The 'Welp, I tried' A-Level blog
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Original post by troubletracking
Ah thank you!! None of the essay questions I've done so far have been unseen, so I haven't really needed to revise for them, although I did prepare. I found it really beneficial to always look at the two texts as a pair, and I guess this sounds pretty obvious but instead of analysing one text and then the other, always think of them as a combined unit. That's probably not much help sorry
Hey! Thanks for the reply
x I remember sending you a PM if you could show me your essay, is that still ok?
If you need any notes let me know
Original post by MissCarter786
Hey! Thanks for the reply x
I remember sending you a PM if you could show me your essay, is that still ok?
If you need any notes let me know
x I remember sending you a PM if you could show me your essay, is that still ok?
If you need any notes let me know
No worries! Yep, it's no problem, I'm just about to start typing it up
Thank you very much lovely x
Original post by nyxnko_
lmao, we got about 3 inches worth of snow here 
essay writing
essay writing
Pahahhaha bet you were snowed in
why oh why did i pick three essay subjects?!?!?
Original post by Tolgarda
Yo, I wasn't tagged haha! Also, I'm doing Rossetti and ADH now. Do you have any essay material of yours that I can look at? I might exchange some of mine in return as well.
I know, no one was in that one until about five minutes ago: I didn't have time to tag while writing it. Yeah sure, I'll attach an essay to this
Thank you very much!"Marriage in literature depends on an imbalance of power." In light of this view, consider ways in which writers explore power and marriage. In your answer, compare one poetry (Rossetti) and one drama text (ADH).
October 2018, timed but not unseen, 25/30 (A)
October 2018, timed but not unseen, 25/30 (A)
It could be argued that, within the Victorian time period in which both texts were set and written, an imbalance of power is essential to the success of a marriage, in both a personal and societal sense. However, with the emergence of feminism and ideas of equality, this statement can be challenged.
It would seem that Ibsen's 'A Doll's House' agrees very literally to the statement, as the audience can see the "imbalance of power" from the very first stage direction that describes the characters. Nora enters the house only after "the bell rings", which tells the audience that she doesn't have a key to her own house, and her clear inferiority is only worsened by her husband's clear dominance. Nora tells Torvald he "could give [her] money", again implying that Nora doesn't have access to things that are expected to be available within a modern day marriage. However, this portrayal of a marriage neatly aligned with gender stereotypes at the time, and Ibsen shows this by having only Torvald control the "money", which reinforces the separate spheres ideology by confining him to the public sphere, which consequently restricts Nora to the domestic sphere. As the play continues and Nora reveals her secret, she gains power over Torvald, as shown by her use of imperatives to "sit down there, Torvald" and for Torvald not to "interrupt [her]", which mirror a parent talking to a child, and therefore how Torvald spoke to her in acts one and two. The closing of the gap in power ultimately leads to the breakdown of their marriage and thus presents forth the idea that without an "imbalance of power", a marriage in the 19th century can't last. This is further supported by Clement Scott's critique in 1889, in which he labels Nora a "baby wife", which illustrates that in order to be wives, women had to be subservient, but also reinforces the stereotypical conservative views of marriage at the time. Rossetti's Maude Clare could be interpreted to agree with the statement as the power imbalance is presented through a portrayal of male dominance. Thomas' father "had just this tale to tell" when he got married, and Maude Clare returns "[her] share of a fickle heart" back to Thomas, and here the reader can see the typical Victorian normalisation of male sexuality, that was acceptable to be acted upon. Thomas had relations outside of marriage and still was allowed, by society's norms, to marry, while Maude Clare would've been labelled a 'fallen woman'. This presents forth Rossetti's conflicting views regarding gender, as she didn't identify as a feminist by sympathised with fallen women, and Rossetti's interests how the abuse of male power was a fundamental part of a 19th century marriage, and was something that happened frequently, which again supports Scott's comment of "baby wife" to present the entirety of women i the 19th century, as they were children who could only do as they were told, while men were free to act as they pleased.
However, a feminist interpretation of the poem could argue that it is marriage responsible for such a "power imbalance". Maude Clare and Thomas' relationship is shown to be pure through Rossetti's use of natural imagery such as "budding bough" to illustrate their thriving relationship, as the relationship is free from the societal pressures that came with being married during the Victorian period, such as the unrealistic expectations women were held to by being expected to be both innocent virgins and also mothers. Simon Avery cites this as a "clear critique of dominant masculinity", but if Rossetti's viewpoints of gender are taken into account, perhaps this is more an effort to shed light on fallen women rather than a hit towards male dominance. This further gives Ibsen's A Doll's House an alternative interpretation. Perhaps the real 'stage villain' of the play is marriage itself and the 'doll's house' that traps them both is the marriage they're trapped in by society, almost like a bird cage a "skylark" yearns to escape from. Ultimately, this disagrees with the statement as it could be said that it is marriage that causes an imbalance of power, rather than depends on it
On further exploration, perhaps marriage in literature depends on the illusion of a poor imbalance, rather than the power imbalance itself. This is exceptionally prominent within Nora and Torvald's marriage, as it is only secure because Trovald thinks he has power over Nora and frequently uses pet names to strip "[his] squirrel" of her own identity. But, fundamentally, it is Nora that holds power over Torlvand by withholding her secret that "it was [her] who saved Torvald's life", therefore insinuating to the audience that the marriage is only held together by the illusion Nora creates by letting Torvald have the power, because of both Torvald's engrained masculine values and society's expectations of an ideal Victorian marriage. The audience sees that when Nora reveals her secret, the marriage breaks down, perhaps highlighting how couples much like Nora and Torvald had to act or pretend to be in love to escape societal judgement, as divorces were rare and left both parties shunned by society. Or conversely, it could highlight Ibsen's own childhood, where his family had to maintain the image of prosperity, even though they were in poverty, maybe even insinuating that illusions were necessary for a harmonious society. This could link to Ibsen's exploration of naturalism instead of the Scribean well-made play, as it focused on the development of characters without the grandeur of theatrical plotlines, and aimed for a realistic approach. An audience would see this wasn't the case, and despite aiming for a more realistic character portrayal, it gave out fake impressions of real life, as emphasised by Ronald Gray's critique on how "Nora's final leave-taking... looks too theatrical," which ultimately suggests that a healthy marriage in the eyes of Victorian society depended on the illusion of power, much like the illusion of naturalism to ensure the husband exerted his "male dominance". This could also be presented in Rossetti's 'No, thank you, John' as if marriage depends on the illusion of power, then the speaker wishes to not marry if that means allowing her spouse to take control from her he doesn't even have himself. The speaker clearly shows her agency through her use of imperatives directed at the superior sex: "use your common sense" and refers to the relationship with war imagery, which has stereotypically masculine connotations, perhaps almost patronisingly trying to get him to understand her wish for an "open treaty". If she marries John, she would have to subdue her power to conform with gender expectations of the 19th century, and a feminist reading could see Rossetti's forward-thinking approach to offering an alternative to marriage as the "woman's right to say no."
Pahah do you ever read back an essay and think, 'wtf was I going on about??' This could really use a conclusion as well, but I'm guessing I ran out of time for that
@MissCarter786, I've got a more recent one (24/30 this time) if you ever need another
hope the essay writing went okay
Friday, 1st February 2019
Today's timetable: French (P1), English (P2), History (P6) (there's finally a purple arghhh I've been waiting over a year for this)
Post length: the distance between Paris and Marseille in a car
Woah, two posts within the same week- is Meghan okay? Well, she got 3 hours of sleep last night, so probably not, but more on that later.
This week has been so intense, particularly the last 48 hours as I hastily scrabbled around trying to get my two essays in on time and to a decent standard which (spoiler) I did (can't give an accurate report on the second half though; let's freakin hope so). But now it's over, and I got home from school today weirdly unsure of what to do with myself. Quite frankly, I thought I deserved a break, so I mooched around on TSR a bit. For the past two Friday evenings, I'd been looking at universities, ordering prospectuses and writing down various open days, but this week I just messed around playing Arctic Monkeys on guitar because I can't think of anything university-related left to do at this stage.
Anyway, yesterday I went to bed 4:30am. Yep, that happened. But it's weird because I don't actually feel any more tired than I usually would. I felt pretty energetic up until 2pm where I spent two hours feeling like I'd been hit by a steamroller, but then I started to feel okay again. I mean, it's not something I'd to on the regular, but I was up researching, planning and eventually writing my essay from 8pm to 3am, and then I realised I had both English homework to do and my French speaking to plan. Three hours later I woke up pretty late but only ended up five minutes late to my first lesson of the day, French.
French:
We did some translation stuff, but mainly worked on the film, which I know I need to watch again at some point because I'm struggling to remember what happened when and who's who. We got set our first French essay *80s horror movie screams* due next Friday, which i definitely won't be leaving until Thursday night It's about the differences in social class between the two main characters, and it's supposed to be no more than 400 words so in theory it doesn't sound too scary, but I don't feel like I know enough words to produce something of decent quality
English:
Wandered in only slightly groggy and then handed in my essay because I never want to see that damn thing again. We're moving on from Twelfth Night now and dipping our toes into the Gothic, so last night I'd finished my notes on these videos of this guy old enough to actually be from the gothic explaining the sublime and transgression and all this other stuff (sounds awfully like The Prelude if you ask me
). Naturally, she didn't even mention them because we spent the entire lesson doing this carousel thing where we peer assessed people's essays, which was a nice easy lesson where I didn't have to engage many brain cells (always a plus). The four essays that I read were all really good and made me feel pretty insecure about my own because I'm pretty sure I rambled on a little too long and never proofread it in the morning, but it's over now so I'm going to try and stop thinking about it
French speaking:
Had my French speaking at 11:10 which went surprisingly okay to say I'd just made literal notes at 3:30am instead of full on sentences, so I was improvising a lot more which is probably better than sitting there reading it off like a script. The topic this week was tourism and travel, so my speaking assistant and I had a great chat about nationalising the railways and German Christmas markets, and then she offered me coffee, Lucozade (which they apparently don't have in France wtf??), strawberry laces and cereal bars (in that order) and gave me stellar advice to not bother sleeping if it was going to be less than two hours. Will keep that in mind, but hopefully I'll learn to not leave my essays until the night before they're due from now on
History:
Had a major crash after lunch, and at 2:55 I had history, which was in the computer room (Richard would NEVER). We're doing Alexander II's reforms, but Alan's split it up between the whole class, where we just do one and then he's going to print them all off and make a big booklet of them all. It's actually a pretty good idea, but this weekend I want to make at least brief notes on all of the reforms so I have a brief overview. I'm not working this weekend (again, I haven't been on the rota since New Year's Day ugh we love stable income), and I don't have any homework apart from the French essay, so I'm hoping it'll be pretty chill and I can actually get some stuff done. I've got a few sets of history notes I'd like to finish off, I'd preferably like to make the Palgrave notes I didn't get done Wednesday , I want to sort out some French vocab stuff along with doing the essay, but my main priority is reading Dracula before Tuesday, which isn't looking so good because I'm on page 56 out of ~300 and I'm such a slow reader
Again, I'll tag in the morning because I have to be up for eight tomorrow and the thought of nine hours sleep sounds like a luxury
I hope you all had a good week! We made it through January kids it only gets better from here
Today's timetable: French (P1), English (P2), History (P6) (there's finally a purple arghhh I've been waiting over a year for this)
Post length: the distance between Paris and Marseille in a car
Woah, two posts within the same week- is Meghan okay? Well, she got 3 hours of sleep last night, so probably not, but more on that later.
This week has been so intense, particularly the last 48 hours as I hastily scrabbled around trying to get my two essays in on time and to a decent standard which (spoiler) I did (can't give an accurate report on the second half though; let's freakin hope so). But now it's over, and I got home from school today weirdly unsure of what to do with myself. Quite frankly, I thought I deserved a break, so I mooched around on TSR a bit. For the past two Friday evenings, I'd been looking at universities, ordering prospectuses and writing down various open days, but this week I just messed around playing Arctic Monkeys on guitar because I can't think of anything university-related left to do at this stage.
Anyway, yesterday I went to bed 4:30am. Yep, that happened. But it's weird because I don't actually feel any more tired than I usually would. I felt pretty energetic up until 2pm where I spent two hours feeling like I'd been hit by a steamroller, but then I started to feel okay again. I mean, it's not something I'd to on the regular, but I was up researching, planning and eventually writing my essay from 8pm to 3am, and then I realised I had both English homework to do and my French speaking to plan. Three hours later I woke up pretty late but only ended up five minutes late to my first lesson of the day, French.
French:
We did some translation stuff, but mainly worked on the film, which I know I need to watch again at some point because I'm struggling to remember what happened when and who's who. We got set our first French essay *80s horror movie screams* due next Friday, which i definitely won't be leaving until Thursday night
It's about the differences in social class between the two main characters, and it's supposed to be no more than 400 words so in theory it doesn't sound too scary, but I don't feel like I know enough words to produce something of decent qualityEnglish:
Wandered in only slightly groggy and then handed in my essay because I never want to see that damn thing again. We're moving on from Twelfth Night now and dipping our toes into the Gothic, so last night I'd finished my notes on these videos of this guy old enough to actually be from the gothic explaining the sublime and transgression and all this other stuff (sounds awfully like The Prelude if you ask me
). Naturally, she didn't even mention them because we spent the entire lesson doing this carousel thing where we peer assessed people's essays, which was a nice easy lesson where I didn't have to engage many brain cells (always a plus). The four essays that I read were all really good and made me feel pretty insecure about my own because I'm pretty sure I rambled on a little too long and never proofread it in the morning, but it's over now so I'm going to try and stop thinking about itFrench speaking:
Had my French speaking at 11:10 which went surprisingly okay to say I'd just made literal notes at 3:30am instead of full on sentences, so I was improvising a lot more which is probably better than sitting there reading it off like a script. The topic this week was tourism and travel, so my speaking assistant and I had a great chat about nationalising the railways and German Christmas markets, and then she offered me coffee, Lucozade (which they apparently don't have in France wtf??), strawberry laces and cereal bars (in that order) and gave me stellar advice to not bother sleeping if it was going to be less than two hours. Will keep that in mind, but hopefully I'll learn to not leave my essays until the night before they're due from now on
History:
Had a major crash after lunch, and at 2:55 I had history, which was in the computer room (Richard would NEVER). We're doing Alexander II's reforms, but Alan's split it up between the whole class, where we just do one and then he's going to print them all off and make a big booklet of them all. It's actually a pretty good idea, but this weekend I want to make at least brief notes on all of the reforms so I have a brief overview. I'm not working this weekend (again, I haven't been on the rota since New Year's Day ugh we love stable income), and I don't have any homework apart from the French essay, so I'm hoping it'll be pretty chill and I can actually get some stuff done. I've got a few sets of history notes I'd like to finish off, I'd preferably like to make the Palgrave notes I didn't get done Wednesday , I want to sort out some French vocab stuff along with doing the essay, but my main priority is reading Dracula before Tuesday, which isn't looking so good because I'm on page 56 out of ~300 and I'm such a slow reader
Again, I'll tag in the morning because I have to be up for eight tomorrow and the thought of nine hours sleep sounds like a luxury
I hope you all had a good week! We made it through January kids it only gets better from here
Original post by entertainmyfaith
hope the essay writing went okay
I got it done in the end so hopefully it turns out alright
can relate with the very unstable shifts
glad french speaking went well
glad french speaking went well
Original post by troubletracking
Pahahhaha bet you were snowed in
why oh why did i pick three essay subjects?!?!?
why oh why did i pick three essay subjects?!?!?
yepp, I couldn't get out the front door yesterday so no school for me (although there wasn't any school to begin with
)i have no idea
(maybe you should switch to chemistry... )hope you got those 8/9 hours of sleep that you wanted
hope feb goes well for you 
Tuesday, 12th February 2019
Today's timetable: English (P1), Tutorial (P2), History (P3), French (P5)
Post length:
So today I've been in school for 7.5 hours. And I'm in bed before 11pm. What in the world is happening?
This morning I woke up fifteen minutes before I left the house (again; I really need to stop doing this) because I was up late last night looking at cheap train tickets to London for open days (but we'll get to that shortly), and I did my English homework on the train to school. If that isn't a sign I'm in dire need of a holiday, I don't know what is.
Anyway, first period was English, where we're still looking at features of the gothic. I don't mind the gothic so much now and it's somewhat interesting, but I'm not looking forward to having to read a crap tonne of dry 19th-century gothic texts for compulsory wider reading. My copy of The Castle of Otranto, which is apparently the first gothic text ever written, arrived today and it was published in 1764, which is the oldest novel I've read. Or going to read. You know what I'm saying. Anyway, tomorrow we have a comprehension test that goes on our record about Dracula and the gothic, and I'm currently on page 229 out of 315. I swear I've been reading this damn book for about four weeks and I'm such a slow reader that I haven't even finished it yet. Will I finish it before period three tomorrow? Unlikely, but Spark Notes never asks questions and never judges (unlike the examiner).
After that was by far the most useful part of my week, tutorial, and this week we were doing stress and resilience or something. I get the point of these, but at the same time they're pretty self-explanatory and I don't a 70 minute period just telling me how to breathe (when I could be reading the novel I was supposed to finish about two weeks ago). It feels like my tutor's just pulling random topics out of the hat at this point until we get to the stage when these sessions will actually be useful, like hmm idk, maybe the big bad UCAS shadow that seems to creep closer with every passing day? Just a thought hun x
Then was my current least favourite a-level, history, with my fantastic teacher who doesn't bother teaching. I've got his lesson plan down by now: a 2-10 minute introduction that's not really needed, maybe a few useful powerpoint slides if we're lucky, copy the textbook out in silence, a 5-15 minute interlude in which Alan will either a.) make us listen to a podcast with terrible Russian accents, 2.) talk through various pieces of lovely Russian art that are 100% not relevant to the exam or 3.) show us a documentary, while the majority of us just carry on with the notetaking, the rest of which will be set as homework (which I've made the unilateral decision to no longer do because he never checks and it doesn't benefit me so take that). I'm currently in the process of getting all my notes in order, which originally I hoped to have done by Friday but it's not looking so promising seeing as I have about two booklets to go through. In other news, my history friend was telling us all today about how she's skipping Spanish to go to the climate change strike, so at least there's that.
After history, I had my Old and Middle English enrichment ("think of the personal statement, think of the personal statement," I chant to myself as I drag myself to things I don't really want to attend), but I emailed the teacher asking if I could go to the Oxbridge meeting that was going on at the same time and she was all, 'I would prefer it if you would come to the enrichment' so I went and there was only three of us there, so she let me go to the Oxbridge meeting anyway, bless her medieval heart. I rocked up thinking there'd literally only be about seven people there (all of which who would take maths/fm/phys/chem), but there was well over a hundred and the guy basically did an Oxbridge 101 session: why it might be for you, why it might not, the college system, the application process, so on and so forth, which I kind of knew anyway thanks to my year 10 studytube days. I'm unbelievably fortunate my college really knows what they're doing with this Oxbridge malarkey; the chances of being a student at my school and getting in are 1/3, while the chances nationally are 1/7, which is insane. Oxbridge is something that kinda hurts my head to think about, because even a 1/3 chance still means that I'm three times more likely to get rejected than accepted, and so much work and time and effort (and undoubtedly tears and breakdowns) goes into the process that I'm not sure if it'll be worth it. I've applied to summer schools in both Oxford and Cambridge and I know when the open days are (stupidly close together; who tf decides to put them one day after another??), so I guess I'll just have to really think about it.
After lunch, I had a free where I went into town with my friends to actually get lunch and we had the weekly uni stress chat. It really doesn't feel real and I don't feel at all old enough to be thinking about uni, but the reality is that I'm deadass applying this year, like wtf is that madness?? I still feel like I've only just picked my GCSE options, and here I am talking about uni-freaking-versity with my friends. It's interesting to hear everyone else's plans, how I want to get as far away from Yorkshire possible, how some of my friends want the big cities with lots of nightlife, how some want to stay at home and attend a local uni, some want to stay within travelling distance so they still feel like they're not at home without being at the other end of the country. I'm not quite sure what I want, really, I just know I don't want to stay where I am now or else I don't think I'll ever move (Once you've tasted Yorkshire water, you never go back, just sayin'.)
Last period was French, where we once again discussed unis, which I'm pretty sure will be my life for the next year and I'm just really not ready for **** to hit the UCAS-shaped fan, yano? Take me back to year 8. Anyway, in French we were doing indirect and direct object pronouns and I realised I've got no idea when to use the direct and when to use the indirect. Originally, I thought you use direct when the verb's intransitive and doesn't take an object (like I called her), and indirect when the verb's transitive and does take an object (like I gave her the pen), but I found out today apparently that's not the case because téléphoner (to call) uses the indirect object pronoun and ARGh I realise that made very little sense but I am confusion.
Basically, a few months ago myself along with some of my friends had signed up to this HE+ course thingy, which was basically an outreach programme from Cambridge in load of different subjects (naturally, I picked English) with application advice and even a trip to Selwyn College thrown in (missed out on the letters for that one though ). The first session was two weeks ago, and today was the second session, where we had like a lecture on Sylvia Plath's poetry and ecocriticism (basically going on about how humans force human characteristics on animals) which I quite liked, and then another one on this Spanish film led by this, um, eccentric English teacher, which wasn't really my thing (the lecture on film, not the teacher) because I don't know wtf she was on about half the time, but it's something to talk about on the personal statement and it's a great opportunity so I shouldn't really be complaining.
That finished at half five, so I didn't get home until half six, and then I've been trying (in vain) to read Dracula but it's not going too well. Maybe I'll give in and read a synopsis but I do want to try and get to at least page 260 so I can read the rest in period one tomorrow.
This'll be my new little section at the end, which seems a bit early but at the same time it's really not, and it's not like there'll always be stuff to put in here. Updates include me getting a rough list of the unis I want to go for open days, and actually booking one at St Andrew's in April! I'm gonna be honest, I fully thought Scotland was like two hours away tops cos I'm a NORVENUH and Scotland's just up the road, but apparently it's a 5 hour drive away so love that for me and my poor family who have agreed to go with me ("You can't go to bloody Scotland on your own, Meghan!"- my mother). I'm off for lunch with my friend on Thursday where I'm going to try and convince her to go to London with me to go to an open day in Summer (think I'm leaning towards UCL over KCL atm), in return for me going to Cardiff with her. Think it'll be a lot of fun tbh, but I'm not looking forward to shelling out my bank account on overpriced train tickets
Will tag and format in the morning (she says), i'm so tired lmao
Today's timetable: English (P1), Tutorial (P2), History (P3), French (P5)
Post length:
So today I've been in school for 7.5 hours. And I'm in bed before 11pm. What in the world is happening?
This morning I woke up fifteen minutes before I left the house (again; I really need to stop doing this) because I was up late last night looking at cheap train tickets to London for open days (but we'll get to that shortly), and I did my English homework on the train to school. If that isn't a sign I'm in dire need of a holiday, I don't know what is.
Anyway, first period was English, where we're still looking at features of the gothic. I don't mind the gothic so much now and it's somewhat interesting, but I'm not looking forward to having to read a crap tonne of dry 19th-century gothic texts for compulsory wider reading. My copy of The Castle of Otranto, which is apparently the first gothic text ever written, arrived today and it was published in 1764, which is the oldest novel I've read. Or going to read. You know what I'm saying. Anyway, tomorrow we have a comprehension test that goes on our record about Dracula and the gothic, and I'm currently on page 229 out of 315. I swear I've been reading this damn book for about four weeks and I'm such a slow reader that I haven't even finished it yet. Will I finish it before period three tomorrow? Unlikely, but Spark Notes never asks questions and never judges (unlike the examiner).
After that was by far the most useful part of my week, tutorial, and this week we were doing stress and resilience or something. I get the point of these, but at the same time they're pretty self-explanatory and I don't a 70 minute period just telling me how to breathe (when I could be reading the novel I was supposed to finish about two weeks ago). It feels like my tutor's just pulling random topics out of the hat at this point until we get to the stage when these sessions will actually be useful, like hmm idk, maybe the big bad UCAS shadow that seems to creep closer with every passing day? Just a thought hun x
Then was my current least favourite a-level, history, with my fantastic teacher who doesn't bother teaching. I've got his lesson plan down by now: a 2-10 minute introduction that's not really needed, maybe a few useful powerpoint slides if we're lucky, copy the textbook out in silence, a 5-15 minute interlude in which Alan will either a.) make us listen to a podcast with terrible Russian accents, 2.) talk through various pieces of lovely Russian art that are 100% not relevant to the exam or 3.) show us a documentary, while the majority of us just carry on with the notetaking, the rest of which will be set as homework (which I've made the unilateral decision to no longer do because he never checks and it doesn't benefit me so take that). I'm currently in the process of getting all my notes in order, which originally I hoped to have done by Friday but it's not looking so promising seeing as I have about two booklets to go through. In other news, my history friend was telling us all today about how she's skipping Spanish to go to the climate change strike, so at least there's that.
After history, I had my Old and Middle English enrichment ("think of the personal statement, think of the personal statement," I chant to myself as I drag myself to things I don't really want to attend), but I emailed the teacher asking if I could go to the Oxbridge meeting that was going on at the same time and she was all, 'I would prefer it if you would come to the enrichment' so I went and there was only three of us there, so she let me go to the Oxbridge meeting anyway, bless her medieval heart. I rocked up thinking there'd literally only be about seven people there (all of which who would take maths/fm/phys/chem), but there was well over a hundred and the guy basically did an Oxbridge 101 session: why it might be for you, why it might not, the college system, the application process, so on and so forth, which I kind of knew anyway thanks to my year 10 studytube days. I'm unbelievably fortunate my college really knows what they're doing with this Oxbridge malarkey; the chances of being a student at my school and getting in are 1/3, while the chances nationally are 1/7, which is insane. Oxbridge is something that kinda hurts my head to think about, because even a 1/3 chance still means that I'm three times more likely to get rejected than accepted, and so much work and time and effort (and undoubtedly tears and breakdowns) goes into the process that I'm not sure if it'll be worth it. I've applied to summer schools in both Oxford and Cambridge and I know when the open days are (stupidly close together; who tf decides to put them one day after another??), so I guess I'll just have to really think about it.
After lunch, I had a free where I went into town with my friends to actually get lunch and we had the weekly uni stress chat. It really doesn't feel real and I don't feel at all old enough to be thinking about uni, but the reality is that I'm deadass applying this year, like wtf is that madness?? I still feel like I've only just picked my GCSE options, and here I am talking about uni-freaking-versity with my friends. It's interesting to hear everyone else's plans, how I want to get as far away from Yorkshire possible, how some of my friends want the big cities with lots of nightlife, how some want to stay at home and attend a local uni, some want to stay within travelling distance so they still feel like they're not at home without being at the other end of the country. I'm not quite sure what I want, really, I just know I don't want to stay where I am now or else I don't think I'll ever move (Once you've tasted Yorkshire water, you never go back, just sayin'.)
Last period was French, where we once again discussed unis, which I'm pretty sure will be my life for the next year and I'm just really not ready for **** to hit the UCAS-shaped fan, yano? Take me back to year 8. Anyway, in French we were doing indirect and direct object pronouns and I realised I've got no idea when to use the direct and when to use the indirect. Originally, I thought you use direct when the verb's intransitive and doesn't take an object (like I called her), and indirect when the verb's transitive and does take an object (like I gave her the pen), but I found out today apparently that's not the case because téléphoner (to call) uses the indirect object pronoun and ARGh I realise that made very little sense but I am confusion.
Basically, a few months ago myself along with some of my friends had signed up to this HE+ course thingy, which was basically an outreach programme from Cambridge in load of different subjects (naturally, I picked English) with application advice and even a trip to Selwyn College thrown in (missed out on the letters for that one though
). The first session was two weeks ago, and today was the second session, where we had like a lecture on Sylvia Plath's poetry and ecocriticism (basically going on about how humans force human characteristics on animals) which I quite liked, and then another one on this Spanish film led by this, um, eccentric English teacher, which wasn't really my thing (the lecture on film, not the teacher) because I don't know wtf she was on about half the time, but it's something to talk about on the personal statement and it's a great opportunity so I shouldn't really be complaining.That finished at half five, so I didn't get home until half six, and then I've been trying (in vain) to read Dracula but it's not going too well. Maybe I'll give in and read a synopsis but I do want to try and get to at least page 260 so I can read the rest in period one tomorrow.
This'll be my new little section at the end, which seems a bit early but at the same time it's really not, and it's not like there'll always be stuff to put in here. Updates include me getting a rough list of the unis I want to go for open days, and actually booking one at St Andrew's in April! I'm gonna be honest, I fully thought Scotland was like two hours away tops cos I'm a NORVENUH and Scotland's just up the road, but apparently it's a 5 hour drive away so love that for me and my poor family who have agreed to go with me ("You can't go to bloody Scotland on your own, Meghan!"- my mother). I'm off for lunch with my friend on Thursday where I'm going to try and convince her to go to London with me to go to an open day in Summer (think I'm leaning towards UCL over KCL atm), in return for me going to Cardiff with her. Think it'll be a lot of fun tbh, but I'm not looking forward to shelling out my bank account on overpriced train tickets
Will tag and format in the morning (she says), i'm so tired lmao
I love how there's only one coloured word in that sea of black text (I know you hate the new colours so I'm going to try and go back and find the nice colours again and then show you how to use them expect a VM sometime in the next few hours )
lmao, 70 minutes just to teach you how to breathe? now that's excessive..
WRONG!! :fuhrer: A 1 in 3 chance of getting in means that you're twice as likely to get rejected, not 3 times as likely to get rejected (and those are amazing stats! 
) Honestly think it's worth applying, especially with your GCSEs and even if you think it's going to be a waste of time because you might get rejected, I say that getting rejected is better than not having tried at all. You're probably going to do all that preparation for your uni application anyway 
, and handing in your application 3 months early is a good thing, especially since it means that all you have to do afterwards is just focus on your subjects (Anyhooow, that's just my take on it )
Loving your mum already she sounds exactly like mine
(I know you hate the new colours so I'm going to try and go back and find the nice colours again and then show you how to use them expect a VM sometime in the next few hours )lmao, 70 minutes just to teach you how to breathe? now that's excessive..
WRONG!! :fuhrer: A 1 in 3 chance of getting in means that you're twice as likely to get rejected, not 3 times as likely to get rejected
(and those are amazing stats! ) Honestly think it's worth applying, especially with your GCSEs and even if you think it's going to be a waste of time because you might get rejected, I say that getting rejected is better than not having tried at all. You're probably going to do all that preparation for your uni application anyway , and handing in your application 3 months early is a good thing, especially since it means that all you have to do afterwards is just focus on your subjects (Anyhooow, that's just my take on it )Loving your mum already
she sounds exactly like mine Sunday, 24th February 2018 *just imagine this is formatted nicely it's now near impossible to format through editing, thank you TSR that's so helpful xox
Post length: almost as long as the essay I'm procrastinating doing (not even kidding, this thing is HUGE)
Hello hello and welcome to the shitshow. Today's episode is aptly titled, 'Meghan has only written the introduction of a 2000 word essay due tomorrow. Will she make it?'
You join me as my second coffee of the day is brewing, Mr Bean's Holiday is playing (this counts as French revision- change my mind) and I'm still wearing my work shirt because we love a bit of hygiene on a Sunday evening (my bath is running as we speak, I promise) but before we get into the Essay Extravaganza, I think it's time to reflect on the half term, because it has been somewhat productive, despite what it might seem. Sort of.
Saturday and Sunday I was working so I didn't do anything, Monday my family and I went to York for the day to celebrate my sister's birthday, and Tuesday was my sister's actual birthday so we went to the cinema with her friend (would not recommend the Lego Movie 2: that's two hours of my life I'll never get back that I could've been planning this damn essay). So on Wednesday to Friday I did quite a bit of work to procrastinate from doing the only piece of homework I actually got set this week. you guessed it, it's that essay.
Things Meghan Did to Put Off Doing the Things Meghan Should Have Done: (-an upcoming novel by Susan Coolidge)
English Literature:
Shocker of the century, I did quite a bit of English this week which is honestly w i l d. I finally, freaking finally, finished Dracula, approximately two weeks after I was supposed to have finished it and literally my whole family was invested in this. My grandma would ask if I was still reading Dracula whenever she saw me, I told my mum I was tired last week and she was all 'iT'S bEcAuSe YoU'RE uP REaDiNg dRacULa', there was an advert on tv the other day with a vampire in it and my sister was like 'omg Meghan it's Dracula' so yeah, we can all sleep easy now that I've read Dracula. Was it worth the four weeks I've slaved through unnecessary description? Absolutely not.
Then (yeah, that's right, there's more) I annotated three poems using a study pack we were given ages ago. I did aim to annotate six in three days, but I'll settle for three. It's a start on the whole pile of English revision I should have started about three months ago. My verdict on Rossetti's poetry hasn't changed: it's as dry as her married life, quite frankly, and she never freaking married. Honestly would take Tissue anyday.
History:
I've started to review Britain, and I'm currently doing it by making notes from a different textbook of the same topic, if you get me, so I'll end up with two sets of notes to bring together to form one detailed set of notes for each topic. Take a shot every time I say 'notes', although in my case I'll be having a shot of espresso. Basically, back in the good ol' days of Richard, he recommended that we buy this big mack off Palgrave textbook by this guy called Norman Lowe that spans about two hundred years when we only need fifty of them, so I've been making notes from the Palgrave textbook, and I've finished chapter one. Only took me three bloody days and only eleven chapters to go. Love it.
Wow. I actually thought I did more than this. I was supposed to do some French but that never happened, so I guess I'll try and squeeze it in this week because my vocab book is in DIRE need of some tlc right now.
A revision timetable, but not really:
What I did do that wasn't work per say, but more so planning for work (we love a good timetable amirite??) because I made myself a rough half-termly plan. It's not for revision, but for something I like to call pre-revision, because it's about me doing long term tasks that surmount to revision, if you get me. For each day I've given myself two tasks to do with no time limit, so it's up to myself to decide whether I want to spend 5 minutes or 1 hour on each task, as a way of making it low-pressure and less daunting, and it's stuff that needs to be done by the time end of year exams roll around. It's things like having completed my Palgrave notes, read all the critical reading and have gone over all the grammar- stuff that needs to be happening in the background of my more immediate tasks and homeworks, if you get my drift. I know everyone always goes on about 'breaking stuff down into manageable chunks' and I've always done that: my plan doesn't say 'English' on Monday, it says 'Ibsen', but what I really realised this week is that 'Ibsen' isn't chunked down enough. Ibsen is a whole ass author of a whole ass play, and there are a lot of things I could be doing surrounding him which is why I procrastinate. I'm like, 'Ooh, should I make flashcards? Should I do some critical reading? Should I make a mindmap? The play really is my oyster, huh?' and ultimately I don't do anything, but I think I've found a way around it. I've got a second weekly planner that I update every weekend with exactly what I'm gonna do. So on Monday, it says 'English Ibsen- continue with Ibsen pack by highlighting and making notes' and then it says 'French Grammar- complete pages 15-18 of the grammar workbook' so I know exactly what I'm doing and there's no excuses for umming and ahhing over themes or characters. It sounds so insignifcant and small and I thought I was doing it all along, but it turns out just writing 'biology-topic 1' wasn't specific enough. Hopefully, hopefully, this is me getting my life together.
The Essay™:
And now for the February half term finale: this weekend. So the plan was to smash out all the research on Saturday to leave the actual writing for Sunday afternoon so I could have a relaxing evening watching a French film while changing my sheets or something. But it turns out I hugely underestimated the amount of notetaking I'd have to do to get anywhere near to the point where I felt comfortable enough to write about Alexander II's reforms. I had legit no notes at all on this topic (going to blame Alan for that; sorry not sorry- he made us all tackle one reform each so that he could compile them together to give us a big booklet of them all,,,, where's this booklet at then m8????)
Anyway, so I've got excerpts from two textbooks and I finish the first one at 11pm on Saturday night, which is a bit of an issue because I have a whole ten page booklet from another textbook I need to get through before I write my essay on Sunday and I need to be up at 5am to go to work. I decided to work until 2am so I could get three hours sleep, and made it halfway through the second textbook excerpt. 5am rolls around and I feel as perky as expected, but I work from 7am-12:30pm feeling pretty rough but I got a cooked breakfast on shift so it's not all bad. But, as expected, here comes the afternoon slump, right when I need to power through the last six pages of Russian reforms and it took me a lot longer than it did last night to get through them all. I finished at around 6pm, but all my research still isn't completely finished yet and all I've got so far is an introduction, a measly 191 words out of my 2000 word essay. All is not well in waffleville.
So the plan is as stands: I'm going to have a bath, have my Sunday roast and try not to think about it and I'm planning to start actually writing it somepoint between 9 and 10pm. I'm an essay kinda person, so writing has never been a problem for me as long as I know what I'm going to write, so the actual writing shouldn't take too long and, don't want to toot my own horn or anything, I'm a pretty solid ********ter so if worst comes to worst I'm just gonna have to blag my way through, which is a lot harder now that I don't have a strong essay structure to rely on because someone *whips head round to Alan and Richard who both look guilty in the corner* hasn't taught us how to actually write an essay apart from 'don't use the first person'. Thanks, that's really helpful. I don't actually have to be in until 10am tomorrow, so I can get up at 8am, but I'm going to try for 7am and get in at first period as I'll need to print it off (there is no way I'm handwriting this thing) and I might need a good half an hour to sit in the library and try and wake myself up and do deep breaths or something. And maybe get another coffee. Mmm. The best-case scenario has me with a finished essay at around midnight, so I have an hour to quickly tidy my room and change my sheets, getting me in bed for 1am with a solid six hours of sleep, which is four whole sleep cycles. Going to bed at 2:30am will get my 4.5 hours of sleep, and the absolute latest is 4am, which means I'll only get two full sleep cycles. Anything less than that isn't worth sleeping at all, and I'm not desperate enough to push that hard.
We really out here doing this ladies. I'll let you know if a.) I survive, b.) I get the essay finished on time and c.) if I get a good grade on said essay, in that particular order.
I hope you all had a lovely half term and aren't completely dreading going back, but can y'all believe we're over halfway through the academic year now?? That **** be craycray, I've only got a year and a half of college left
For some reason my posts won't upload with tags, so this might be the end of tags unless i tag a different way, apologies to all x
Post length: almost as long as the essay I'm procrastinating doing (not even kidding, this thing is HUGE)
Hello hello and welcome to the shitshow. Today's episode is aptly titled, 'Meghan has only written the introduction of a 2000 word essay due tomorrow. Will she make it?'
You join me as my second coffee of the day is brewing, Mr Bean's Holiday is playing (this counts as French revision- change my mind) and I'm still wearing my work shirt because we love a bit of hygiene on a Sunday evening (my bath is running as we speak, I promise) but before we get into the Essay Extravaganza, I think it's time to reflect on the half term, because it has been somewhat productive, despite what it might seem. Sort of.
Saturday and Sunday I was working so I didn't do anything, Monday my family and I went to York for the day to celebrate my sister's birthday, and Tuesday was my sister's actual birthday so we went to the cinema with her friend (would not recommend the Lego Movie 2: that's two hours of my life I'll never get back that I could've been planning this damn essay). So on Wednesday to Friday I did quite a bit of work to procrastinate from doing the only piece of homework I actually got set this week. you guessed it, it's that essay.
Things Meghan Did to Put Off Doing the Things Meghan Should Have Done: (-an upcoming novel by Susan Coolidge)
English Literature:
Shocker of the century, I did quite a bit of English this week which is honestly w i l d. I finally, freaking finally, finished Dracula, approximately two weeks after I was supposed to have finished it and literally my whole family was invested in this. My grandma would ask if I was still reading Dracula whenever she saw me, I told my mum I was tired last week and she was all 'iT'S bEcAuSe YoU'RE uP REaDiNg dRacULa', there was an advert on tv the other day with a vampire in it and my sister was like 'omg Meghan it's Dracula' so yeah, we can all sleep easy now that I've read Dracula. Was it worth the four weeks I've slaved through unnecessary description? Absolutely not.
Then (yeah, that's right, there's more) I annotated three poems using a study pack we were given ages ago. I did aim to annotate six in three days, but I'll settle for three. It's a start on the whole pile of English revision I should have started about three months ago. My verdict on Rossetti's poetry hasn't changed: it's as dry as her married life, quite frankly, and she never freaking married. Honestly would take Tissue anyday.
History:
I've started to review Britain, and I'm currently doing it by making notes from a different textbook of the same topic, if you get me, so I'll end up with two sets of notes to bring together to form one detailed set of notes for each topic. Take a shot every time I say 'notes', although in my case I'll be having a shot of espresso. Basically, back in the good ol' days of Richard, he recommended that we buy this big mack off Palgrave textbook by this guy called Norman Lowe that spans about two hundred years when we only need fifty of them, so I've been making notes from the Palgrave textbook, and I've finished chapter one. Only took me three bloody days and only eleven chapters to go. Love it.
Wow. I actually thought I did more than this. I was supposed to do some French but that never happened, so I guess I'll try and squeeze it in this week because my vocab book is in DIRE need of some tlc right now.
A revision timetable, but not really:
What I did do that wasn't work per say, but more so planning for work (we love a good timetable amirite??) because I made myself a rough half-termly plan. It's not for revision, but for something I like to call pre-revision, because it's about me doing long term tasks that surmount to revision, if you get me. For each day I've given myself two tasks to do with no time limit, so it's up to myself to decide whether I want to spend 5 minutes or 1 hour on each task, as a way of making it low-pressure and less daunting, and it's stuff that needs to be done by the time end of year exams roll around. It's things like having completed my Palgrave notes, read all the critical reading and have gone over all the grammar- stuff that needs to be happening in the background of my more immediate tasks and homeworks, if you get my drift. I know everyone always goes on about 'breaking stuff down into manageable chunks' and I've always done that: my plan doesn't say 'English' on Monday, it says 'Ibsen', but what I really realised this week is that 'Ibsen' isn't chunked down enough. Ibsen is a whole ass author of a whole ass play, and there are a lot of things I could be doing surrounding him which is why I procrastinate. I'm like, 'Ooh, should I make flashcards? Should I do some critical reading? Should I make a mindmap? The play really is my oyster, huh?' and ultimately I don't do anything, but I think I've found a way around it. I've got a second weekly planner that I update every weekend with exactly what I'm gonna do. So on Monday, it says 'English Ibsen- continue with Ibsen pack by highlighting and making notes' and then it says 'French Grammar- complete pages 15-18 of the grammar workbook' so I know exactly what I'm doing and there's no excuses for umming and ahhing over themes or characters. It sounds so insignifcant and small and I thought I was doing it all along, but it turns out just writing 'biology-topic 1' wasn't specific enough. Hopefully, hopefully, this is me getting my life together.
The Essay™:
And now for the February half term finale: this weekend. So the plan was to smash out all the research on Saturday to leave the actual writing for Sunday afternoon so I could have a relaxing evening watching a French film while changing my sheets or something. But it turns out I hugely underestimated the amount of notetaking I'd have to do to get anywhere near to the point where I felt comfortable enough to write about Alexander II's reforms. I had legit no notes at all on this topic (going to blame Alan for that; sorry not sorry- he made us all tackle one reform each so that he could compile them together to give us a big booklet of them all,,,, where's this booklet at then m8????)
Anyway, so I've got excerpts from two textbooks and I finish the first one at 11pm on Saturday night, which is a bit of an issue because I have a whole ten page booklet from another textbook I need to get through before I write my essay on Sunday and I need to be up at 5am to go to work. I decided to work until 2am so I could get three hours sleep, and made it halfway through the second textbook excerpt. 5am rolls around and I feel as perky as expected, but I work from 7am-12:30pm feeling pretty rough but I got a cooked breakfast on shift so it's not all bad. But, as expected, here comes the afternoon slump, right when I need to power through the last six pages of Russian reforms and it took me a lot longer than it did last night to get through them all. I finished at around 6pm, but all my research still isn't completely finished yet and all I've got so far is an introduction, a measly 191 words out of my 2000 word essay. All is not well in waffleville.
So the plan is as stands: I'm going to have a bath, have my Sunday roast and try not to think about it and I'm planning to start actually writing it somepoint between 9 and 10pm. I'm an essay kinda person, so writing has never been a problem for me as long as I know what I'm going to write, so the actual writing shouldn't take too long and, don't want to toot my own horn or anything, I'm a pretty solid ********ter so if worst comes to worst I'm just gonna have to blag my way through, which is a lot harder now that I don't have a strong essay structure to rely on because someone *whips head round to Alan and Richard who both look guilty in the corner* hasn't taught us how to actually write an essay apart from 'don't use the first person'. Thanks, that's really helpful. I don't actually have to be in until 10am tomorrow, so I can get up at 8am, but I'm going to try for 7am and get in at first period as I'll need to print it off (there is no way I'm handwriting this thing) and I might need a good half an hour to sit in the library and try and wake myself up and do deep breaths or something. And maybe get another coffee. Mmm. The best-case scenario has me with a finished essay at around midnight, so I have an hour to quickly tidy my room and change my sheets, getting me in bed for 1am with a solid six hours of sleep, which is four whole sleep cycles. Going to bed at 2:30am will get my 4.5 hours of sleep, and the absolute latest is 4am, which means I'll only get two full sleep cycles. Anything less than that isn't worth sleeping at all, and I'm not desperate enough to push that hard.
We really out here doing this ladies. I'll let you know if a.) I survive, b.) I get the essay finished on time and c.) if I get a good grade on said essay, in that particular order.
I hope you all had a lovely half term and aren't completely dreading going back, but can y'all believe we're over halfway through the academic year now?? That **** be craycray, I've only got a year and a half of college left
For some reason my posts won't upload with tags, so this might be the end of tags unless i tag a different way, apologies to all x
(edited 5 years ago)
Original post by nyxnko_
I love how there's only one coloured word in that sea of black text (I know you hate the new colours so I'm going to try and go back and find the nice colours again and then show you how to use them expect a VM sometime in the next few hours )
lmao, 70 minutes just to teach you how to breathe? now that's excessive..
WRONG!! :fuhrer: A 1 in 3 chance of getting in means that you're twice as likely to get rejected, not 3 times as likely to get rejected (and those are amazing stats! ) Honestly think it's worth applying, especially with your GCSEs and even if you think it's going to be a waste of time because you might get rejected, I say that getting rejected is better than not having tried at all. You're probably going to do all that preparation for your uni application anyway , and handing in your application 3 months early is a good thing, especially since it means that all you have to do afterwards is just focus on your subjects (Anyhooow, that's just my take on it )
Loving your mum already she sounds exactly like mine
(I know you hate the new colours so I'm going to try and go back and find the nice colours again and then show you how to use them expect a VM sometime in the next few hours )lmao, 70 minutes just to teach you how to breathe? now that's excessive..
WRONG!! :fuhrer: A 1 in 3 chance of getting in means that you're twice as likely to get rejected, not 3 times as likely to get rejected
(and those are amazing stats! ) Honestly think it's worth applying, especially with your GCSEs and even if you think it's going to be a waste of time because you might get rejected, I say that getting rejected is better than not having tried at all. You're probably going to do all that preparation for your uni application anyway , and handing in your application 3 months early is a good thing, especially since it means that all you have to do afterwards is just focus on your subjects (Anyhooow, that's just my take on it )Loving your mum already
she sounds exactly like mine It's so hard to edit with the new update because I can't reel off the bb code by memory, so a lot of my updates might just be black text from now on
Thank you again for that you lovely human being!
Yep. Can confirm I've known how to breathe since birth
And THIS is why I don't do maths
Thanks for noticing that, as usual (should I just make you my proofreader already??)Yeah, I think I'll still go to sessions and really consider it over the summer. Should hear back from UNIQ tomorrow to see if I've got onto an Oxford summer school
Thank you for the inspirational speech, can confirm I'm well and truly inspired
Original post by Tolgarda
How come I don't get tagged anymore?
It's not just you, it's everyone, nothing personal I promise ahah. For some reason my posts won't upload with tags on, so there might not be tags anymore unless I tag differently. Just uploaded a new post now but it's an ugly unformatted mess. love that
good luck with the essay meg! i shall send you encouragements through snapchat
Original post by troubletracking
It's so hard to edit with the new update because I can't reel off the bb code by memory, so a lot of my updates might just be black text from now on
Thank you again for that you lovely human being!
Yep. Can confirm I've known how to breathe since birth
And THIS is why I don't do maths Thanks for noticing that, as usual (should I just make you my proofreader already??)
Yeah, I think I'll still go to sessions and really consider it over the summer. Should hear back from UNIQ tomorrow to see if I've got onto an Oxford summer school
Thank you for the inspirational speech, can confirm I'm well and truly inspired
Thank you again for that you lovely human being!
Yep. Can confirm I've known how to breathe since birth
And THIS is why I don't do maths
Thanks for noticing that, as usual (should I just make you my proofreader already??)Yeah, I think I'll still go to sessions and really consider it over the summer. Should hear back from UNIQ tomorrow to see if I've got onto an Oxford summer school
Thank you for the inspirational speech, can confirm I'm well and truly inspired
Will miss the colour, but I guess there is an aesthetic to black text too No problem
Would be concerned if you didn't
(I'll pass on the proofreading, I do enough of that for the school magazine already )And you did!! Well done!!
I'm not going to respond to your last post, because I'm 4 days late and most of it is old news already
Glad you've got a timetable-thing together tho
Sleep well
And maybe try quoting people instead? e.g. [noparse]
troubletracking
x
I know a few people do those but I think they've got those saved in a word doc or something
Wednesday 10th July
Days until Year 13: 55 (not e-freaking-nough if you ask me)
Post length: long (pretendstobeshocked.gif)
...and she's back.
So, uh, this is pretty weird. In case you've forgotten who the hell I am (because it has been nearly five months since we last spoke, so I'll forgive you if you have), I'm Meghan and my first year of A-Levels has been an absolute rollercoaster with more down-y bits than uppy ones, and this is the long-awaited finale to a sub-par Grow Your Grades blog.
So, this year has been.. something. There's been highlights: attending a UNIQ summer school last week at Oxford, work experience at a grammar school, days out with friends old and new, university open days and other good stuff, but there's also been hard stuff, too. I suppose this is why the blog got put on hold, yano, there was just stuff. Mental health stuff, relationship stuff, job stuff, personal stuff, tsr-kept-crashing-and-deleting-all-my-posts stuff, but above all, school stuff, which was also largely impacted by the aforementioned stuff. Everything works in a chain: my personal life affects my academic life, and my blog is reliant on my academic life to be at least pseudo-successful for that blog to also be successful. And if one aspect isn't particularly successful, like my mental health for example, then the rest just falls through.
Although, when I say 'fall through', I actually mean 'Doesn't align with the sky-high expectations I have of myself', so while nothing has objectively crashed and burned just yet, sometimes it feels like everything has. Which isn't true!! But... still. You can't help what you feel n that.
Like, for example, I wasn't -- and I'm not -- happy with my mocks. I got AAB with the B in English, which, objectively, is great!! Like, i know, rationally, those are far from bad grades. But I was really upset and angry at myself and all this other (sarcasm alert!!) unbelievably healthy stuff, and it wasn't just because it was a B, cos if I got a B in French I'd be happy, but it was because it was a B in English and I'd been getting As all year and I kindasortamaybe might apply to Oxbridge to do English so it really made me question my ability. Like landing on a bad space in one of those naff boardgames primary school teachers get out to make maths 'fun', it really knocked me back a few spaces (that sounded so much better in my head I swear). So here's to Meghan hopefully getting decent predicted grades (have missed this emoji ngl)
Anyway, felt like this update was necessary for gaining closure at the end of my year 12 journey. I hope you're all doing well and if you'd like to comment below on how you're hanging (I stg if someone puts 'upside down' I'm leaving n never coming back) and what you're planning on doing over the summer cos I'd love to read them all n catch up n stuff. Have missed this, not gonna lie.
For my summer, I've got a lot of work to do. Like, I was planning on doing a fair bit before I got lumbered with two coursework essays and a pile of French to do (okay maybe I did miss seven days of college galavanting around the country for uni outreach days). so yeah I've got enough work to warrant making a timetable to make sure it gets done, and that's not even considering the revision I want to start on because, I'm gonna be honest ever since mocks ended (and they literally ended mid-May time) I've been seriously slacking, especially in history. I've gone on about my history teacher before and, don't get me wrong, he's a great guy (and he's also said he's gonna predict me an A* so I probs shouldn't complain) but when I say his teaching style doesn't work for me, I mean 'I have absolutely no motivation to read textbook extract after textbook extract and make notes in silence so I stare into space and do nothing'. This has led to two problems: 1.) when we have essays set, it doesn't just mean I have to write the essay, it also means I have to write all the notes then the essay because I don't' half-arse essays (despite what this blog has led you to believe), and 2.) I only have decent notes for half of the Russia we've done so far. To reiterate, I only have half the Russia notes and this is very very bad. Hence why I will be the only one in my year group who returns to college without a tan because I've spent my holiday working.
Me slacking off has also been due to my terrible, terrible motivation these past few months. Now I'm not gonna get too into my personal life because quite frankly no one's here for that, but I've mentioned a few times I struggle with my mental health which kinda comes in waves. I'll go through stages where I'm anxious all the time and then I'll go through stages where I'm sad all the time and they both make life difficult in their own ways. But when I'm anxious, like I was during my GCSEs, it's like plugging a 12 volt battery into an outlet only built for 5 volts (dear physics readers, do forgive any scientific inaccuracies I want to study books for a living). So last year, I did so much work because it was the best distraction I had and it stopped me from obsessing over things I didn't want to think about. But now, I'm at a low which is kinda like eating a meal that smells amazing but tastes of nothing, and it means I don't want to move and I don't want to do any work or talk to anyone and, most relevant to this blog, I have no motivation and it's the most overwhelming 'cba' feeling almost all of the time. Which is hard, but I also want to clarify that I'm fine and not in danger and it's just something that makes daily life that bit harder, especially school. So this summer will also be about finding my motivation again, in the same way I spent my summer two years ago before I started year 11.
All that along with the dreaded personal statement, which is more BS than PS at this point. I got my first draft done last week and my tutor and I looked over it and both decided it was far too long (unsurprisingly really) and not focussed enough, the latter of which can be solved by more reading that subsequently makes the former a little more challenging. I've got a LOAD of books this Summer to read because I haven't read a whole load yet, if I'm honest. Like, I want to apply for an English Literature degree and I haven't read 1984. Surely there's at least three unspoken rules against that somewhere.
So, yeah, this is me closing off the 'Welp I tried' AS blog and did I try? Definitely yes, though I think I could've tried harder, which is something to spur me on next year. And now even more importantly: will there be a next year for these GYGs? I've been thinking long and hard about this and honestly I think it'd be heresy to not try and document the final chapter of my studies, kind of like the finale in an epic fantasy story (except the dragon is called AQA and occasionally can be quite nice). Also because I've got a sick title lined up already and it'd be a shame for it to go to waste.
Days until Year 13: 55 (not e-freaking-nough if you ask me)
Post length: long (pretendstobeshocked.gif)
...and she's back.
So, uh, this is pretty weird. In case you've forgotten who the hell I am (because it has been nearly five months since we last spoke, so I'll forgive you if you have), I'm Meghan and my first year of A-Levels has been an absolute rollercoaster with more down-y bits than uppy ones, and this is the long-awaited finale to a sub-par Grow Your Grades blog.
So, this year has been.. something. There's been highlights: attending a UNIQ summer school last week at Oxford, work experience at a grammar school, days out with friends old and new, university open days and other good stuff, but there's also been hard stuff, too. I suppose this is why the blog got put on hold, yano, there was just stuff. Mental health stuff, relationship stuff, job stuff, personal stuff, tsr-kept-crashing-and-deleting-all-my-posts stuff, but above all, school stuff, which was also largely impacted by the aforementioned stuff. Everything works in a chain: my personal life affects my academic life, and my blog is reliant on my academic life to be at least pseudo-successful for that blog to also be successful. And if one aspect isn't particularly successful, like my mental health for example, then the rest just falls through.
Although, when I say 'fall through', I actually mean 'Doesn't align with the sky-high expectations I have of myself', so while nothing has objectively crashed and burned just yet, sometimes it feels like everything has. Which isn't true!! But... still. You can't help what you feel n that.
Like, for example, I wasn't -- and I'm not -- happy with my mocks. I got AAB with the B in English, which, objectively, is great!! Like, i know, rationally, those are far from bad grades. But I was really upset and angry at myself and all this other (sarcasm alert!!) unbelievably healthy stuff, and it wasn't just because it was a B, cos if I got a B in French I'd be happy, but it was because it was a B in English and I'd been getting As all year and I kindasortamaybe might apply to Oxbridge to do English so it really made me question my ability. Like landing on a bad space in one of those naff boardgames primary school teachers get out to make maths 'fun', it really knocked me back a few spaces (that sounded so much better in my head I swear). So here's to Meghan hopefully getting decent predicted grades
(have missed this emoji ngl)Anyway, felt like this update was necessary for gaining closure at the end of my year 12 journey. I hope you're all doing well and if you'd like to comment below on how you're hanging (I stg if someone puts 'upside down' I'm leaving n never coming back) and what you're planning on doing over the summer cos I'd love to read them all n catch up n stuff. Have missed this, not gonna lie.
For my summer, I've got a lot of work to do. Like, I was planning on doing a fair bit before I got lumbered with two coursework essays and a pile of French to do (okay maybe I did miss seven days of college galavanting around the country for uni outreach days). so yeah I've got enough work to warrant making a timetable to make sure it gets done, and that's not even considering the revision I want to start on because, I'm gonna be honest ever since mocks ended (and they literally ended mid-May time) I've been seriously slacking, especially in history. I've gone on about my history teacher before and, don't get me wrong, he's a great guy (and he's also said he's gonna predict me an A* so I probs shouldn't complain) but when I say his teaching style doesn't work for me, I mean 'I have absolutely no motivation to read textbook extract after textbook extract and make notes in silence so I stare into space and do nothing'. This has led to two problems: 1.) when we have essays set, it doesn't just mean I have to write the essay, it also means I have to write all the notes then the essay because I don't' half-arse essays (despite what this blog has led you to believe), and 2.) I only have decent notes for half of the Russia we've done so far. To reiterate, I only have half the Russia notes and this is very very bad. Hence why I will be the only one in my year group who returns to college without a tan because I've spent my holiday working.
Me slacking off has also been due to my terrible, terrible motivation these past few months. Now I'm not gonna get too into my personal life because quite frankly no one's here for that, but I've mentioned a few times I struggle with my mental health which kinda comes in waves. I'll go through stages where I'm anxious all the time and then I'll go through stages where I'm sad all the time and they both make life difficult in their own ways. But when I'm anxious, like I was during my GCSEs, it's like plugging a 12 volt battery into an outlet only built for 5 volts (dear physics readers, do forgive any scientific inaccuracies I want to study books for a living). So last year, I did so much work because it was the best distraction I had and it stopped me from obsessing over things I didn't want to think about. But now, I'm at a low which is kinda like eating a meal that smells amazing but tastes of nothing, and it means I don't want to move and I don't want to do any work or talk to anyone and, most relevant to this blog, I have no motivation and it's the most overwhelming 'cba' feeling almost all of the time. Which is hard, but I also want to clarify that I'm fine and not in danger and it's just something that makes daily life that bit harder, especially school. So this summer will also be about finding my motivation again, in the same way I spent my summer two years ago before I started year 11.
All that along with the dreaded personal statement, which is more BS than PS at this point. I got my first draft done last week and my tutor and I looked over it and both decided it was far too long (unsurprisingly really) and not focussed enough, the latter of which can be solved by more reading that subsequently makes the former a little more challenging. I've got a LOAD of books this Summer to read because I haven't read a whole load yet, if I'm honest. Like, I want to apply for an English Literature degree and I haven't read 1984. Surely there's at least three unspoken rules against that somewhere.
So, yeah, this is me closing off the 'Welp I tried' AS blog and did I try? Definitely yes, though I think I could've tried harder, which is something to spur me on next year. And now even more importantly: will there be a next year for these GYGs? I've been thinking long and hard about this and honestly I think it'd be heresy to not try and document the final chapter of my studies, kind of like the finale in an epic fantasy story (except the dragon is called AQA and occasionally can be quite nice). Also because I've got a sick title lined up already and it'd be a shame for it to go to waste.
I hope all of you have a great summer!
Pour souls who have committed to being tagged:
(if you're also slightly masochistic, lemme know if you wanna be tagged- or removed, for that matter)
(if you're also slightly masochistic, lemme know if you wanna be tagged- or removed, for that matter
)Spoiler
hey, i did a year of alevels before switching to BTECs, just wanted to say please from day 1 use whatever revision technique (example: revision cards) as it will help you big time because there is ridiculous amount of content, wish i had done this
Hope you have a good summer!tags didn't work
i'm sorry your mh hasn't been great, you can always talk to us on the gc if you ever need to
AAB is really good, you should be very proud english lit will be the death of me i swear
i'm sorry your mh hasn't been great, you can always talk to us on the gc if you ever need to
AAB is really good, you should be very proud
english lit will be the death of me i swearQuick Reply
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