Aga's journey to PRODUCTIVITY and Cambridge??

Welcome to my GYG

Hi, and welcome to my first attempt at a GYG, it might go really well, or crash and burn so why not stick along for the ride?

So who am I?
I'm currently in year 12 studying Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Biology (All AQA).

•

My dream is to study computer science at Cambridge, but who knows if I'll be able to get there. The reason I have my head set on Cambridge is because last summer I went there on a summer school and adored everything about it, the people, the beautiful buildings and the amazing atmosphere.

•

I love video games, and that's one of the reasons I'm so interested in computer science, I'm so fascinated by how we can make computers preform such complex tasks and how they are such an immense part of our lives.

•

I also really love languages, I self studied Japanese for a while but stopped right around GCSEs and haven't gotten back into it because of A levels, but I hope to soon.

My goals? My goal for AS is to get AAAA, which is crazy I know, but as someone once said, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.”.
I plan to update this thread daily so that it can hopefully motivate me to be more productive.

GCSEs
Here's what you've been waiting for, or maybe not......

Spoiler

So yeah, why not grab a cup of tea and have a read?

Reply 1

agaaga1010

OP

9

Update: 30/10/2017 - Finishing all the work I was supposed to do during the half term

As you can tell from the title, today I was dedicated to finishing off any last pieces of work that needed to be done ready for my first day back tomorrow. Luckily, today we had a teacher training day so I had the whole day to mentally prepare myself to go back to school :biggrin:

I did most of what I set off to do so I feel like today was quite a good day.

•

I spent around about an hour finishing off some maths homework on differentiation, and the amount of times I found the tangent to the curve instead of the normal like it was asking me to do was honestly embarrassing. All in all this was fairly easy, just quite repetitive, but I guess that's just how you learn in maths, by doing something over and over and over again.

•

I spent almost 2 hours on some physics exam questions, there was just SO MANY. When I thought I was almost done because I had just 3 question left, I turned the page and realised our teacher had apparently chosen the 3 longest exam questions in history, and so I reluctantly carried on and finally finished them all, mostly because they were all due in tomorrow.

•

I've written out a to-do list for myself for tomorrow so I hopefully won't procrastinate as much as today.

•

I sat down and created a pros and cons list for dropping one of my a levels, because my head of sixth form really doesn't want anyone doing 4. I still honestly don't know what to do, but I think I'll stick with all 4 for now because I really enjoy all of them and feel like I managing fairly well.

I'm actually quite excited to get back to school and get back into a rhythm. I always find I'm much more productive during a school week and being productive makes me rather happy, which is why I don't understand why I procrastinate so damn much, but I guess that besides the point. That's all for now, and I'll be back tomorrow.....hopefully.

Reply 2

EmilySarah00

19

Glad to hear I inspired you to make this! I'll be following along! :cute:

Reply 3

agaaga1010

OP

9

Update: 31/10/2017 - Not as productive as I'd hoped

Today I had physics which was pretty good as it usually is, we learned more about diffraction in particular about Young's double slit experiment, which is far more interesting than it sounds (as least to me anyway). We got our mock papers back and I got 97%! I actually have no idea how that's possible and I'm honestly so proud of myself. Our teacher said that for one particular question, "What is the particle responsible for mass?", even he didn't know the answer and so he was so surprised a few of us got it and he even said we probably need to get out more :biggrin:

, (the answer is the higgs boson btw). I had general R.E which was as dull as always, and I had a free in which I managed to finish my notes on wave properties 1, and I started notes on wave properties 2, so much variation ikr :tongue:

. Finally, I got my physics homework done so that it' out of the way.

So yeah, today was quite an easy day to be honest, I only did about an hour of work at home but I don't want to stress myself out too much in the beginning of term. Tomorrow I'll probably stay after school to make sure I get some proper work done then.

Reply 4

agaaga1010

OP

9

Update: 1/11/2017 - Maths, maths, maths

I completely forgot to write this up yesterday...oops...better late than never.

Yesterday I had triple maths, in the first two lessons we were doing vectors :colonhash:

, it was really boring because we spent just 2 hours going over GCSE stuff, which I was sure everyone in the class knew about. I hope we get around to new stuff on vectors soon because I have a love-hate relationship with vectors, at first I always hated them because I found the questions hard and confusing, but then I practised them for ages and got good and I began to love them. Those 2 hours made me hate them again. :u:

In our last lesson, we did more work on differentiation, which I find really interesting mostly because it's quite new to me, we were particularly focusing on increasing and decreasing functions. It was quite funny because in the first 2 lessons I was almost crying with boredom, and in the last I was almost crying with confusion at certain points. I mean I guess that's not exactly funny..... :tongue:

In my last two lessons I had physics, YAY! We looked at energy levels of electrons and excitation, which was a particularly "exciting" topic.........that was terrible, I sincerely apologise........We also finished off some work on stationary waves, as well as learning how to use an equation for the first harmonic frequency, which was a "first" for me...........I'll stop now, I swear. :biggrin:

As I promised myself on Tuesday, I stayed after school to do some maths enrichment stuff, which was all problem-solving based stuff, because our teacher wants to prepare us for the senior maths challenge which is coming up soon.

Once I got home, I had to do my further maths homework, which was on drawing rational functions, it took around an hour or more for 4 questions....which isn't great but the whole topic just confuses me quite a bit, I need to practise it more tbh. I got my physics homework done, which only took about half an hour so it wasn't too bad, and that was that. I also watched the latest episode of American Horror Story Cult and "my wig flew out of my window", which is a quote from my friend but it applies just as well to me. I recommend this season soooo much, it's really creative and the story just keeps going where I don't expect it.

Reply 5

agaaga1010

OP

9

Anyone who Isn't Chocolate...S can ignore this, which is a part of my GCSE English revision btw.

OP

Update: 2/11/2017 - Further maths is hard.

Another triple maths today, but unlike yesterday it was of the further variety. And boy... Apparently further maths is actually quite difficult, who would have known? The first lesson wasn't as bad, our teacher just gave us a worksheet on activity networks to carry on with while he taught the year 13s (in case you were wondering our further maths class consists of three year 13s and four year 12s including myself, so the teachers just kind of switch between us), and it was confusing but manageable. After that we waltzed over to our next two lessons in the other room, not expecting the horror within......solving rational inequalities. Safe to say, I really didn't completely understand anything that happened that lesson, probably because I was already shaky on just drawing the damn things, and now I had to solve inequalities with them. The four of us all struggled on the questions and so ended up talking for most of the lesson, which looking back probably wasn't a great idea, but it was better than the alternative of staring at the questions, hoping that the letters on the page would magically move around and spell out the answer. Needless to say I will definitively revisit that topic, and do a load of practise questions on it.

After all that confusion I had Biology, which was a nice break from all the maths I had done. In both lessons we were just going over the mock we did on the last week of term, so it was very chill. I was really surprised by an amazing 40/45 marks, so that made me quite happy :smile:

I stayed after school again for an hour, this time I did some biology notes about enzyme inhibition. And once I got home I was so tired for some reason that I just lay in bed watching YouTube and Netflix, and napped (and yet I somehow forgot to watch the new Riverdale episode!!! But I will do tomorrow because I think sleep is probably more important....just).

I should really be in bed rn but I'm still here typing this up. I'm actually finding this really enjoyable for some reason. I never really liked writing much and as you can tell, I'm not all that great at it, but reflecting on each day as it goes feels really good to do, especially if you're productive that day. Hope you guys have a productive day too!! See you tomorrow!

Reply 7

agaaga1010

OP

9

Update: 3/11/2017 - A fairly productive end to the week

I had 3 frees today :h:

, so I had a lot of time to do everything I needed to, which was a fair bit. In my first two frees I did some maths homework on vectors, and finished my enzyme inhibition notes completely. I also struggled along with some further maths work on the devil itself..... I mean on finding inequalities with rational functions, to be honest I am finding this a bit easier now but I'm still struggling with how to choose which method to use to find the answer. You see, with these questions there are 3 different methods you could use, 1. Sketch the graph, 2. Multiply through, 3. Grid method, I'm much better at the sketching method than the other two so I'll probably ask my teacher for help on those. In my final free, I did some Biology notes on cell specialisation and organisation, which was fairly easy as it was mainly a reminder of GCSE stuff.

For my last two lessons I had maths and you guessed it, in the first lesson we did vectors :colonhash:

yay........ The lesson was fine, just not very interesting. In the last lesson we learned about second order derivatives, which was very interesting, even though the gradient of the gradient is a fairly mind-bending concept. We learned how to used second derivatives to find if a turning point on a graph is a maximum or a minimum, and let's see if I can remember the rules we learned......I think it was if the second derivative is less than 0, then the point is a maximum, while if the second derivative is more than 0, then the point is a minimum. Hey! I actually got that right, go me!

I stayed after school once more to do some notes on Biology, specifically prokaryotic cell structure, which was quite good because the topic wasn't all that hard to understand (especially on a Friday afternoon) and yet pretty fascinating. Here's a picture of these notes because I felt proud of them:

I might post during the weekend too, but I'll definitely be back on Monday. If you've gotten this far, I hope you have an amazing weekend!

Reply 8

agaaga1010

OP

9

Update: 6/11/17 - Oh so cold

It feels good to be back reflecting on how little I've done in the past day :laugh:

. I didn't do any work during the weekend because my sister and an old friend came down to visit, so I have nothing to report on there. It's been so cold recently, I know this doesn't seem to have much relevance to studying but hear me out, I've been feeling a lot less motivated to study lately and I think it's because it gets dark so quickly, and it's so cold and all you want to do is lie in bed and watch random things on Netflix. With that out of the way, let's get on to what I've done today...

First of all I triple biology, in the first two lessons we learned about enzyme inhibition and did a lot of practice questions. And in the last lesson we did work on the fluid-mosaic model of cell membranes, which is a bit complicated but not all that bad.

Next, I had double further maths. In my first lesson we started learning about linear programming, which was really interesting and a nice, relaxing break from the more complicated decision maths, which is just confusing. I like how much more mathsy linear programming is in comparison to the early parts of decision that we've already covered such as activity networks, travelling salesman etc. In the last lesson we worked on polar coordinates, in particular we focused on how to converted Cartesian coordinates to polar ones and vice versa. It wasn't massively difficult to grasp, but what we moved on to doing was, polar graphs. I was baffled. There were just circles and flowery shapes appearing on the screen and before I knew it I had been saved by the bell. I could leave, still as confused as ever but at least I didn't have to bear it any longer.

I briefly stayed after school for only around half an hour because I was sure I'd finish the biology notes I had started once I was at home... boy was I wrong :colondollar:

. Though, I do have a free period tomorrow in which I could try and finish them off.

Once I got home I realised I had physics homework which needed to be done for tomorrow, so I did that. It was just a fairly straightforward recap on stationary waves, which we did a few lessons ago. I've got the senior maths challenge tomorrow and thought I should somehow prepare for it, but I was far too lazy to look for any resources to practice with and I'm not too stressed out about it because I know I'm destined to do badly :u:

, and I've just accepted it. So I did 2 questions of the maths homework as "preparation".

That's all for right now, I'll let you guys know how the maths challenge goes, be ready for me saying it was terrible :biggrin:

.

P.s. I found this emoji and felt compelled to include it: :pika:

<---(me attempting to not procrastinate and failing)

Reply 9

agaaga1010

OP

9

Update: 7/11/17 - Maths challenge day

Original post by agaaga1010

That's all for right now, I'll let you guys know how the maths challenge goes, be ready for me saying it was terrible :biggrin:

.

Well the maths challenge didn't go great. As soon as I stepped out of the hall I realised that I made some really stupid mistakes on a lot of questions and I also guessed a couple, which I really shouldn't have done looking back now. I don't think i did very well but it's not the end of the world, I mean it would have been nice to be able to mention my score in my UCAS etc but it's not essential.

I didn't do much today, my excuse is that I was tired from the maths challenge; I didn't stay after school and I did no work at home. Tbh I have a school trip tomorrow so I didn't have any work that needed to be done urgently.

Today I only had two lessons of physics, even though I should've had three, but I missed period 3-4 because of the maths challenge, which was quite sad because we were doing some pretty interesting stuff in physics :puppyeyes:

. Though I did also miss general R.E so I guess every cloud has a silver lining :redface:

.

In physics we recapped what we did last lesson about energy levels, and we started learning about diffraction grating, which was honestly quite a lot of fun :excited:

(hopefully I'm not the only one who thinks so :lol:

).

After the maths challenge I had a free period, in which I did some notes on stationary and progressive waves, which honestly confused me quite a bit just because the explanations in the book are quite weird and very different to how our teacher described it.

Once I got home I started watching some YouTube videos and fell asleep for around an hour, and woke up with cat right next to my face because she was hungry, here is a dramatic reconstruction of the event:

Spoiler

After that I had to walk my dog, and once I got back I started watching YouTube videos and then played Overwatch with a few friends for FAR TOO LONG, but it was a lot of fun, even though I should have been revising for my upcoming biology exam....upsie.

That was all I got up to today, my goals for tomorrow are to:

•

Finish my biology notes on RNA and DNA

•

Make some biology revision posters

•

Do my physics homework

Tagged peeps (if you want to be tagged just ask :smile:

):
saffarinda <3

Reply 10

agaaga1010

OP

9

Update: 08/11/17 - School trip!!

So we had a university trip today how exciting, I know. We got a tour of the university, and a few talks about how to choose our course and student finance. It was nothing super exciting.

Whenever I can I try to stay after school to help out in science club, so that's exactly what I did today...until about 5, which may have been a mistake seeing as I was supposed to be revising for an test, but oh well. I talked to the students there for quite a bit and it was weird reflecting on what I was like in year 8 and 9. I also spoke to my biology teacher, who runs science club, about an upcoming project for the year 12 physics students, which seems really interesting.

Once I got home I did my DNA and RNA structures notes straight away, and did some biology posters about lipid and enzyme as revision. I still have some biology homework that I need to get done but I might do it tomorrow morning.

I didn't get my physics homework done, but I can do it in my frees on Friday.

Anyway, it's only a short update today, so see you all later!

Reply 11

04MR17

Volunteer Section Leader

22

I love this so much. :biggrin:

Keep me updated. :colondollar:

Reply 12

agaaga1010

OP

9

Original post by 04MR17

I love this so much. :biggrin:

Keep me updated. :colondollar:

Thank you so much! :h:

I'm so glad you're enjoying it.
I'll tag you in my updates if you like?

Reply 13

04MR17

Volunteer Section Leader

22

Original post by agaaga1010

Thank you so much! :h:

I'm so glad you're enjoying it.
I'll tag you in my updates if you like?

Reply 14

EmilySarah00

19

Loving this, your biology notes are so neat! :heart:

Add me to the tag list though? :cute:

Reply 15

agaaga1010

OP

9

Original post by EmilySarah00

Loving this, your biology notes are so neat! :heart:

Add me to the tag list though? :cute:

Will do! I'm so so happy people are enjoying this. :biggrin:

Reply 16

agaaga1010

OP

9

Update: 09/11/17 - A day of relaxation

So, you may or may not have noticed that I didn't write up an update yesterday and that's because I made it a bit of a day off for myself, but I'm here now to fill you all in :smile:

.

Yesterday was a bit different in that our lessons were all only 40 minutes long, so we got to leave school at 1 o'clock but we had to come back to have a short parents evening type meeting with our tutor, where we got told what grades we were working at and had to set goals for ourselves.

To start the day off I had three super short lessons of further maths but oh boy, they didn't feel like it. To be fair the first lesson flew right by, by the time I managed to fully complete 1 linear programming question the lesson was over. I quite enjoy linear programming it's quite logical and it makes sense unlike what we did in lesson 2 and 3...polar graphs... :afraid:

. I honestly didn't exactly know what was going on during the lesson until the very end. We were taught the 3 different methods used to sketch polar graphs, what didn't help my confusion was that our worksheets had stuff on them from the old AS spec, which we weren't taught how to do. The homework we got from the lesson was on this topic so hopefully I can get to grips with it with Geogebra by my side, holding my hand and leading the way.

Lastly, I had two lessons of biology. In the first one we started doing work on osmosis, we built upon what we learned in GCSE so it was fairly easy. In my last lesson I had my biology test and I'm pleased to say it went really really well. There weren't many questions but I felt fairly confident with all of my answers so I guess my revision posters paid off! :biggrin:

I stayed for an hour after school and only managed to finish off some electron microscope notes, which I started quite a while back, this was because I made the mistake of staying in the library with a group of friends, so chatting was inevitable :colondollar:

.

A while later I had that meeting with my tutor and my mum and it went soo well :h:

. I got my working at grades which are: Maths- A2, Further maths- A2, Biology- A2 Physics- A1, I honestly couldn't be happier with what I got, you can tell that physics is my favourite subject :tongue:

. I also got my targets for the end of year 13, which are Maths- A*, Further maths-TBC, Biology- A*, Physics- A*, which is frankly a bit insane, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get those but I sure will try! :^_^:

. Something which kind of dampened my mood during the meeting was that my tutor mentioned that the heads of sixth form really want all students to be doing 3 and not 4 a-levels, which means I've got to either drop one of the subjects I really enjoy right now or "argue" with them about how I should be able to choose what to study. I decided yesterday to talk to one of the heads of sixth form about it today and I did, and you'll find out what they said in the next update....

P.S. What a cliffhanger I know, I should just go ahead and start writing scripts for game of thrones or something

.

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 17

Quirky Object

20

Original post by agaaga1010

x

Hey! Best of luck with your goals, you've made such a good start to sixth form already :h:

you also have very good taste in unis :wink:

I'm also a 2019 Cambridge hopeful so maybe we'll see each other there :tongue:

Reply 18

agaaga1010

OP

9

Original post by Sonechka

Hey! Best of luck with your goals, you've made such a good start to sixth form already :h:

you also have very good taste in unis :wink:

I'm also a 2019 Cambridge hopeful so maybe we'll see each other there :tongue:

Thanks so much, what course are you thinking of applying to? And yeah hopefully we will see each other! :biggrin:

Reply 19

04MR17

Volunteer Section Leader

22

Original post by agaaga1010

Update: 09/11/17 - A day of relaxation

So, you may or may not have noticed that I didn't write up an update yesterday and that's because I made it a bit of a day off for myself, but I'm here now to fill you all in :smile:

.

Yesterday was a bit different in that our lessons were all only 40 minutes long, so we got to leave school at 1 o'clock but we had to come back to have a short parents evening type meeting with our tutor, where we got told what grades we were working at and had to set goals for ourselves.

To start the day off I had three super short lessons of further maths but oh boy, they didn't feel like it. To be fair the first lesson flew right by, by the time I managed to fully complete 1 linear programming question the lesson was over. I quite enjoy linear programming it's quite logical and it makes sense unlike what we did in lesson 2 and 3...polar graphs... :afraid:

. I honestly didn't exactly know what was going on during the lesson until the very end. We were taught the 3 different methods used to sketch polar graphs, what didn't help my confusion was that our worksheets had stuff on them from the old AS spec, which we weren't taught how to do. The homework we got from the lesson was on this topic so hopefully I can get to grips with it with Geogebra by my side, holding my hand and leading the way.

Lastly, I had two lessons of biology. In the first one we started doing work on osmosis, we built upon what we learned in GCSE so it was fairly easy. In my last lesson I had my biology test and I'm pleased to say it went really really well. There weren't many questions but I felt fairly confident with all of my answers so I guess my revision posters paid off! :biggrin:

I stayed for an hour after school and only managed to finish off some electron microscope notes, which I started quite a while back, this was because I made the mistake of staying in the library with a group of friends, so chatting was inevitable :colondollar:

.

A while later I had that meeting with my tutor and my mum and it went soo well :h:

. I got my working at grades which are: Maths- A2, Further maths- A2, Biology- A2 Physics- A1, I honestly couldn't be happier with what I got, you can tell that physics is my favourite subject :tongue:

. I also got my targets for the end of year 13, which are Maths- A*, Further maths-TBC, Biology- A*, Physics- A*, which is frankly a bit insane, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get those but I sure will try! :^_^:

. Something which kind of dampened my mood during the meeting was that my tutor mentioned that the heads of sixth form really want all students to be doing 3 and not 4 a-levels, which means I've got to either drop one of the subjects I really enjoy right now or "argue" with them about how I should be able to choose what to study. I decided yesterday to talk to one of the heads of sixth form about it today and I did, and you'll find out what they said in the next update....

P.S. What a cliffhanger I know, I should just go ahead and start writing scripts for game of thrones or something

.

Sounds fab. :yy:

Forget about target grades, set your own goals. :cool:

Aga's journey to PRODUCTIVITY and Cambridge??

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