surprised that all of my A Levels interconnect so well! For example, in Economics we use Quantitative data, which is what positivists use in Sociology (so I was able to use what I knew from Sociology in my Economics class). Anyways, my EPQ is coming along nicely (just finished writing my initial ideas on Project Q, so am very happy)

I am mainly using my blog to keep myself motivated and focussed throughout the next two years and people like yourself really help me attain my focus. So much so that I have researched going for straight Llb Law and below will be the Universities I will be applying to in year 13 for LLB Law.

Cambridge - A*AA (I understand that the data is certainly not in my favour, but I believe if I back myself and have enough potential there is always a small chance)
Exeter - AAA, AAB - (My firm choice university that I definitely want to goto if I get in, I visited my Uncle's farm right next to Exeter and fell in love with it)
Royal Holloway - AAB - (Really my backup choice, don't really want to goto London but it's my final backup)
Warwick - AAA - (My brother goes here and loves it, I've visited a couple of times and have been on the open days, suffice to say it's awesome!)
York - AAA (I've heard good things, but this slot is more open to change over the next year, just had to fill the five allocated places)

As ever, I hope this was eligible and made some sense, I type quite fast and hope you continue on my journey!

-MT

Keep up the hard work, hopefully you'll soon join me at Warwick University

Those sound like a great choice! Glad to hear you've got a topic for your EPQ! I'm thinking of doing a EPQ on an act or law in human rights we have to start planning next week (half term). i'm very scared because my teacher did say that not everyone will be able to do EPQ and some people will get kicked out via a letter home so I hope thats not me!!