Tuesday 17 January 2012
Saturday 14 January 2012
The past few days have been stressful. I won't talk about everything that's gone wrong this week, but I will talk about yesterday.
I've always been one to deceive myself that, by merely filling it, I'm putting my time to good use. I have a tendency in my revision sessions to excuse my pen from its note taking for 30 seconds, and let it conceive a cute little cartoon cyclops man with a lot of piercings at the bottom right hand corner of the page. I start to get acquainted with my cyclops son, and I have to bond with him by colouring him in. Before I know it I'm emotionally attached, and my darling son needs a body or he won't get anywhere in life. Obviously the body needs a lot of time and concentration, and the notes can fend for themselves - there's enough of them... ish. I check what time it is, and oh look - time's up for this session!
Fortunately I'm not quite as bad as I used to be. I managed to get a fair bit of learning done over the past few weeks - at least, that's what I stupidly led myself to believe.
Last week I asked my Philosophy teacher if I could email her some practice exam answers I'd done over Christmas so she could mark them. She kindly said yes, which I'll say now I do appreciate because I realise she's a teacher and teachers are busy people. It was good of her to go out of her way for me.
I did about 10 of these exam answers, and I sent them all to her. I've since done a few more which I'll just have to believe are decent even if they're not. Yesterday she called me to her classroom to give me feedback, and I'll be honest: I was crushed.
I was cocky enough to think beforehand that they were no lower than C grade material, maybe even B. I'd put a lot of effort into them. But oh no. Nowhere near.
Believe it or not, I really have been trying with this subject. I've been doing tonnes of background reading. I really wanted a B in this resit. It would've completed me. But I've come to accept now that that's just not gonna happen.
For what it's worth though, I don't know if I can totally trust her verdicts. Two of the exam answers were in fact just A-grade answers written by two students from another class and put into my own words. They'd been marked by my other Philosophy teacher, and she'd given them an A* and an A respectively. My Philosophy teacher gave them a C and a D. I'm losing faith in just about everything these days...
I don't know how all these people come out with As at A level, some of them without even trying. If the marking system wasn't so arbitrary maybe there'd be less ruined lives. Like, if you put your opinion in a Philosophy exam, it doesn't matter if it's a breakthrough in all human thought or whatever - you will get 0. If you deviate from the dictate of the mark scheme, you're down the bog. It's so damn strict: you must not mention Irenaeus in paragraph one - he has to be in paragraph two. And you must not mention Bertrand Russell in paragraph two - he has to be in paragraph three. And the first sentence of your essay has to be identical to the following mile-long sentence, word for word...
I can't be bothered to launch into a massive rant, even though I vaguely feel like it. But I just don't trust the way things are done at my school. It's a crap school, with only a handful of good teachers. I had one teacher last year who I hope gets a bloody good salary because they sure as hell deserve it. One of the best teachers I've ever had: such a friendly person, knew what they were talking about, not at all judgemental, even still knows my name! :D I actually wish I could tell them how great a teacher they are, but I won't cuz like, poo. You really don't come across a teacher like that very often.
I'm kicking myself for nourishing the fantasy that I would get 2 Bs at A level. What I'm aiming for now is 2 Cs. The Philosophy exam's this Tuesday, and the Law exam's on the Wednesday the week after that.
Oh I don't think I've mentioned it in this blog (not that it matters cuz only two people and a Ziggy read this): I resigned from McDonald's. Phail.
I've always been one to deceive myself that, by merely filling it, I'm putting my time to good use. I have a tendency in my revision sessions to excuse my pen from its note taking for 30 seconds, and let it conceive a cute little cartoon cyclops man with a lot of piercings at the bottom right hand corner of the page. I start to get acquainted with my cyclops son, and I have to bond with him by colouring him in. Before I know it I'm emotionally attached, and my darling son needs a body or he won't get anywhere in life. Obviously the body needs a lot of time and concentration, and the notes can fend for themselves - there's enough of them... ish. I check what time it is, and oh look - time's up for this session!
Fortunately I'm not quite as bad as I used to be. I managed to get a fair bit of learning done over the past few weeks - at least, that's what I stupidly led myself to believe.
Last week I asked my Philosophy teacher if I could email her some practice exam answers I'd done over Christmas so she could mark them. She kindly said yes, which I'll say now I do appreciate because I realise she's a teacher and teachers are busy people. It was good of her to go out of her way for me.
I did about 10 of these exam answers, and I sent them all to her. I've since done a few more which I'll just have to believe are decent even if they're not. Yesterday she called me to her classroom to give me feedback, and I'll be honest: I was crushed.
I was cocky enough to think beforehand that they were no lower than C grade material, maybe even B. I'd put a lot of effort into them. But oh no. Nowhere near.
Believe it or not, I really have been trying with this subject. I've been doing tonnes of background reading. I really wanted a B in this resit. It would've completed me. But I've come to accept now that that's just not gonna happen.
For what it's worth though, I don't know if I can totally trust her verdicts. Two of the exam answers were in fact just A-grade answers written by two students from another class and put into my own words. They'd been marked by my other Philosophy teacher, and she'd given them an A* and an A respectively. My Philosophy teacher gave them a C and a D. I'm losing faith in just about everything these days...
I don't know how all these people come out with As at A level, some of them without even trying. If the marking system wasn't so arbitrary maybe there'd be less ruined lives. Like, if you put your opinion in a Philosophy exam, it doesn't matter if it's a breakthrough in all human thought or whatever - you will get 0. If you deviate from the dictate of the mark scheme, you're down the bog. It's so damn strict: you must not mention Irenaeus in paragraph one - he has to be in paragraph two. And you must not mention Bertrand Russell in paragraph two - he has to be in paragraph three. And the first sentence of your essay has to be identical to the following mile-long sentence, word for word...
I can't be bothered to launch into a massive rant, even though I vaguely feel like it. But I just don't trust the way things are done at my school. It's a crap school, with only a handful of good teachers. I had one teacher last year who I hope gets a bloody good salary because they sure as hell deserve it. One of the best teachers I've ever had: such a friendly person, knew what they were talking about, not at all judgemental, even still knows my name! :D I actually wish I could tell them how great a teacher they are, but I won't cuz like, poo. You really don't come across a teacher like that very often.
I'm kicking myself for nourishing the fantasy that I would get 2 Bs at A level. What I'm aiming for now is 2 Cs. The Philosophy exam's this Tuesday, and the Law exam's on the Wednesday the week after that.
Oh I don't think I've mentioned it in this blog (not that it matters cuz only two people and a Ziggy read this): I resigned from McDonald's. Phail.
Wednesday 4 January 2012
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