Making my Grades Flower - Grow your Grades 2016

I know! I can't wait to spend the whole summer on the beach with a book in hand! Or even better in the sea all day long on a body board. Or sailing on the water!

Only a bit longer to go and then most of the stuff we're learning won't be useful ever again.

Oh my goodness do you sail? I do, there's a club just round the corner but the lake is tiny! Never done sea sailing though (bit scared about tides and waves and endless water along the horizon...). If you do, what boats? I have my own topper, but I love Heron, Graduate and RS sailing too!

I live on the coast and the harbour is a five minute walk away. I usually just sail in the harbour and I used to do a sailing group for teens but my friend and I were the oldest and they raised the prices so we're joining a sailing club in the summer.

You hardly notice the tide in the harbour, except when the sandbanks come up and you have to try to avoid the area otherwise the centerboard and rudder get stuck and you have to try to get them up whilst trying not to go into irons. It's an experience and my friend just laughed as I struggled.

I've been sea sailing twice with my mum's friend (that's how cool I am!) on their wooden sailing boat. I'm not sure what kind of boat it was except that it was wooden and they had a pirates flag on the top of their mast.

I don't have my own boat. My friend has a Topper which I sometimes join them on but most of the time I end up on a Pico or Wayfarer. I sailed in a lake once and it felt so weird to me since it was slightly shielded so the wind wasn't great and I couldn't hang out of the boat like I usually do. (I learnt to sail on windy days so I'm a little addicted to speed and find it more interesting.)

I MUCH prefer sailing with wind... but half of the races we all just sit there and talk because we are not moving! At one end of the lake we have 'the shallows' where it suddenly gets really shallow and I cannot tell you how many times a rescue boat has had to...well.... rescue me. And the pond weed at the beginning of the season is horrendous! Hope you manage to find a good club though!

Dear Readers,
So I know that it has been a long long LONG time since I have posted. Oops. I have been a little busy! Last week I attended an assistant instructor course so now I can actually get paid for what I do which is brilliant! Okay, moving on to revision...

So I have done:
An hour of English Literature (reading Kindertransport and making notes)
An hour and a half of Chemistry unit one (of which I was one off an A* on a past paper )
An hour of Food and Nutrition
An hour of Critical Thinking
Three hours of Maths
Five hours of Geography (I seem to be really enjoying this which is good because I'm doing it next year!)
And I am currently on a break from Child Development revision. I'm doing a past paper and I'm really hoping to get an A* because although my coursework would bring me up, I really want to secure that grade!

Side note: My Geography and Critical Thinking exams clash. Noooooooooooooooooooo! I'm having to take Geography in the morning and Critical Thinking in the afternoon.

Basically what I have been doing this Easter holidays is waking up at ten and then doing whatever revision I feel like. I should probably be pushing myself more, but my teachers don't really mind because I am already on solid As/slightly less solid A*s in everything except German. So I should really be revising German more, but hey I hate it and I only need a C to pass it (I wanted to an MFL at GCSE so that I could still potentially get into UCL).

Also, yesterday I went to an under graduate open day at Churchill College Cambridge. Although I still want to study medicine, I don't want to do it at Cambridge! Their course is a year longer than most other universities and you get pretty much no clinical experience in the first three years. Churchill was also definitely not a traditional Cambridge college, i.e. it was fairly modern, but what I did like is that they provide accommodation for the majority of the course. Another disadvantage would be that there also isn't a large, highly regarded paediatric centre nearby, unlike other unis like St. George's and UCL.

So that is just a quick update, hope everyone's on track with revision and speak soon!
Sophie

P.S. I finally got an A* in maths (I mean, it was only by two marks, but I still got it!).

An A* is still an A*! Your revision seems to be going well! Deciding which uni to go to seems like a long and complicated process. That's going to be fun for next year!

Thanks! I did plan to do some German and Sciences today but that doesn't seem to have happened! I spent most of the day looking at Universities, but there are so many I don't how I will choose!