Aga&#x27;s journey to PRODUCTIVITY and Cambridge??

OP

Original post by 04MR17

Sounds fab. :yy:

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

Will do!

Reply 22

OP

Original post by Sonechka

Modern and medieval languages :h:

are you planning to go to/have you been to any of the masterclasses?

I really want to go to one but I'm waiting for a computer science masterclass to come up

Reply 23

EmilySarah00

I'm very eager to find out about what came of that meeting with your head of sixth form! :eek3:

Reply 24

OP

Update 10/11/17 - Day of reckoning

The title may be a tad dramatic but here we go. Also I apologise for lagging behind a bit on these updates, I'll try my best to write them up day of.

Yesterday I had three frees to start the day off; in my first two I did my maths homework which was on differentiation and finding maximums, minimums and points of inflection of a graph, which still confuse me a little bit so I'll ask my teacher about them next lesson. In my last free I did some biology notes on microscope measurements and calculations.

In my last two lessons I had maths. In the first, we got our mock papers back and our teacher went through all of the questions. I got a respectable 49/59, which I'm pretty happy with, the most annoying thing though, is that most of the marks I lost were to really silly mistakes :angry:

, but I guess it happens to the best of us :wink:

. In the last lesson we were given time to revise individual topics that we did badly on the test, so I did some questions on lines and circles, I always forgot to use the formula (y-y1)=m(x-x1) and instead I use y=mx+c, I guess because it was ingrained into me during GCSEs.

I stayed again after school, alone this time and did quite a few pages of biology notes on Eukaryotic cell structure, but before all of this I met up with my head of sixth form...

I was so nervous, I've been avoiding this for a while because I was scared that she'd just outright tell me to drop something. So I went into the office and I said I needed to talk about how I'm doing 4 a-levels, straight away she responded with "Oh, are you finding it too much and want to drop something?", I burst out with a chorus of resounding "No, no, no, no", and I said that I was only here to explain that I'm really eager to carry on with 4 subjects but have been told that I need to drop one. She looked at me for a moment and asked with subjects I'm taking, then she started explaining that the biggest problem with taking 4 a-levels in year 12 is that most people, with very few exceptions, only do 3 a-levels in year 13, and that I'd be wasting my time especially if I got no qualification out of it. She mentioned that universities only look at 3 and that doing 4 really isn't necessary, which is something that I've heard a few too many times before. She said it's not worth doing because I'm not sitting any AS exams (because all my subjects are on the new spec), but I told her that my maths teachers were thinking of making us sit the maths and further maths AS exams. She wrote something down and said "Well, that changes things." That sentence made me feel so hopeful. She asked about my grades and how I'm finding it, and I responded that I really enjoy all my subjects, and that I really think I'm capable with sticking with four. For a moment she looked at her screen before looking back at me and saying "You're a really good candidate and the only problem I can see, is you not getting a qualification if you drop something before year 13"...a moment of silence..."But I guess we could always enter you into the AS exam for a subject if you decide that you want to drop it before the end of January. I'll speak to some other members of staff, but for right now I see no problem with you taking 4 a-levels in year 12".

Spoiler

I can finally rest easily knowing that my head of sixth form has no major issues with me doing 4 subjects in year 12, maybe not in year 13 yet, but I can cross that bridge when we come to it. I'm so happy :biggrin:

. I was so anxious about this for a while because I love school at the moment and I really wouldn't want to drop any of my subjects, even though they're extremely tough at times. To celebrate I played video games and video called my friends for about 6 hours until almost 2am, when I was almost falling asleep :tongue:

.

I'm going to talk to my tutor a bit more about 4 a-levels because he did the exact same ones that I do now, so I guess he could give me a good perspective on what year 13 with those subjects would look like.

Hope you guys enjoyed this longer post, I know my English skills aren't the best. I'll be back with a update on Monday!!

Reply 25

22

Original post by agaaga1010

I was so nervous, I've been avoiding this for a while because I was scared that she'd just outright tell me to drop something. So I went into the office and I said I needed to talk about how I'm doing 4 a-levels, straight away she responded with "Oh, are you finding it too much and want to drop something?", I burst out with a chorus of resounding "No, no, no, no", and I said that I was only here to explain that I'm really eager to carry on with 4 subjects but have been told that I need to drop one. She looked at me for a moment and asked with subjects I'm taking, then she started explaining that the biggest problem with taking 4 a-levels in year 12 is that most people, with very few exceptions, only do 3 a-levels in year 13, and that I'd be wasting my time especially if I got no qualification out of it. She mentioned that universities only look at 3 and that doing 4 really isn't necessary, which is something that I've heard a few too many times before. She said it's not worth doing because I'm not sitting any AS exams (because all my subjects are on the new spec), but I told her that my maths teachers were thinking of making us sit the maths and further maths AS exams. She wrote something down and said "Well, that changes things." That sentence made me feel so hopeful. She asked about my grades and how I'm finding it, and I responded that I really enjoy all my subjects, and that I really think I'm capable with sticking with four. For a moment she looked at her screen before looking back at me and saying "You're a really good candidate and the only problem I can see, is you not getting a qualification if you drop something before year 13"...a moment of silence..."But I guess we could always enter you into the AS exam for a subject if you decide that you want to drop it before the end of January. I'll speak to some other members of staff, but for right now I see no problem with you taking 4 a-levels in year 12".

Your head of sixth form is a very sensible lady judging by this. Trust her. :yes:

Reply 26

OP

Update 13/11/17 - I should probably sleep more...

As the title says, I really should go to bed earlier. I fell asleep at around 2-ish because I couldn't sleep and I was on my phone until like half one, which granted wasn't the greatest idea :colondollar:

. I woke up this morning feeling so groggy and annoyed at myself but I was determined to not let my tiredness get in my way.

First of all I had triple biology, which was fairly fun. In the first lesson we just went over the test we did on Thursday, I got 19/26 which was a borderline A grade, which is pretty good I guess. In the last 2 lessons we did a practical on mitosis, which was actually really interesting, we looked at the cells as they were undergoing different stages of mitosis, here's a picture:

In my final two lesson I was supposed to have further maths but I had a lovely surprise from my teacher, and instead of doing any work we had to help out with a maths competition for year 10s and 11s... :colonhash:

We all missed our lunch break and the whole thing was just so boring because we weren't allowed to help the students in any way, we were just there to stop them from cheating.

I stayed after school to continue my notes on eukaryotic cell structure, I'm almost done with them now! They've been taking me such a long time to do because they're not all that interesting, but I hope I can finish them tomorrow because I have a free in my last lesson.

Other than that I didn't do much today because I didn't feel too well. I attempted some maths questions but I kept getting the wrong answers and decided I wasn't in the right frame of mind for maths, instead I just had a 2 hour nap so because I was so tired :biggrin:

.

Hope you all have a nice night, see you tomorrow!

Reply 27

EmilySarah00

Original post by agaaga1010

Update 13/11/17 - I should probably sleep more...

As the title says, I really should go to bed earlier. I fell asleep at around 2-ish because I couldn't sleep and I was on my phone until like half one, which granted wasn't the greatest idea :colondollar:

. I woke up this morning feeling so groggy and annoyed at myself but I was determined to not let my tiredness get in my way.

First of all I had triple biology, which was fairly fun. In the first lesson we just went over the test we did on Thursday, I got 19/26 which was a borderline A grade, which is pretty good I guess. In the last 2 lessons we did a practical on mitosis, which was actually really interesting, we looked at the cells as they were undergoing different stages of mitosis, here's a picture:

In my final two lesson I was supposed to have further maths but I had a lovely surprise from my teacher, and instead of doing any work we had to help out with a maths competition for year 10s and 11s... :colonhash:

We all missed our lunch break and the whole thing was just so boring because we weren't allowed to help the students in any way, we were just there to stop them from cheating.

I stayed after school to continue my notes on eukaryotic cell structure, I'm almost done with them now! They've been taking me such a long time to do because they're not all that interesting, but I hope I can finish them tomorrow because I have a free in my last lesson.

Other than that I didn't do much today because I didn't feel too well. I attempted some maths questions but I kept getting the wrong answers and decided I wasn't in the right frame of mind for maths, instead I just had a 2 hour nap so because I was so tired :biggrin:

.

Hope you all have a nice night, see you tomorrow!

I relate to the title, all the 1-2AM nights/mornings can’t be doing me any good! :rofl:

Hope you start getting enough sleep soon! :hugs:

Reply 28

22

If it makes you feel better, I was up until 6am. :colondollar:

Had 2 hours sleep and staggered through the day until 5pm. :hide:

Reply 29

OP

Original post by EmilySarah00

I relate to the title, all the 1-2AM nights/mornings can’t be doing me any good! :rofl:

Hope you start getting enough sleep soon! :hugs:

Thank you! I'm glad I'm not the only one :biggrin:

Original post by 04MR17

If it makes you feel better, I was up until 6am. :colondollar:

Had 2 hours sleep and staggered through the day until 5pm. :hide:

That sounds rough, I can barely get up when I fall asleep at 2 :nooo:

.

Reply 30

OP

Update 14/11/2017 - Doing the bare minimum

So today I still didn't feel too great, I couldn't fall asleep at all and kept waking up every few hours :colonhash:

.

Today I had 3 lessons of physics, which would usually be really fun but we were doing practicals for the whole 3 hours and I was in a group with someone who did pretty much no work, so it was just so frustrating :eviltongue:

.

I had general R.E, which was a bore :sleep:

.

I had a free last in which I set out to do loads of work...but about 10 mins in a friend sat with me to ask about a maths question and I didn't get anything done after that. I didn't stay after school either because I felt too ill to focus on anything. Hopefully I can get back to my normal routine soon, but until then I'm going to give myself a bit of a break, (@EmilySarah00 I'm taking your advice :smile:

!).

See you all tomorrow! Have a good night :biggrin:

.

Reply 31

EmilySarah00

Original post by agaaga1010

Update 14/11/2017 - Doing the bare minimum

So today I still didn't feel too great, I couldn't fall asleep at all and kept waking up every few hours :colonhash:

.

Today I had 3 lessons of physics, which would usually be really fun but we were doing practicals for the whole 3 hours and I was in a group with someone who did pretty much no work, so it was just so frustrating :eviltongue:

.

I had general R.E, which was a bore :sleep:

.

I had a free last in which I set out to do loads of work...but about 10 mins in a friend sat with me to ask about a maths question and I didn't get anything done after that. I didn't stay after school either because I felt too ill to focus on anything. Hopefully I can get back to my normal routine soon, but until then I'm going to give myself a bit of a break, (@EmilySarah00 I'm taking your advice :smile:

!).

See you all tomorrow! Have a good night :biggrin:

.

It's sound advice :laugh:

Hope you had a lovely night :yep:

Reply 32

OP

Update 15/11/2017 - Maths trip!

So today I had no lessons, which is a shame because I missed double physics but oh well. Instead I got to go to the university of Warwick for a series of lectures about how maths is EVERYWHERE.

The first lecture was quite physics-y, so I really enjoyed it :biggrin:

. The lecturer was a man called Dr Lewney and he began his talk with an electric guitar in hand, performing a cover of bohemian rhapsody about maths...it was as crazy as it sounds. I was honestly so confused when we came in because we arrived a bit late. The title of the lecture was, "Are we made of maths?", and after his wonderful yet baffling performance the lecturer posed the question, "What is maths?", to which he got many different responses such as numbers, algebra and also "a construct made by the human mind", which was quite a bizarre answer but I guess in some ways it's true. After that he asked the audience to vote on whether they thought maths still existed even when humans didn't, for example during the dinosaur era, to which most people voted that it did. Swiftly, the lecturer showed us examples of maths during prehistoric times, such as a snail with a pattern on its shell which was mathematically significant...I forgot how it was significant but I know it was... :colondollar:

. Another interesting thing he brought up was something called Conway's game of life, which I won't be able to explain properly, but here's a gif:

Attachment not found

The basic idea is that a set of rules is given to these blocks and they create this pattern which looks suspiciously like a living organism such as bacteria.

After that we had a lecture about biology, so I liked that too :tongue:

. The lecturer spoke about population dynamics, and she used game of thrones as an example so that was quite fun :h:

. She focused her lecture on MRSA and how maths helps with the development of new techniques to treat it, she mentioned some of the latest advancements in these sorts of treatments, and I forgot what it was called, so sorry about that :colondollar:

.

Our third lecture was about maths in voting, which revealed to me that voting systems are awfully unreliable. The fourth lecture was about Fermat's last theorem, so it was very mathsy, which I really liked. It was about Andrew Wiles' journey to proving the theorem, which was pretty inspirational to be honest, apparently he decided to solve the theorem when he was 10 years old and found out about the theorem in a book. Finally, we had a lecture titled "Maths vs Sports", which I didn't really enjoy that much, there was a lot of volunteers running around and stuff, and there were so many clips of football...it wasn't my cup of tea.

Once I got home I did my biology homework and my friend came over and did my makeup so she could take photos of me for her photography project, so that took up most of my time, it was actually a lot of fun :biggrin:

.

So that's all for today, back to normal lessons tomorrow!

Reply 33

saffarinda

Maths in voting sounds super interesting! Tell me more about it tomoz omgg

Reply 34

tereziscool

13

I really like your handwriting! I'm sooo jealous

Reply 35

Sounds fab. :party2:

OP

Original post by tereziscool

I really like your handwriting! I'm sooo jealous

Thank you! :h:

Reply 37

OP

Update 16/11/2017 - Tiresome torture

So today I learned that being tired and learning new and complicated maths concepts isn't all that fun... :colonhash:

To start the day off I had triple further maths, in the first lesson we did some linear programming work, which was rather confusing, but it was alright, the problem came in lesson 2 and 3 when we did sketching polar curves. I struggled with it because it's new to me and also because I couldn't seem to do simple maths properly; I honestly sat there confused about a question for a few minutes before realising that 2/3 is not 1.667 as I thought, but rather 0.667. At least by the end of the lesson, I knew roughly how to go about sketching a polar curve as in the lessons before I had absolutely no idea of what was even happening :tongue:

.

Lastly, I had double biology. In the first lesson we started learning about DNA replication, which was quite fun because it's pretty unique, and isn't too difficult to grasp. In the last lesson we looked at mitotic index (the rate of mitosis in cells) and how it differs in cancerous cells.

Finally, I stayed after school to continue some biology notes on the structure of the cell-surface membrane. I feel like I've only been doing biology notes lately, so I'll try to do some physics notes tomorrow because I have three glorious frees. See you all then! :smile:

Reply 38