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Lelanor aims for (A*)A*A*A + 1,1 in STEP

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Reply 40
Original post by Lucofthewoods
Any advice for doing well in mechanics?


M1 was my worst unit (in homework, in mocks and in the real exam) so I'm probably not the best person to ask? For all units in maths doing lots of past papers seems to work best. For mechanics my teacher always told us, again and again, to draw and label the diagrams for questions as much as possible and that helped me understand what was going on in questions. Also, there's sometimes a couple of ways to get to an answer, it's worth using one method to do it and the other method to check your answer.
Reply 41
Update for the end of the summer holidays

I go back to school tomorrow! My brother went back today so I feel pretty lucky to have another day off. Tomorrow is also my birthday so after school my friends and I are going to a cafe/restaurant place that sells milkshakes and stuff.

I was trying to check my timetable on the parent portal thingy, and my school have managed to add my year 13 lessons over the top of my year 12 lessons and only in July 2017? While for this year I apparently only have tutor group 😂 I hope they sort it out soon, I want to know my timetable! I can work out when some of my lessons are but there are still 19 I'm not sure about, out of 50 a fortnight.

It looks like the two further maths classes have joined together because my friend from the other class and I are apparently both in class FM1. I'm fine with that (it will mean the end of our class only having girls, which was pretty surprising for a further maths class, but I don't mind), but it could mean I don't have my favourite maths teacher any more :s-smilie:

What I was most interested in was if I have any free periods at the end of the day, because Year 13 are allowed to go home if they don't have any more lessons, and I seem to have at least 2 a fortnight which is cool.
(edited 6 years ago)
Reply 42
First day back!

My school completely messed up the timetables and form groups for the new Year 12s. We have mixed Year 12 and Year 13 forms and I got sent by my form tutor to go to the Data Office to find out why she had timetables for about 6 people not in the room and no timetables for 7 people in the room (she often asks me to do this kind of thing - I mean, I'm happy to go and do things like getting the register and taking things to the office, but I don't like having to talk to people and explain things... I don't think she realises how much I hate talking to people). I joined the short queue outside the data office (which grew to the length of the corridor while I was there) but it still took about 20 minutes of waiting until I got to talk to the data manager to find out why we had the wrong timetables or the wrong people. Turns out that whole groups of Year 12s had been sent to forms that didn't have them on the register and therefore didn't have timetables for them, due to a "massive data crash" over the summer or something. Idk. That was what I did while the rest of my form got told all the important information about Year 13 or had an assembly.

I had two maths lessons and a computer science "ninth period" which is a timetabled lesson where your teacher sets work but instead of having your teacher you're supervised by a teacher (usually from a different department). The teacher for my ninth period was also supervising three other classes across two different rooms. I don't know if any other schools have anything like this but at my school in Year 13 for each subject you get 8 taught lessons and a ninth period. I spent it revising for the computer science test we have next week because I haven't looked at the topic for six weeks, and I also checked that the tiny amount of programming I've done for my NEA works on the school system. Annoyingly, the computers in the IT room we're in don't have some of the software we usually use installed on it. But at least we managed to end up in an IT room and not a normal classroom.

My maths lessons were with the new, combined further maths class. We had two separate FM classes last year but too many people dropped FM (either to retake maths or because they just changed their mind) and one of the teachers left so now we have one class with everyone still doing FM. I personally think the class is too big. I like bond you have in each class in sixth form but I just think the class is too big for that. I don't know if I've just been lucky to have small classes (Spanish and Computer Science have very small A Level classes) or if most classes are this size and I just haven't experienced it before in sixth form. At least I like the teachers for maths! I got homework for tomorrow though.

Also, as I've said, today is my birthday! I went out after school with my friends to a cake/milkshake place and then we stood on a hill near the sea talking for a while. I did end up making dinner when I got home to save an argument about which of my parents should be responsible for making dinner *eye roll*. I'm having birthday cake and birthday celebrations with my family on Thursday because my mum's not working then. I am finally going to learn to drive because my main present was driving lessons! Which I'm pretty excited about!

Okay it's nearly midnight and I have to finish that maths homework so that's it for this post.
(edited 6 years ago)
Reply 43
Second day of school!

Updates probably won't be as frequent as they have been so far once I start getting more work but for now I have time!

I had four lessons today, so the average school day for me. I had my first Spanish lesson with the teacher I didn't have last year, and it made me feel slightly less like I want to drop Spanish, so that's good!

I also had my first CS lesson this year and the banter quickly returned... I got teased by my teacher for starting too many sentences with the words "you just" and then we had a class discussion about how, for my NEA, I could send automated spam emails to the head teacher using a "cyborg pigeon" - a Raspberry Pi running a Python program, connected to the Internet with a SIM card, tied to a pigeon (the idea is that they can't track my IP address because the pigeon will keep moving around). I pointed out that the RSPB might not be fans of that idea.

I talked to one of my maths teacher about a program I wrote in the summer that finds prime numbers in a fairly reasonable amount of time, and in the other maths lesson we started M2, which wasn't quite as successful as the rest of the day. I think I've said before that M1 was my weakest module and it doesn't look like it's going to get much better for M2. It didn't help that everyone else on my table, and probably also the majority of the class, had covered the work in Physics already so the lesson was keeping up to their pace. I'm also pretty tired and that didn't help. And we were finishing proof by induction in the first maths lesson, which gets repetitive pretty quickly so the work in that lessons wasn't particularly fun.

I was at school until 5 because my brother had a detention (he goes the the school next door) and my mum was picking him up so I waited to get picked up too. Meanwhile my friends took advantage of being allowed to leave if you don't have afternoon lessons for the first time.

Okay I need to go and do some homework and other studying now. I did some D2 after school and now I need to do a few CS questions, then reread a few chapters of a book for Spanish.
(edited 6 years ago)
Reply 44
Thank you!
Reply 45
I feel like another update is needed because I just did my first hand-in maths homework this year and want a short break before I continue working but I don't want to do something that I'll keep doing for ages. I started homework pretty late because I had birthday celebrations with my family. And then tomorrow evening I need to send the form to renew my passport and get ready for the open day I'm going to on Saturday.

I had my first maths 9th period today, and we were told that all our maths 9th periods will probably be spent doing any questions we haven't done in class or any other practice we need to do (and we're not allowed to spend it doing homework). I practised some mechanics questions and then attempted to finish an FP1 question I got stuck on on Tuesday... but didn't get much further because I ran out of time.

The actual maths lesson I had was continuing with M2 and I kept messing up questions for silly reasons, which was annoying. I did actually find the homework I just finished fine though, I obviously don't know what mistakes I've made but it wasn't so difficult to figure out what to do. Maybe it's just more difficult for me to concentrate in lessons? I might move to another table and sit by myself so I can focus better.

I need to put my last few updates in the index on the first post at some point!
Reply 46
This weekend has so far not been very productive regarding schoolwork, but I think being out of the house from 6 am to 9 pm yesterday is a pretty good reason why.

I visited the University of Leeds yesterday. I went by myself, which was kind of awkward at times when I was looking round. Any time I wasn't reading something or listening to a talk, I didn't really know what to do. I did a bit of maths on the train there and did a bit of work on my personal statement on the way back. I liked the university and I think I'm going to apply there to do MSci, BSc Computer Science with Mathematics. Entry requirements are AAA, and I think this might be the course with the lowest entry requirements that I apply for. I wanted to ask if they'd offer or accept A*AB instead of AAA, because I already have an A* in maths, but I didn't want to start a conversation with anyone to ask, so I didn't. I also went to a talk about maths degrees, where the speaker gave some weird advice about personal statements that I'm going to ignore because it contradicts all the other advice I've ever heard.

Today I think I'm going to revise FP1 because I have a test on Tuesday (which will probably be used in deciding my predicted grade), then maybe some revision for CS because I have a test on Wednesday in that. And for Spanish I'll start reading the article thing my teacher gave us, which is an analysis of the first part of the book we're reading. Obviously there isn't much of today left (I didn't get up until a couple of hours ago as I was so so tired) so I don't expect to get all of this done, but I'll have a go.

I'm looking forward to a normal week next week - this week I was busy after school every day (two days for birthday celebrations, one day for getting a passport, one when I just got home really late) and had an open day at the weekend, but next week I don't have any plans for after school or the weekend meaning I can spend more time on school work. I really need to start going to bed on time because I was so tired last week!

I thought I'd talk about my timetable a bit too. I can't remember if I've talked about it before here, but I think it is a fairly good timetable. There are two times that I have double free periods, which is useful for really getting some work done - with one free I spend at least 15 minutes at the start getting food from the cafe or deciding what to do or finding another reason not to work. I also have more free periods with people I didn't have many frees with last year (mainly because they dropped subjects) which is cool. I do have one full day which is kind of annoying, but it's from having three maths lessons so I think I'm okay with it. There are four days that I have a free last period, meaning I'll be able to go home, and I'm happy about that. I also have all my computer science lessons with one teacher, another thing I'm happy about.

I'm going to go and do some FP1 now!
Reply 47
Original post by Lelanor
This weekend has so far not been very productive regarding schoolwork, but I think being out of the house from 6 am to 9 pm yesterday is a pretty good reason why.

I visited the University of Leeds yesterday. I went by myself, which was kind of awkward at times when I was looking round. Any time I wasn't reading something or listening to a talk, I didn't really know what to do. I did a bit of maths on the train there and did a bit of work on my personal statement on the way back. I liked the university and I think I'm going to apply there to do MSci, BSc Computer Science with Mathematics. Entry requirements are AAA, and I think this might be the course with the lowest entry requirements that I apply for. I wanted to ask if they'd offer or accept A*AB instead of AAA, because I already have an A* in maths, but I didn't want to start a conversation with anyone to ask, so I didn't. I also went to a talk about maths degrees, where the speaker gave some weird advice about personal statements that I'm going to ignore because it contradicts all the other advice I've ever heard.

Today I think I'm going to revise FP1 because I have a test on Tuesday (which will probably be used in deciding my predicted grade), then maybe some revision for CS because I have a test on Wednesday in that. And for Spanish I'll start reading the article thing my teacher gave us, which is an analysis of the first part of the book we're reading. Obviously there isn't much of today left (I didn't get up until a couple of hours ago as I was so so tired) so I don't expect to get all of this done, but I'll have a go.

I'm looking forward to a normal week next week - this week I was busy after school every day (two days for birthday celebrations, one day for getting a passport, one when I just got home really late) and had an open day at the weekend, but next week I don't have any plans for after school or the weekend meaning I can spend more time on school work. I really need to start going to bed on time because I was so tired last week!

I thought I'd talk about my timetable a bit too. I can't remember if I've talked about it before here, but I think it is a fairly good timetable. There are two times that I have double free periods, which is useful for really getting some work done - with one free I spend at least 15 minutes at the start getting food from the cafe or deciding what to do or finding another reason not to work. I also have more free periods with people I didn't have many frees with last year (mainly because they dropped subjects) which is cool. I do have one full day which is kind of annoying, but it's from having three maths lessons so I think I'm okay with it. There are four days that I have a free last period, meaning I'll be able to go home, and I'm happy about that. I also have all my computer science lessons with one teacher, another thing I'm happy about.

I'm going to go and do some FP1 now!


Okay, changed my mind, I'm working on my personal statement
Reply 48
I had my first maths test of the year yesterday. It was an FP1 paper and we got it back today - I got 73/75 which I was pretty happy with. I lost one mark because I gave an angle in radians instead of degrees, and another where I think I just typed it into the calculator wrong. I also got back homework from my other maths teacher, I got 94%, I think, so made it onto our class sticker chart (for scores above 90%). I'm definitely happy about that considering my dislike for mechanics.

I had three maths lessons today but tomorrow I only have a period nine maths lesson and on Friday only one maths lesson. I also have two frees for the next four school days which will make a nice change from the full day of lessons I had today.

I also had a computer science test (on data structures) today and I think that went fairly okay. I haven't yet realised any mistakes I definitely made but I wasn't totally sure I was doing one of the questions and probably lost a few marks on questions where I had to explain or define things, so I possibly didn't reach my 90% target. There was also a question on the test of material that was taken off the specification, meaning we didn't get taught it and I don't know if my teacher will count it. I probably won't get that back until Monday or Wednesday because my teacher doesn't usually mark by the next day and he won't be there on Friday.

I'm still thinking about dropping Spanish and I'm still not much closer to a decision... *sigh*
Reply 49
This week we got predicted grades and they are what I'm aiming for! My Computer Science teacher has predicted my an A*, and we haven't been directly told our predicted grades for Further Maths but my teacher said that almost everyone would be predicted the same grade they got in Maths, so an A* for me. My whole Spanish class were predicted an A so I'm happy for myself and for the rest of my class! It was a nice surprise for all of us. I'll probably find out for certain my predicted for Further Maths on Monday.
Reply 50
Okay I've already posted today but I want to say a bit more. I'm actually somewhat disappointed that I don't have school tomorrow? I want to go and learn more things! Although I did develop a cold over the course of today and having a cold isn't fun so I'm grateful that I don't have to go anywhere or do much this weekend. I was woken up in the early hours of this morning by my throat hurting and I didn't really think I had a cold during maths today, when I suddenly started to feel it. I only actually had two lessons today (one of my teachers was away) but both of them dragged on while I thought about how nice it would be to go to sleep.

I gave my head of sixth form a second draft of my personal statement yesterday and spent lots of today looking for him to ask him for feedback about it... I didn't find him until 4 pm, when he was eating his lunch? I guess he must have been pretty busy today. But the good news is that he said he thinks my PS and application are pretty much ready to send, which I was surprised about. I'm going to wait at least a few days, maybe ask a few other people to read my personal statement and also submit it to be reviewed on the personal statement review forum thingy on here, but I'm relieved that it's mostly done.

I do still need to choose a couple of courses - I have three I'm sure I want to apply for but I'm still deciding on the other two, so I think I'm going to apply with only three choices and add the other two afterwards. Also, I have a slight issue with the length of my personal statement - it was within the line limit yesterday and I saved it to UCAS but now it doesn't fit, even though I can't find any differences between the version I printed from UCAS and the version I have saved. I've already overwritten the version saved to UCAS so I can't just use that, so I'm going through the entire printed out version of it and comparing it to find differences.
Reply 51
Another week of school begins...

I did some stats homework this evening and I knew the method (I think) but my answers just don't seem correct? There are also questions about things we haven't covered yet - I'm assuming we'll be covering that stuff before the homework is due in (on Friday) but it was pretty simple (the mean and variance of binomial distribution) and I just read the textbook page. I'm not enjoying having the look up values in the table for P(X<=x), that's annoying. Especially when the probability is more than 0.5 so you have to use the value of p for the opposite of X. I finished the last question but whether I got any of it right is another matter. I'm going to see if my friends got any of the answers I think are weird and then probably discuss it with them. I might do some more questions from the textbook now to practise because I'll be able to check those answers.

It's definitely weird changing from revising to learning; in the months before maths exams in Year 12 we were revising what we'd already learnt and I understood pretty much everything already. In fact, a significant amount of what we learnt last was things I was already familiar with, in both maths and CS (from additional maths and due to lots of AS CS content being in the GCSE). But now we're back to learning new things, I keep forgetting that I probably shouldn't expect to immediately be great at it - knowing exactly what to do was what I got used to during revision in Year 12 for maths. In contrast, in Spanish I'm used to having no clue what's going on... last week it took me a really long time to realise that the teacher was setting homework, and by then I'd missed most of her explanation of what it was (she was speaking fairly quickly in Spanish to be fair).

I still haven't got my definite predicted grade in Maths. I don't see why it wouldn't be an A* but I want to know for certain that that's what my prediction is. Regarding UCAS, I'm taking a few days to not think about it - as I said in my last update I submitted it to be checked on here, and I also have Oxbridge Society on Wednesday where I'm assuming the teachers who run it will continue looking at personal statements. Until then I'm not going to look at my personal statement, I want to look at it without remembering it quite so well. But I'm hoping to submit my UCAS application at the beginning of next week, although not with all my choices on it yet - probably only 3 (Cambridge, Warwick, Leeds).

Also, a funny thing that happened in Spanish today: we were revising the subjunctive and one of the examples on the powerpoint began "If I get into university..." and my teacher actually apologised for not thinking about the fact that getting into university is what everyone's worrying about right now before she used that example :')
Reply 52
The negatives:

Spoiler



Now for some good things to try to balance this out a bit:
I got 100% in my last piece of mechanics homework so I'm now in the lead on the class sticker chart (I have three whole stickers!)
Our predicted grades got handed out officially and that reminded me that I'm happy about them
I don't have Spanish tomorrow because it's a half day
I'm visiting Durham for the open day on Saturday (leaving tomorrow afternoon)
Reply 53
I return!

Last week
I felt kind of weird this week. A sort of weird mixture between being very silly (one lunchtime we had a "fight" using drawings of weapons) and wishing I didn't exist (mostly caused by UCAS stuff). I don't seem to be able to remember much of what I did this week, and it felt both really long and really short at the same time. Yesterday I had a headache all day which made everything less fun. I also spent an extra 1.25 hours in maths; in my free I ended up in another class's maths lesson so I could sit at the back to do some MAT questions (I'm not going to be doing the MAT but my teacher printed a big booklet full of MAT papers for anyone in my class applying for maths or CS at Oxbridge and it's not going to do any harm to try some questions). Anyway I asked the teacher about a question and ended up staying for 15 minutes after school while we tried to work it out. It definitely helped me focus because I couldn't find ways to procrastinate.

Weekend plans
I seem to have ended up with a pretty long list the of things to do this weekend (hopefully the photo of my list is below). The CS stuff is mostly just finishing a few sheets but Spanish has quite a lot of things to do. Meanwhile maths, which I have twice the amount of lessons for, has one thing I need to do and one thing I could do. So hardly any homework compared to Spanish :/

I'm finding that having a messy room is stressful and making me less productive so much going to start by tidying up.

20170930_122049.jpg

Next week
I'm going to Spain on Thursday, for a school trip. I'm missing lessons on Thursday and the following Monday and an activity day on Friday, but hopefully I can use travelling times during the trip to do some of the work I'll be missing. I have PDF copies of the maths textbooks and Google Classroom has everything for CS so it's really just my tablet and paper that I'll need with me for school work. My Spanish teachers are going on the trip so I doubt they'll set work for the lessons as 2 of the 4 people in our class will be on the trip.

Goals for today:
Tidy up
Do 2 (out of 4) pieces of Spanish homework
Finish CS sheets
Start (and maybe finish) my stats homework
Do some more personal statement editing

If I manage all of that:
Do chapter 4 of D2
Do another piece of Spanish homework

Goals for tomorrow:
Plan what I need to pack for Spain
Do the rest of my Spanish homework
Finish my maths homework
Do the other CS homework
Finish editing my personal statement

(This posts was written on my phone so is quite possibly full of typos. I've already had to correct a lot of things but I might have missed things. My phone just changed "correct" to "ectopic", for example.)
Reply 54
Just a quick update because I've been busy this week - I've finished everything for UCAS, done quite a bit of homework, been to a student council meeting, and tomorrow I'm going to Spain!
Reply 55
I'm still fairly busy this week. We have charity week next week so I've been painting and cutting out decorations for that. I missed two days of lessons when I was in Spain so I've been catching up with the work, although I really didn't miss that much. I don't have very much homework (luckily, as all I really want to do is sleep).

The Spanish trip was pretty good and has made me more enthusiastic about Spanish. So at the moment I don't think I want one drop it.

About 10 minutes before the coach left for Spain I was still in school trying to hand in forms to my head of sixth format for UCAS. Luckily I gave everything to him in time and he finished and sent the reference today, so my application has been submitted! I've only put down three choices so far but I'm planning to add two more when I decide which universities to apply to. I might wait until I get responses from some of the unis I've applied to.

As for goals in my subjects, maths is still going well. I got 100% on an FP1 homework paper and 97% on a mechanics homework so I'm meeting my 90% goal. I'm a bit behind on my NEA in Computer Science and also on my independent research project in Spanish but I'm hoping to catch up over half term.

That's all from me for now!
Reply 56
Let's go through subject-by-subject

Maths
We've finished 3 units now: FP1, M2 and S2
I didn't really enjoy mechanics or stats. I understand everything, but I just don't like doing it.
So far the only maths I've done this half term break is homework, but I'm planning to also finish D2. Or I suppose it's more likely that I'll still have at least a chapter left. After half term one of my teachers is starting D1 so I can use that lesson time for D2. I was considering doing S3 but I don't think I'm going to. Once I've finished D2 I think I'll use the lesson time either revising what we've already done or practising questions for the CSAT or STEP.
Maths goals for the rest of the week:
- M2 notes
- S2 notes
- finish M2 paper
- D2 further linear programming (finish)
- D2 game theory
- D2 Chapter 6 (can't remember what it's called)

Computer Science
I still haven't got very far with my NEA. I need to do more. I really haven't devoted much time to CS so far this year.
Goals for Computer Science:
- finish and submit all worksheets on Google classroom
- make a plan for my NEA
- do whatever my plan for my NEA says I need to do

Spanish
I've been enjoying Spanish more than I was before. We had two assessments in Spanish last week and I did okay on both of them. The first one I found pretty difficult, especially the translation into English, because there were just so many unfamiliar words. There was also a synonym-finding question that was more difficult that usual. However, I was happy with the 79% I got. In the other assessment, which was on the book we're reading, I could answer the questions but I didn't have enough time to finish all of them, so I missed a lot of marks, leaving me with 58%.
Goals for Spanish:
- do some of my independent research project
- do homework for immigration topic
- continue notes on Civil War
- add vocab on quizlet and revise it
Reply 57
I want to add a list of things I have done this week

school work:
- a few CSAT questions, which I didn't find too difficult (although I've heard the real papers are harder)
- M2 homework
- S2 homework
- some notes on the background of the Spanish Civil War
- read a chapter of 'Nada'
- added vocabulary to Quizlet
- caught up on a Spanish lesson I missed

other:
- finally finished reading a book I started in December
- done some MLAT questions for fun (the language aptitude test part is cool, okay)
- tidied my room a bit (although I'm struggling to keep it tidy)
Really enjoying your thread so far! How are you finding CS at the minute? Also sorry if you've already said this but what exam board are you on?

Also well done on your astounding maths UMS and result :shock:
(edited 6 years ago)
Reply 59
Original post by EmilySarah00
Really enjoying your thread so far! How are you finding CS at the minute? Also sorry if you've already said this but what exam board are you on?

Also well done on your astounding maths UMS and result :shock:


Thank you! I was just looking to your GYG and I also have an AAB offer from Leeds for Computer Science with Maths! And I've also applied to Bristol, and I'm considering adding Natural Sciences at Josephine Butler College at Durham as my last choice?? Nice coincidences!

I'm on AQA for CS, and I'm currently finding it okay. I'm fine with the theory stuff but I'm not sure how to get properly started on my coursework. I'm not even sure I like my idea?

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