Clucking up some A*s! (hopefully)

09/02/20

I was wondering whether to update after I finish my last test on Tuesday or to just do one today, but I doubt much is going to happen between now and then so woohoo let's go.

I've finished up basically all my mocks apart from Bio paper 2. So far I'd say I'm quite confident on how it'll all turn out. Hmm maybe I'll a quick summary of each test...

Biology
Paper 1: Apparently most the questions were from the 2019 paper. Mostly just application and hardly any year 2 content. There were stupid amounts of practical questions and those weird questions on how to improve the method/reliability of this experiment, which I hate!

Paper 2: We'll see on Tuesday

Chemistry
Paper 1 (inorganic): More straight-forward than I thought tbh. I feel like a few of the multiple choice in the beginning were weird but apart from that the questions were just like the ones we did in class. There were no buffers tho .. so I couldn't even show off my Henderson-Hasselbach equation. The year 1 content was fine. Luckily it WAS all in my brain so that's a good sign!

Paper 2 (organic): There were hardly any organic synthesis questions, so all those reaction conditions I memorised were all for nothing. They asked some application questions to do with CFC radical formation and the ozone layer, which took me quite long to get ... and even now I'm pretty sure I messed up somewhere. I also missed a 1 mark question on a chromatography calculation. We had to find the Rf value for this amino acid but this little chicken obviously forgot to bring their ruler! I guessed 0.4 but apparently the answer was 0.34 so it wasn't massively off. There was a nice proton NMR question which took ages but fun to do!

Further maths
Most people found Pure easier than Applied but for me it was the other way round.

Paper 1 (pure): First test I did so I can't remember too much. The first question was a proof by induction question with recurrence relations, which I totally messed up. I did all the steps but couldn't do the final proof with the k+1. I never did a question like that before so I definitely need to do a little more practice on it. There was this other question to do with solving simultaneous equations using 3x3 matrices. I never realised that I could've just found the inverse on my calculator so I spent sooo long doing it by hand. Grr I was rushed for time on this paper too so it's just annoying. There were more questions to do with roots of polynomials and De Moivre's which I spent soo long revising so did fairly quickly. A few of the other questions were 'show that's but I wasn't able to get it in the right form, so hopefully I get method marks!

Paper 2 (mechanics): It was defo harder than stats. They gave us a pulley question which was horrible. It was to do with this ball in some resistive fluid and omg it just confused me a whole load. The worst bit was when the string breaks at which point I kinda gave up and made up a few random equations to do with GPE and KE. There was a 10 marker which I did in 5 minutes which actually saved soo much time. It was a question which stated that after the collision between a particle moving at speed u and a copy of the particle at rest, only 48%/58% (I'm not sure which it was) of the intial KE was kept. Work out the value of e. I was super happy when I got an exact answer of 0.4! The last mechanics question was to do with springs and everything was general.

Paper 2 (stats): Fairly normal questions. Chi-squared tests with contingency tables and a few simple ones. Some distribution questions with poisson, negative binomial and geometric. There was a question to do with a clown and how well he improved at throwing darts and the hypothesis test came back as he didn't improve.... idk I just found it quite funny. There was a question on PGFs and another one on the central limit theorem. Yh so stats was prolly the easiest of all the maths, which isn't that much of a surprise! I'm just glad that maths is over...


We've had study leave for the past week so we haven't had any lessons. Next week is also free even though I only have 1 exam on Tuesday. So after that I have around 2 weeks until school starts again. With my plan I decided that as soon as I do bio I'm going to start on my EPQ. I really need to motivate myself and I feel like this timetable thing really helped me. So on tuesday I'll make a smol action plan thing where I write down exactly what I need to finish doing on what day.

Yesterday was a cheat day for my revision stuff. I went out with my cousins to pizza hut which was quite nice. I felt like I was going to lay like 15 eggs afterwards tho. Pizza fills you up sooo quickly it's unreal. I watched a few more eps of Naruto too. I'm at the bit where Naruto summons the big ass toad. Hhhhh I love Jiraiya sooo much (even more so than Kakashi) he's soo hilarious! I've also been watching quite a few anime movies... but this has been more of a daily thing. After I finish up revision I 'treat' myself to an anime movie, which is a really relaxing way to end the day. Hehe maybe it's time for anime review



Moving on swiftly to song of the week because no one needs to endure my inner-weeb.


Hmmm not much other chicken stuff is going on I suppose. My parents are going off to some conference thing a mosque somewhere so I'll be home alone for a bit and I need to convince myself to do some bio revision. Tbh I did a lot of work for paper 1 so this is more of a recap, but nevertheless must be done. I'm not sure how I would've revised for paper 1 even if I knew the questions just because practical questions are stupid, so I'll probably decide on my approach to that today.

I also had my UCL interview which I forgot to talk about. I felt like it went bad-ish. The questions they asked were quite simple, so I mentioned good points but I'm not sure if I delivered it well. I have this annoying thing where when I realise I'm waffling I do it a whole lot worse and I felt like that's what happened. But meh at this point I'm just praying I get an offer but also don't really care as well!
Cambridge sent me this health assessment thing which I need to go to the GP to fill out. Apparently it costs £45 for a hospital stamp which is sooooo dumb because it requires no effort what so ever it's quite a lot of money.... like wtf do you need that for?
I'm also apparently going to go Sri Lanka this year after sooooo long! I kinda can't wait but it'll be after exams obviously so there's a lot to worry about before that. I get to meet my grandpa after sooo long so it's going to be soo funny when I have to speak to him because I totally forgot how to speak Tamil. Alas we can learn.

Ici est ma tagliste! Tell me if you wanna get added or removed


So that's about it for this week. I'll let you guys know how I get on with my EPQ and the last bio test next week. Wishing you guys the best for next week! Good luck!

It's great to hear positive things about the mocks! 'your name' is suchhh a good anime i loved it!! can't believe you got two weeks study leave! i didn't even get a day haha!
£45 for a stamp?!! rip off!! lol
Good luck for Biology paper 2!
(song of the week is pretty good but i spent a huge portion of this week listening to western pop- you should defo check out Run by Joji and Beautiful Faces by Declan Mckenna, so so so good!!)
ANYWAYYYS, have a good week!!!! <3

It's great to hear positive things about the mocks! 'your name' is suchhh a good anime i loved it!! can't believe you got two weeks study leave! i didn't even get a day haha!
£45 for a stamp?!! rip off!! lol
Good luck for Biology paper 2!
(song of the week is pretty good but i spent a huge portion of this week listening to western pop- you should defo check out Run by Joji and Beautiful Faces by Declan Mckenna, so so so good!!)
ANYWAYYYS, have a good week!!!! <3

I saw Declan live yesterday and it was incredible even if we were at the back

Well it's more like 1 week study leave but with a week holiday on the end. Still more than yours tho ,,, F how tf did you even survive without study leave?
Bio paper 2 was fine too! so it's all good good,but for most questions I felt like I wasn't giving enough points. For 3 markers I'd always get two solid points and the last one was just a meh. Well we'll see when we get it back!
Yeah it's kinda sad but kpop has been quite dry lately... even song of the week wasn't as big as a bop as I wanted it to be. I'll check them out ... coz my spotify playlist has defo got a little boring.
Have a great week too! <3

20/02/20

Hehe just 2s and 0s ... kinda cool. N e ways Imma keep this short because I don't have much time. I just didn't want to keep you guys in the dark and considering that almost 2 weeks has past since I made my last update ... yh I thought today was a good day to just talk about what I've been getting up to.

The whole reason why this post ain't going to be long is because I have to finish off this god damn EPQ. I don't regret doing it this late .. but the internal deadline in my head is for this holiday and I'm seriously nowhere close to finishing it off by that time. Call it bad time management or being lazy ... it's probably both those things but I just feel kinda sick of it. This passed week has been nothing but just typing out random useless stuff about why I decided to choose xyz to do and then talking about my aims and objectives ... just blurgh ... eww I hate it. My fingers are actively losing blood flow for the past week and it's just not looking good.

The whole project is due on the 16th of March so hopefully I should finish it by then.... it's just so much of a hassle + I have an interview coming up so it's all just getting out of hand. Sksksk let song of the week be Hug by seventeen because rn I just feel like I'm not doing anything useful and I'm wasting everyone's time! and I just want a hug from one person but they're soo far away

Meh I don't even want to reread all of this ... I probably made soo many mistakes and you probably don't have a clue on what I am actually talking about but ... ahh idc and I didn't wanna tag anyone coz no one really needs to read this. I guess its more of a way to stop my stress for a sec ....

Sorry for such a random update but dw I should complete this demon of a project by the end of next week. I just need to do my research and then my actual dissertation. Wish me luck! and to anyone else in the situation ... good luck tooo!

i know it's not me but i'll give you a hug
keep working hard, and that EPQ will hopefully come to an end hehe.
don't stress a lot and take a lot of breaks! health comes first!!
good luck for the interview and of course, the monstrous EPQ haha.
<3

Aaaaa hope you get the EPQ done soon! Do any of your offers take it into account?

Nope .. well not my cam offer. Still waiting for the UCL offer tho they kinda messed up my references and needed some verification stuff.

I don't regret taking the EPQ but rn I don't know why 'past'-me decided that this was a good idea! Well n it don't matter we still fighting!

haha our school makes it compulsory for us to take epq (even if you take 4 a-levels aaa kinda the reason that i dropped chemistry)
best of luck for UCL, it's mid march when they have to get back to you by isn't it?

grr i wish I’d seen this earlier,,,
here have all the hugs!!💕

whhaaaa compulsory epq .... gross. Idk if you've done yours or not ... but my advice (if I actually have the right to even give advice) would be to not leave everything till the last minute and do it on something you're actually interested about.

Well UCL are meant to give you your outcome 3 weeks after you do your interview. I did mine on the 4th so I should hear back by the 25th ... but with the reference problem it will prolly take longer - we keep waiting I guess.

I didn't expect anything less from a jumbo dumbo. But yh I've kinda calmed down so je n'ai plus besoin de tes calins .... hmmm I feel like I butchered the french but whatever....

Fwahhhhhhhhhhhhh I made a whole update just to accidentally click off last second. Grr I hate tsr!