The Quest for Perfection (2017-18)

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Grow Your Grades: Update 08 <28/02/18 - 01/03/18>

Wednesday 28th February

Hi, before you all start thinking "wait, didn't those days in between the last update just magically vanish?", just let me explain...
I've essentially been very inactive and that lack of effort has resulted in me missing a few updates, as I can't properly recall the days contents I'm just skipping over them.

I woke up at the usual hour 07:00 am, it was pretty normal when I looked outside, not much snow - just a couple of centimetres. My sister and I walked to my bus stop, expecting a normal day of school. In reality, after standing in the cold for 15m, we got a message saying that School was cancelled. Couldn't hide my joy of hearing this, I've been waiting for one of these days for a loooooooong time. Anyways, I rushed home thinking that I could catch up on some sleep, unfortunately, I was unable to get back to sleep so I turned on my laptop and began grinding out a game. Before I knew it, the morning faded into the afternoon. I realised I had to do something productive so I made an effort to start studying. Yet again, something happened, I got bribed into doing my mum's homework (she's in college) for her, so I spent a few hours typing up a 24-page piece of homework for her - I wish I was this productive with my own homework...

Following this, I played some more games until the early hours of the morning, where I fell asleep - happy at the prospect of another day off of school.

Thursday 1st March 2018

Wow... When I woke up this morning and looked outside, everything was covered in a sheet of snow that went up to my waist at points - I'm 5'7" - I have to say that I was pretty surprised. Anyways, I had the best sleep I've had in a long time, so I decided to make a start on some studying. For around an hour or so, I began making Flashcards to help myself keep easy-to-use notes that I have been thinking about all week! After this, I had a small sandwich for breakfast before re-assuming my study.

Once it got to around 1 pm, I got a few calls from my friends - wanting to go outside. I decided that I'd been antisocial enough these few days so I decided to meet them. They live around 2 miles away from me, so it took me a little while to walk there, especially while trying to stop myself falling in the snow! Anyways, we spent some time walking around throwing snowballs and almost falling over. Afterwards, most of the shops were closed so I went home pretty early - it took around another hour to walk home in the snow. Gotta say that when the snow and wind pair up, they are pretty annoying to walk against...

Currently, I'm sitting at my laptop, about to play some more games for the majority of the night. However, I'm setting myself the challenge of studying for around 6 hours tomorrow - around the duration of a school day - so that I don't slip behind my studies. However, the plus side is that I can listen to music and wear my own clothes - what a great idea!

So, if anyone has any good problems in maths or questions for the sciences/program ideas (bearing in mind my level) I'm open to being challenged!

Hope you've all had a good weekend - also, here's a short clip of a better part of the journey to my friends' house!
[video]https://youtu.be/KK8br39vAYs[/video]

- Kathleen

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(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 21

independentx

You've definitely had a more productive snow day than me!!
I've literally done nothing ahaha!!

I have to go back tomorrow :frown:

I really admire your motivation to study even on snow days!!

Hope you get lots of work done tomorrow!! YOU CAN DO THISSSS!!

Reply 22

username3779536

Grow Your Grades: Update 09 <02/03/18 - 04/03/18>

Friday 2nd March 2018

Yawn..... I woke up at 1 pm today, honestly a good sleep - despite falling asleep at around 4 am! Anyways, after this lazy start, I got to work on my flashcards. I spend around 7 hours making flashcards for physics and computing - there's so much to cover! Of course, I had Teen Wolf, Shadow Hunters and Naruto on in the background - my concentration levels aren't that high... This allowed me to retain motivation as I wasn't full on tryhard studying! This took the majority of the afternoon, as I had spent the day working, I decided that once my 7 Hours were done, I'd spend the night relaxing and playing games. This ended up lasting until around 4 am in the morning... This wasn't the worst part either, following this I decided to try a cup of coffee - bitter but great! This ended up prolonging my lack of sleep until around 6:30 am, this was when I fell asleep without even realising it!

Also, I found this picture, very very accurate!

Saturday 3rd March 2018

Ouch! Waking up at around 11 am after sleeping at 6:30 am is not a good idea, this was a very slow morning, I ended up waking to the noise of people arguing with each other, honestly, I wish I could've caught up on my sleep but oh well... Today was a pretty lazy day, I ended up talking to a lot of my old friends from the internet and grinding out some games. Honestly, one of the best afternoons I've had in a while. This lack of productiveness has prompted me to hurry up and form a better study timetable! Sleeping times continued to fail as I drifted off at around 6 am...

Sunday 4th March 2018

I really need to do something about my sleep schedule. Who knew that a few snow days would completely knock it apart! After shaking the lack of sleep from myself, I started working on my Computing Program - my teacher challenges me to complete extra tasks as I finish work fairly quickly in classes. Got to say that this was a difficult program, it took around an hour of debugging and testing to figure out the simplest logic and execution error causes! I also decided to go out for a walk in the remains of the snow. Due to the low temperatures, most of it has frozen and the pavements are a nightmare to navigate over :biggrin:

Eventually, I made my way home and thus continued collecting responses for my survey for my business assignment. Not too confident with my assignment, but I've got to keep working on it, the next few days are going to be fairly busy! I have taken inspiration from some servers and decides to work on a new study schedule that will work for me (hopefully)

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Reply 23

username3779536

Grow Your Grades: Update 10 <05/03/18 - 10/03/18>

Monday 5th March 2018 - Saturday 10th March 2018

So... I've done it again, been inactive, :colondollar:

however, I have been fairly busy!

Here are the Subject Updates:

Maths:
Looks like our teacher has decided to move onto the next topic - oh wait there aren't any left...
We finished vectors on Friday, finally - we thought we'd have a break from so much work now, unfortunately, we were very very very wrong
One of our teachers - the very focused one - has decided we're going to do every past paper out there... While the other - the laid back one - has given us booklets of "100 Maths Questions", which we'll be working on this week :bawling:

On the plus side, it is good that we've finished the course - meaning we'll be well prepared for the exam!

English:
Edwin Morgan has officially become the person I hate the most :angry:

We've just started studying the next two poems - Slate and Winter.
Slate, first of all, had us stumped - of course, we worked through it and I actually understood it :^_^:

However it did seem quite rushed, we haven't even practised Slate Questions yet...
Winter, well I don't have much to say about this weird poem. Possibly even weirder than Slate... We had to work in groups to describe a section of the poem, in mine - it wasn't the best group of people - we had both annoying and sarcastic people, what a great mix...
One of them said that girls were inferior to guys, so I told them they could work on the section themselves as they were soo "superior", suddenly they didn't seem so cocky :closedeyes:

Anyways, I worked on it fairly independently and got a good response from the teacher!

Physics:
My only expression in Physics is constant confusion. I've spent the past few days listening to the teacher explaining electrical components and I've just been listening like :dontknow:

We've covered Light Dependent Resistors, Thermistors, Variable Resistors, Transistors and so on. Would've thought that they'd have some form of different names as remembering them all is so much effort. Anyways, I'll be spending some time revising these things!
Best thing is that we've got this sort of Friday Lunchtime revision club of sorts - lunch passes to skip the queue is the best part! :excited:

Chemistry:
Finally back to the normal course - goodbye Learning Outcome 1!!! We've resumed the booklet and worked through variations of battery types, REDOX equations in depth and some other questions.
The funniest thing was the fact that our teacher gave us a sheet of basic questions - me and my friend had some problems working through these questions but eventually got 70% right. Then, she gives out some "advanced questions" and these were soo much easier than the original sheet - logic! :facepalm:

Business Management:
Assignment, Assignment, Assignment.
We've spent the majority of the week working on our Assignments and being nagged to finish them off for next week. I'd say that mine is of a good quality, I had to lower the wordcount of mine from 2,307 to around 1,300 words... It took a bit of time but I'm finally happy with my own work (rarely happens).
We're supposed to print them out on Monday - however my Computing Practical Assessment is on Monday - though he should be aware of this... :hmmm:

Computing Science:
Eyyy, welcome back to my favourite subject by far. We've spent the whole week and a half doing practise practical tasks. It's the best to be on the computers and working on programs, databases and web pages!
We completed two full practical tasks - I scored 50/50 and 47/50 - so I'm altogether happy with my results! :grin:

However, Monday and Tuesday are going to be some stressful days and I'm hoping that all goes well, I'd say I'm a very capable student, however I have a tendency to fix the inefficient sections of code - not following the program design - and lose marks.
I suppose we'll see what happens!

Saturday
Wow, I've already completed all of my subject homework - just got the weekend to revise computing stuff now!
So, of course, I end up playing games and listening to music - world's most productive person here (not) :mute:

Anyways, at around 15:45, I left the house to go to a friends party - first in a while tbh - it was a trampoline party. Honestly so much better than I expected, considering we were 15/16 years old, and there were a bunch of 10-year-olds there...
Surprisingly, it's a great form of exercise - so tiring being there for a couple of hours.

Right now, I'm debating on playing some more games or studying - probably going to play games tonight and full-on study all of Sunday. I hope... :crossedf:

Thanks for reading!

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Reply 24

username3779536

Grow Your Grades: Update 11 < --/--/-- - 19/03/18>

Welp, my scheduling for this has gotten even worse than it was before, so I'm going to be structuring my posts a little differently. From now on, I'll be posting whenever, sectioning them into a daily main post, but sub-sections: Update 12.2 etc. Hopefully, this should allow more regular posts and of course give me more motivation.

Anyways, It's been a pretty boring week or so. I've spent the past few days in school covering areas to clean up blank areas in each course - the pressure of assignments are all over - so it's a little bare at the moment, I kinda want more pressure to keep me motivated - can't seem to motivate myself to study without it. The Easter holidays in a week or so is gonna be a wake-up point. So,

Goals for the Easter Holidays:

- Create Flashcards for all 6 Subjects full courses
- Complete Chapter 3 of my Java Course on Udemy (learning)
- Start going on occasional runs in the early morning hours at weekends (to avoid all other human life)
- Follow a strict sleep schedule
- 1-2 Fizzy Drinks Maximum per day (I know, I'm unhealthy - sugar just wakes me up nicely...)

Current Homework Status:

- Maths (complete)
- English (currently "working on")
- Computing (constant extra homework)
- Business (REVISE - incomplete)
- Chemistry (done, the teacher hasn't asked for it yet)
- Physics (done, too much time was given...)

Anyways, pretty boring update - more interesting ones are coming in the future, I'm just not the best at keeping with a schedule - nonetheless, hopefully, you'll see me around TSR more :wink:

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Reply 25

Toastiekid

Hello

I've just read through all this thread and it looks so interesting, could I join the tag list? :proud:

And ouch, that's a lot of homework :shock:

good goals!

Original post by Toastiekid

Hello

I've just read through all this thread and it looks so interesting, could I join the tag list? :proud:

And ouch, that's a lot of homework :shock:

Will add you to the list for the next post and yeah, though some may argue it’s not enough o.o

Original post by laurawatt

good goals!

I’m hoping that I can stick with them :smile:

Reply 28

Labrador99

Volunteer Team

Original post by WestDragon

Grow Your Grades: Update 11 < --/--/-- - 19/03/18>

- Computing (constant extra homework)
- Business (REVISE - incomplete)
- Chemistry (done, the teacher hasn't asked for it yet)
- Physics (done, too much time was given...)

Anyways, pretty boring update - more interesting ones are coming in the future, I'm just not the best at keeping with a schedule - nonetheless, hopefully, you'll see me around TSR more :wink:

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Sounds like a good plan :yes:

And it's not boring at all :no:

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 29

username3779536

Grow Your Grades: Update 12 <20/03/18>

My Day:

Long school days tend to take a lot of time, especially ones on Monday and Tuesday, anyways the day went as...

- Double Computing
We’ve been working on low fidelity paper prototypes, apparently a guy from the sqa isn’t going to record us performing usability testing. We were supposed to be working in groups, but I’m working solo and have completed it in the same timeframe :wink:

Our teacher gave us Jaffa Cakes :smile:

It’s a sort of running joke within our class!

- Physics
Continuing the start of our next topic to learning - pressure. It’s strange but I am learning this, not too bad a topic to be honest. We’ve drawn two graphs and are learning about the three relationships between pressure, volume and temperature.

- PSE
Options for S5 were handed out. Gotta look into those as soon as possible.

- Maths
Past Papers, again :frown:

- English
We’ve been working on posters about each poem, our group is on Good Friday - ironic, due to the timing.

- Business
All we did was sort through some files, nothing that was really important though.

Homework Status:

Physics - Complete
Chemistry - Complete
Maths - Complete
English - None
Computing - None

Goals:

Slept at around half ten!
No soft drinks :smile:

Anyyyways, I’ll post another update later! :wink:

Have a great day all!

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(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 30

Toastiekid

Jaffa cakes :tongue:

yummmmy, my teachers rarely give us food :frown:

Well done for sticking to your goals :biggrin:

Reply 31

independentx

You have set yourself some brilliant goals!! Need to set myself some goals for Easter too. One of which being the soft drink/energy drink goal!!

Reply 32

username3779536

Original post by Toastiekid

Jaffa cakes :tongue:

yummmmy, my teachers rarely give us food :frown:

Well done for sticking to your goals :biggrin:

I love Jaffa Cakes, apparently farm foods is selling 100 Jaffa cakes for £3.99, not a bad offer in my terms so I intend on browsing at the weekend!

Original post by independentx

You have set yourself some brilliant goals!! Need to set myself some goals for Easter too. One of which being the soft drink/energy drink goal!!

Some goals are more difficult to stay with however I’m hoping to keep this one.

Reply 33

username3779536

Grow Your Grades: Update 13 <21/03/18 - 22/03/18>

School!

Chemistry
We’ve been continuing with fertilisers and have been learning about the Haber and Ostwald Processes. We’ve also looked into flame tests and dipped a metal coil in salts before placing them on the inner cone of the Bunsen burners flame, pretty cool ass colours! We also got given homework, almost completed too - the easiest questions are the ones I lack most motivation in..

Physics
We’ve been looking at the first gas law. We looked at the graph between pressure and volume, along with the graph between pressure and one upon the volume. It’s actually not too bad and the formula is also quite refreshing. Thankfully Physics isn’t too boring yet!

Business Management
Gahhhh, we’ve spent two hours working on a Past Paper to be marked, we completed it open book so it’s not a true representation so I don’t really see as much point in these, however we’ve been promised doughnuts tomorrow due to Prelim results so :biggrin:

!

Computing Science
SQA man didn’t show up today, it’s been rescheduled, all we’re doing is finishing up blank spots from the course, as always this is one of the few interesting subjects that I have left currently!

English
We’ve started of mice and men Revision for our Critical Essay, I’m pretty confident with this area so I’m not too worried, however the practise is good, definitely. Looking on, there’s gonna be a lot more boring lessons soon of course!

Maths
Revision, Revision and guess what? More Revision. We’ve been doing past papers, example papers and of course, one hundred exam type questions - you can never have enough. Nonetheless, it is quite helpful :smile:

Just looks like a boring few weeks ahead.

Easter School
I’ve signed up for a few sessions at our schools Easter school, gonna be sooo good just sitting there thinking why did I do this to myself. However, it can be useful in some ways - forceful motivation tactics..

Options Form

Just filled in my options form, I’m planning on taking:
- Higher Maths
- Higher English
- Higher Physics
- Higher Chemistry
- Higher Computing

Life

Just handed in my assessor's sheet for my volunteering section of my Silver DofE, should be 2/3 sections complete soon and on to the third!
Helping out at cubs was fun, we had an American night tonight - sorta highlighted the differences in our scouting systems, sounds pretty cool over in the states, to be honest.

My Goals:

- Probably drinking too much coffee now, but I’ve had one soft drink in the last three days so I’d call that success...
- Sleeping habits are cool, later night tonight due to cubs, it’ll go back to normal soon.

Homework:

- Physics none
- Chemistry 85% complete
- Maths complete
- English complete
- Computing none
- Business complete

Anyways, hope you’re all having a good time and enjoying life!

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@Labrador99 @CheeseIsVeg @independentx @Toastiekid @laurawatt

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 34

Toastiekid

Original post by WestDragon

I love Jaffa Cakes, apparently farm foods is selling 100 Jaffa cakes for £3.99, not a bad offer in my terms so I intend on browsing at the weekend!

Some goals are more difficult to stay with however I’m hoping to keep this one.

oooh yum revision snacks :wink:

Sounds like an alright day :tongue:

Are highers equivalent to a-levels? (Sorry if that’s a stupid question :colondollar:

).
Have a great day today :h:

Reply 35

username3779536

Original post by Toastiekid

oooh yum revision snacks :wink:

Sounds like an alright day :tongue:

Are highers equivalent to a-levels? (Sorry if that’s a stupid question :colondollar:

).
Have a great day today :h:

Snacks are the best haha.
As for highers being equivelant to a-levels, I'm not exactly sure. From what I understand these a levels are taken over two years, we have highers in s5 and generally advanced highers in s6, I'm sure theres a thread somewhere or page with more information, so I'll look around :smile:

- https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1490666

and Thanks, you too!

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 36

username3779536

Grow Your Grades: Update 14 <23/03/18>

Friday(!) 23rd March 2018

Double Physics
This is arguably one of the best lessons of the week. Today we covered the (creatively named) second law of pressure - the pressure law... Anyways, thankfully it was pretty simple to understand and as such - Physics is going well! Now all that's left to complete is the third law and some cleanup points.
We also asked about columns and teachers, it seems that the columns my table's little physics group are all taking Physics next year in column E, which should be our current teacher's column :crossedf:

Business Management
Well, honestly I don't know what to think of this class. First we get told to finish a past paper for the next day, but due to one or two people forgetting - the whole class has to wait till Monday. Little bit of a rant but I believe that just because others can't be bothered doing homework shouldn't hold the rest of us back. Instead we spent the period listening to our teacher drag on and rushing note taking as less than adequate time was issued. However, some useful points were covered I suppose! Doughnuts have been delayed till the last day before the Easter "Holidays".

Chemistry
Hmmmmmmm. We did some revision on titration calculations - which always seem to be easier to complete in class, rather than at home. Then we did some percentage composition calculations. I personally love this sort of area of chemistry with all of the calculations - very fun and a great way to practise!
Next week we need to cover Nuclear Chemistry and a NAB for unit 3 (backups if anyone fails :frown:

)

English
I hate Friday Afternoons with a passion. Today was worse as we had to do a practise Critical Essay, as our teacher wasn't in (again...)
I decided to try out a different character, finished in around half an hour - though I'm certain that I won't get the best mark possible in it :curious:

oh well...
I've decided that I'm going to make an effort to create essay plans which should allow easier exam preparation.

Maths
Final. Lesson. Of. The. Week.
Did we learn something new? Nooope.
We did yet another past paper, which I'd say that I coped well with, however, the only issue was that I ended up spending more time procrastinating before the end of the lesson that I had to finish it at home. Most questions went well with minimal confusion, not a bad way to pass time in some cases.
Also, our teacher had been given our S4 full reports - was quite a wait for the paper to be dumped onto our desk!

My Report:

Overall, my teachers all seemed to go crazy and write some cool paragraphs about my motivation and about doing more revision, even a suggestion to read the newspapers. Not a bad idea, oh well. Also, we got our attendance for the year out. Most annoying thing is that I got 99.24% attendance - one day off in the whole year. There goes my chances of perfect attendance, again...

Grades:

(Subject / Target Grade / Working Grade / Next Target Grade / Prelim Percentage)
Maths / A1 / A1 / A1 / 97%
English / B3 / A2 / A1 / 84%
Physics / A1 / A1 / A1 / 92%
Chemistry / A1 / A1 / A1 / 96%
Business / A1 / A1 / A1 / 94%
Computing / A1 / A1 / A1 / 94%

Homework Status:

- English Essay Plans
- Maths Past Paper
- Chemistry Homework
- Physics Homework
- Business Refresher
- Computing Extra Revision
- Java DofE Skills Section

Goals for Easter:

- Create Flashcards for all 6 Subjects full courses
- Complete Chapter 3 of my Java Course on Udemy (learning)
- Start going on occasional runs in the early morning hours at weekends (to avoid all other human life)
- Follow a strict sleep schedule
- 1-2 Fizzy Drinks Maximum per day (I know, I'm unhealthy - sugar just wakes me up nicely...)

So! I hope everyone has had a good Friday Night, it's currently 3:25am on the 24th of March, so this is a little late - oh well, I finished Season 2 of Jessica Jones tonight :grin:

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Reply 37

flaurie

Volunteer Team

that report :love:

I wish I could get those percentages :moon:

That attendance thing must be annoying :yes:

Reply 38

Labrador99

Volunteer Team

Original post by WestDragon

Grow Your Grades: Update 14 <23/03/18>

- Java DofE Skills Section

Goals for Easter:

- Create Flashcards for all 6 Subjects full courses
- Complete Chapter 3 of my Java Course on Udemy (learning)
- Start going on occasional runs in the early morning hours at weekends (to avoid all other human life)
- Follow a strict sleep schedule
- 1-2 Fizzy Drinks Maximum per day (I know, I'm unhealthy - sugar just wakes me up nicely...)

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Spoiler

Sounds like you're doing well :h:

Good choices for your highers too :wink:

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 39

username3779536

Grow Your Grades: Update 15 <24/03/18 - 25/03/18>

Saturday 24th March 2018

My Day:

Saturday wasn't much of a productive day. I slept at around 2/3 am in the morning and woke up at around 8 am - so I was already tired before starting anything! Anyways, I decided to spend my morning with my sister, who turned 13 on the 24th (today)... Was pretty good and I'm glad that I didn't forget!
Afterwards, I joined two sessions of the all-day revision thread to cover physics flashcard creation. This helped me to continue looking through past parts of the course and allowed me to feel less guilty about evening activities!
At around 5:00 pm, I headed off to my friend's house to stay over, so of course, not much revision happened! It's a good thing all my homework was already completed!
Staying over was pretty good, we stayed up till around 4 am (forgetting about the clocks changing etc). My stupid body clock woke me up at 7 am, which was awful - I couldn't get back to sleep so I just sat in a chair for a while. Finally, the best breakfast/lunch is dominos (not sure if its the best for my health of course!)

Sunday 25th March 2018

My Day:

So, I arrived home at around 2:30 pm, to relax for a little while. I then forged onto my Java learning, went through a chapter on basic conditionals and then set out to start on some more problems issued by the teacher. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the day working on one program that I just couldn't get rid of errors from...
So! It's a good thing that my homework was completed already, or I'd be having to rush a lot :biggrin: