What's up doc? - Panda14's GYG garden!

Hi everyone!

I tried GYG last year, without any success - I didn't even actually start this bit! I'm going to have another go in 2016 seriously matters! :colondollar:

A short intro:
I've applied for medicine this year, so I'm not likely to get any offers less than AAA, so I'm setting this as my minimum target, from chemistry (currently B1), Biology (A3) and Law (A2). Perhaps now is a good time to explain how my school grades things - the numbers are the teacher's confidence levels, so 1 means there's potential to move to the next grade, 2 means the grade is secure and 3 means there's a possibility it might fall if not urgently consolidated. I quite like this system, so I'll probably be using it quite a bit! I've already got 2 AS levels I'm not continuing to A2 (an A in Critical Thinking and a C Physics) as well as an A* in my EPQ (which was on educational theory, so I'll try to pass on any nuggets of wisdom as I try them out!).

The master plan!
My main goal is simple - get 3 A grades (or better). To do this, I'm going to be establishing a set of habits and systems, for better or worse, to push my grades up. These will mainly be done through small goals, which I'll be setting as my weekly targets. I will try to keep you updated throughout, so if I don't seem to do anything for a few days someone please let me know - they say accountability helps with goal setting, and the bombardment of emails from the TSR Community telling me to get back to it might just be the kick up the proverbial I need!

I'm also going to be doing posts about anything I think might be useful and/or interesting, maybe about something I've tried and found to work. I hope some of these are helpful to you guys too!

My targets for this week!

Complete my KAM (Key Area Monitoring) spreadsheet. I'm going to set up a spreadsheet with all the spec points as the rows, and a coloured cell in red, amber or green next to it for my confidence level. This mean I can target areas I'm weakest at - basically this is my version of a "Personalised Learning Checklist", which I can add another coloured cell to when I review my progress in that area.

Get into the habit of using my Memrise course for Law (here) to revise key cases and authority at least every other day, and to update it as I cover the offences against property.

In general, I'm going to review my targets every week on Sunday afternoon - updating you with how I'm getting on!

Thank you, and good luck!

Panda :sadpanda:

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 1

Kevin De Bruyne

Original post by panda14

Hi everyone!

I tried GYG last year, without any success - I didn't even actually start this bit! I'm going to have another go in 2016 seriously matters! :colondollar:

Get into the habit of using my Memrise course for Law (here) to revise key cases and authority at least every other day, and to update it as I cover the offences against property.

In general, I'm going to review my targets every week on Sunday afternoon - updating you with how I'm getting on!

Thank you, and good luck!

Panda :sadpanda:

Interesting grading system :redface:

it would be great to turn that 3 into a 2 or a 1! :biggrin:

The spreadsheet idea is great too.

If you are genuinely being bombared with emails from TSR there should be a way to turn them off :tongue:

Good luck! :rave:

Reply 2

Tank Girl

Your master plan is brilliant!

My main goal is simple - get 3 A grades (or better). To do this, I'm going to be establishing a set of habits and systems, for better or worse, to push my grades up. These will mainly be done through small goals, which I'll be setting as my weekly targets

This is an excellent strategy, very methodical :h:

Good luck! Sure you'll get the grades you want!

Reply 3

Kvothe the Arcane

Good luck. Maybe I might steal your spreadsheet idea.

Reply 4

panda14

Mid-week update #1:

Thank you all for taking an interest. I'm going to try and publish at least a mid-week review in terms of the weekly targets, probably on Wednesday evenings, after I get back from SJA so I remember that I still have school work to do!

I'm going to be honest, I haven't got much done in terms of my rather bulky KAM target - I've got all of the chemistry A2 points into the spreadsheet - I'm actually experimenting with a database as well, given how wordy the spec points are, so I might even be able to produce a fancy report with key areas on after every check!

I never knew that we had to know so much stuff - there's over 340 different points of things we could be examined on at A2! Fortunately most of it is synoptic, which is good because I think I know most of that stuff now - even if I didn't seem to know it in time for my AS exams. :colondollar:

I have quite a few frees on Friday, so the plan is to crack on and sort out biology and law then.

For Law case learning, I've now got all my notes sorted for the property offences we've covered, I've added all the ones for Theft (which has the most anyway) so I should be on track to add all the cases by tomorrow evening.

Panda :sadpanda:

Reply 5

panda14

Original post by SeanFM

Interesting grading system :redface:

it would be great to turn that 3 into a 2 or a 1! :biggrin:

The spreadsheet idea is great too.

If you are genuinely being bombared with emails from TSR there should be a way to turn them off :tongue:

Good luck! :rave:

Thank you!
Fortunately I don't get bombarded atm, TSR actually has really good email etiquette! My idea was if I don't stick to my plan of updating you all regularly, the notifications I'll get from people posting to say "get something done and stop wasting time!" should be an incentive to start again. :biggrin:

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 6

panda14

So thanks everyone, this is actually working quite well!

Mocks update:
My school is being a bit unhelpful with my mocks (all done now) - they're not going to let us have the results until 4th March so we can be put into groups based on results and either told not to get complacent or seriously start revising. No idea why they want to wait so long (all the papers are marked!), but there you go! :unimpressed:

Tip/life story#1: What do plants, infections and peer education have in common? Boring revision moments, and how to cope with them!
One thing I've found helps with revision is association - I'm having a problem getting down to revising certain topic, particularly with regard to plants. I find human physiology and anatomy incredibly interesting and could spend hours reading about it (but apparently that might be something to do with me on a different level :u:

) but find it very difficult to concentrate on plant biology. I guess this also highlights the benefit of association - for immunology, linking what I've learnt about TB and HIV, as well as general Infection Prevention and Control through St John to the biology content has really solidified a fair bit, although it's sometime a struggle not use abbreviations we use within SJA in biology past papers - IPC, Px , CBT and BM probably don't mean much to an examiner! If there's something you can link your content to, I'd say try it - it definitely works for me! Officially the funnier and more vivid the better, but mundane works sometimes too, especially if you find visualisation quite difficult! As for plants - well, I guess I could try association with DofE expeditions! :flower:

For revising boring stuff, I use a modified pomodero technique sometimes if I'm finding it really difficult. When I was doing my Peer Educator training (St John again!) and my EPQ, I found some research that the average attention span in minutes is roughly equal to age+1. If you can keep up revision for the appropriate time (18-20 mins for me) then it's much easier to keep going! It's also a fairly short time, so it's a good target to set if you're time limited.

I hope this helps! :sadpanda: