End of my School Era - Year 13 GYG 2020/2021

Hi

I’m also going into year 13 and I also do maths (AQA) and geography(OCR) :smile:

Can I have a tag? And good luck for the next year ahead!

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 2

br2611

as someone who was stuck between human geog and econ, land economy is an absolutely brilliant course, definitely go for it

Reply 3

OP

Original post by Becca216

Hi

I’m also going into year 13 and I also do maths (AQA) and geography(OCR) :smile:

Can I have a tag? And good luck for the next year ahead!

Thank you! I’ll be sure to add you to the tag list :smile:

Original post by br2611

as someone who was stuck between human geog and econ, land economy is an absolutely brilliant course, definitely go for it

It sounds it, like it’s pretty much my dream course but I just don’t know if I’m clever enough for it to be realistic to apply :frown:

Reply 4

br2611

Original post by beginningofanera

Thank you! I’ll be sure to add you to the tag list :smile:

It sounds it, like it’s pretty much my dream course but I just don’t know if I’m clever enough for it to be realistic to apply :frown:

as long as you get predicted like A*AA, you should be good

Reply 5

OP

Original post by br2611

as long as you get predicted like A*AA, you should be good

I’d like to think that I’ll be predicted at least that, but my school are notorious for giving really low predictions and they also take flight path grades (decided on GCSEs which mine are low for a quantifiable reason) into account and mine are BBB so I’m not that hopeful

Reply 6

StudentMania

10

Hey, can you tag me :smile:

Good luck this year!

Reply 7

OP

Original post by StudentMania

Hey, can you tag me :smile:

Good luck this year!

Thank you! I’ll add you to the tag list :smile:

Reply 8

OP

Week 1: 7th-11th September

Well, this week was actually pretty good I'd say! I went back on Monday and tbh didn't really do that much that day, but have had lessons since then. This year i've got a very afternoon heavy timetable, which is good as I get a lot of morning lie ins, but will alsio need to find a way of motivating myself to wokr then instead of just waste time. My school have a lot of stuff in place to try to stop the virus spreading, but it doesn't really look like it will do that much if there actually is an outbreak. Multiple schools in the city already have cases and my old school has 5, so I'm feeling that it's inevitable that we will have to close at some point, which I'm dreading as I'm enjoying seeing my friends so far

Maths: I slowly understood more as this week went on. My first lesson was with Teacher 1, and she was teaching us parametric and cartesian equations, and I really struggled with it, and need to go over it this weekend so I don't embarrass myself in lessons next week lol. With teacher 2 we covered trigonometry and modelling, and I started off not understanding a word, but understood it by the second lesson after going over it the night before.

Geography: I had 4 lessons this week, and the majority were on physical geography which I really hate as I just never understand it and that teacher is not very good. We were set an essay based on earthquake case studies which made sense at first but I feel as though I'm really overcomplicating things as per the usual haha. With teacher 2 for human geography we were told what we need to do for the NEA, which I'm dreading as I left GCSE coursework to the last minute and can't think of a title. If anyone has any suggestions that are based on human geography (and that don't involve asking people on the street surveys as I'm way too shy to do that :smile:

) that would be much appreciated!

Economics: My favourite subject and it's a good thing that for most days it's my last lesson of the day as I doubt I'd really listen in any other subject ngl. We've had a teacher change which is a good thing as one teacher from last year was absolutely useless, and the new teacher doesn't take *****y behaviour which seems to be about half the class, which is good as we can actually learn this year instead of the teacher just constantly removing people from the class. With teacher 1 we covered wage rates and some (un)employment related definitions, and with teacher 2 we also covered definitions which are used a lot in the microeconomics section of the year 2 course.

We've been told that we should be getting our UCAS predictions next week which is pretty nerve racking as these basically decide whether I apply to Cambridge or not ahhhh

Hope everyone has had a first (full) week back at school/college and best of luck for the next one!

Taglist:
@Becca216
@StudentMania

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 9

Original post by beginningofanera

Week 1: 7th-11th September

Well, this week was actually pretty good I'd say! I went back on Monday and tbh didn't really do that much that day, but have had lessons since then. This year i've got a very afternoon heavy timetable, which is good as I get a lot of morning lie ins, but will alsio need to find a way of motivating myself to wokr then instead of just waste time. My school have a lot of stuff in place to try to stop the virus spreading, but it doesn't really look like it will do that much if there actually is an outbreak. Multiple schools in the city already have cases and my old school has 5, so I'm feeling that it's inevitable that we will have to close at some point, which I'm dreading as I'm enjoying seeing my friends so far

Maths: I slowly understood more as this week went on. My first lesson was with Teacher 1, and she was teaching us parametric and cartesian equations, and I really struggled with it, and need to go over it this weekend so I don't embarrass myself in lessons next week lol. With teacher 2 we covered trigonometry and modelling, and I started off not understanding a word, but understood it by the second lesson after going over it the night before.

Geography: I had 4 lessons this week, and the majority were on physical geography which I really hate as I just never understand it and that teacher is not very good. We were set an essay based on earthquake case studies which made sense at first but I feel as though I'm really overcomplicating things as per the usual haha. With teacher 2 for human geography we were told what we need to do for the NEA, which I'm dreading as I left GCSE coursework to the last minute and can't think of a title. If anyone has any suggestions that are based on human geography (and that don't involve asking people on the street surveys as I'm way too shy to do that :smile:

) that would be much appreciated!

Economics: My favourite subject and it's a good thing that for most days it's my last lesson of the day as I doubt I'd really listen in any other subject ngl. We've had a teacher change which is a good thing as one teacher from last year was absolutely useless, and the new teacher doesn't take *****y behaviour which seems to be about half the class, which is good as we can actually learn this year instead of the teacher just constantly removing people from the class. With teacher 1 we covered wage rates and some (un)employment related definitions, and with teacher 2 we also covered definitions which are used a lot in the microeconomics section of the year 2 course.

We've been told that we should be getting our UCAS predictions next week which is pretty nerve racking as these basically decide whether I apply to Cambridge or not ahhhh

Hope everyone has had a first (full) week back at school/college and best of luck for the next one!

Taglist:
@Becca216
@StudentMania

Glad to hear you had a good first week back :biggrin:

I’m not a fan of physical geography either, and don’t get me started on the NEA (I have no idea what I’m doing for mine yet) - but hopefully we’ll all get it started/finished soon.

Best of luck for your ucas predictions! Remember most teachers will happily talk to you about them if you think you deserve better :redface:

Have a good weekend! :biggrin:

Good luck! :biggrin:

I do maths and geography too (different exam boards though :h:

)

Reply 11

OP

Original post by Becca216

Glad to hear you had a good first week back :biggrin:

I’m not a fan of physical geography either, and don’t get me started on the NEA (I have no idea what I’m doing for mine yet) - but hopefully we’ll all get it started/finished soon.

Best of luck for your ucas predictions! Remember most teachers will happily talk to you about them if you think you deserve better :redface:

Have a good weekend! :biggrin:

Thank you! I hope my predictions are what I want them to be, and I feel that I have a fairly good argument to get them moved up if they're below it, so we'll see haha.
The NEA is so overwhelming, like the majority of my class want to do a physical based project but there's no way I'm doing that on gods green earth :biggrin:

Have a great weekend as well!

Original post by laurawatt

Good luck! :biggrin:

I do maths and geography too (different exam boards though :h:

)

Thank you! I feel like literally nobody seems to do OCR for geography, it's so frustrating as there's like no resources available online :mad:

Reply 12

Original post by beginningofanera

Thank you! I feel like literally nobody seems to do OCR for geography, it's so frustrating as there's like no resources available online :mad:

I don’t know if I did this but I do OCR geography as well :smile:

but I can totally relate to there being basically no resources online (even Seneca don’t do it) :frown:

Original post by beginningofanera

Thank you! I feel like literally nobody seems to do OCR for geography, it's so frustrating as there's like no resources available online :mad:

Ahh it must be really annoying :frown:

I’m very lucky that there are a couple of resources for AQA :yes:

Have you checked out things like getrevising, brainscape and quizlet for flashcards/mindmaps? I’d imagine there would be some resources on those :h:

Reply 14

OP

Original post by laurawatt

Ahh it must be really annoying :frown:

I’m very lucky that there are a couple of resources for AQA :yes:

Have you checked out things like getrevising, brainscape and quizlet for flashcards/mindmaps? I’d imagine there would be some resources on those :h:

I tried quizlet to find stuff to use for revision for my online mocks but annoyingly my teachers love to do weird case studies that aren't in the textbook so all the cards are for ones we didn't do :frown:

I might have a look at getrevising and brainscape, thanks for the idea :smile:

Original post by beginningofanera

I tried quizlet to find stuff to use for revision for my online mocks but annoyingly my teachers love to do weird case studies that aren't in the textbook so all the cards are for ones we didn't do :frown:

I might have a look at getrevising and brainscape, thanks for the idea :smile:

Aghh that a bit annoying (though the examiners won’t know if you make up a few facts+figures if you forget them :giggle:

)

Reply 16

OP

Original post by laurawatt

Aghh that a bit annoying (though the examiners won’t know if you make up a few facts+figures if you forget them :giggle:

)

Haha yes, I guess that's the one advantage as examiners won't likely know if stats are made up :biggrin:

Reply 17

OP

Week 2: 14th-18th September

I've had a really good week overall! Still no confirmed cases at my school, which is pretty incredible since it seems that half the schools in my city have classes or whole year groups isolating. It's only a matter of time till that happens to us, as my area is an 'area of concern' with rates above the national average, but I'm enjoying being at school (while it lasts :cool:

). I also got my predicted grades today, but more on that later :smile:

Maths: The majority of my lessons have been with teacher 1, and we finished chapter 8 on parametric equations which I still don't really understand, and I've got a homework sheet to complete on that this weekend so that's gonna be fun :mad:

. In the like 1 lesson with teacher 2 we covered some more of chapter 7 on trigonometry, which I'm finding hard but manageable, I just need to keep practicing questions from the textbook so I get more confident.

Geography: No lessons with teacher 1 this week, which was honestly great as I love a week break from physical geography :yeah:

. With teacher 2 we started researching for our NEA, and I think I've decided on a topic. I think I'm going to do it based on how the place profile of an area differs the demise of the high street in the last few years, and I'll use 2 local towns with contrasting demographics/age range/built environment as examples to compare/contrast. Like half my class are doing the NEA on tree carbon, and barley anybody is doing human geography, which makes me nervous as apparently physical projects are easier to score higher on :confused:

not too sure how true that is but that's most of my classes' logic :biggrin:

Economics: I enjoy each lesson so much, I just get so excited by this subject :smile:

I know that's kinda cringey, but it's so true. Teacher 1 covered minimum wages this week, and we analysed diagrams in the context of a 25 mark question in this lesson. Teacher 2 is our new one for this year and they're actually really good, they put a seating plan in place to try to sort the serious behaviour issues with some of the class which is annoying as I can't sit next to my friend in their lessons, but at least we can actually learn instead of constant removals from the lesson. Sometimes I question why people bother doing sixth form if they're just going to mess around, but hey-ho. Teacher 2 covered short and long term objectives of firms, which was pretty interesting though the diagrams are horrible :s-smilie:

For everything else, I got my UCAS predictions today! My school are known for being really stingy, so I was hoping for the best but expecting the worst. Sooooooo, I got:
Maths: A*
Economics: A*
Geography: A

I'm really happy with these, and I especially wasn't expecting the A* in maths. To be fair, I was one of the only people in my class religiously doing the work set through lockdown, and got an A in the online exam, but still to know that my teachers have faith in me to maybe get an A* is crazy especially as I'm coming from one of the lower GCSE standpoints in the class. I don't think I'll necessarily actually achieve that, but here's to hoping :colondollar:

.
I was happy with Geography and Economics, as they were identical to my summer online exam result. I would have been annoyed if economics hadn't have been an A* to be honest, as I was doing pretty well throughout lockdown, and got an A* in the summer. I thought that if I was going to be getting A*A*A, geography would have been the other A*, but it appeared the the department were being pretty stingy, and I only really need an A anyway so I'm not mad about it at all.
Honestly, I'm just grateful that I don't have to make a meeting to appeal my predictions like some of my friends are having to do, as there has not been much consistency between departments.

With these grades, I have decided that I'm going to apply to Cambridge :biggrin:

I love the look of the Land Economy course, and with these grades, it's worth a shot right? I'm tempted to swap out Liverpool from my choices for Nottingham, but I feel as though I wouldn't like Notts as much as Liverpool for various reasons, so I don't really know what to do. The only reason I'm thinking this is that I don't want to sell myself short with my predicted grades, but equally I want to apply to places that I really want to go to, and I don't really know if I could see myself at Nottingham :confused:

That's it for this week's post, hope everyone has had a great week and best wishes for next week! Let me know if you'd like a tag :smile:

Taglist:
@Becca216
@StudentMania

Reply 18

Glad to hear you had a good week :smile:

I struggle as well with parametric equations - hopefully you can manage to do that sheet though this weekend :h:

That sounds like a good NEA topic :biggrin:

I personally think human NEAs are easier to score high marks on due to all the links you can make and articles you can reference, but I am probably a bit biased as I prefer human over physical :lol:

WELL DONE on those predicted grades :woo:

you are a star

If you want to, you should definitley apply to Cambridge, I have heard other people rank the land economy course very highly!

Best of luck with UCAS and hope you have a good weekend :hugs:

Reply 19

OP