exams

Yay, Half Term!

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Finally, I have a bit of a break from school! Although, I have lots of homework to do, a presentation to complete and I need to start preparation for the real exam. I’ve completed my biology homework which took some time and I’ve still got to complete my presentation on Scottish identity for media studies. I don’t really know why I picked Scottish identity because for one of our case studies in media studies we have to explore the identity of a group of people or a place. I’m the only one in my class doing a place but I’ve always found Scotland quite interesting. I’ve got mocks coming up in Easter for all my subjects which is fun🙄 but these exams are really good practice for the real exams in June so their not pointless or unbeneficial. 

I finished Harry and Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Saturday and it feels so strange not having anything to read. The books were soo good, if you haven’t read the book, I really advice that you do even if you’ve seen the films. I’m think of rereading all the books or maybe the 3rd, 4th and 6th book because those are my favourites. I probably wont reread then anytime soon because I’m concentrating on studying. 

This week has gone pretty slowly in my opinion, but like I said, I’m glad it’s half term and I can have a bit of a rest. Even my head of sixth form said we should have a break because when we come back, there’s going to be a lot of work and revision to do. We have about 13 weeks (excluding holidays) of school before our exams!

I hope you guys have been having a good week and please tell me what you’ve been up to☺️

Omone 😀

New Years + Mock Exams

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Welcome, lovely people, to 2017! 2016 has been a crazy year and I hope you have had a good year too. I spent the holidays with my mum and brother and other family members in Manchester. I had a great time, my mum made so much food on Christmas and It was so nice to see them again after 3 months. I spent New Years at church, where we waited like an hour to get the bus and to be honest we were on the verge of going home. I really enjoyed the church service but I was really upset that I had to leave in 2 days. I had a marvelouse time and I can’t wait to see them soon again. 

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been so busy! I’ve had to revise for my mock exams through the holidays and they start next Tuesday. I’ve been doing LOTS of revision each day and most of it was spent doing biology revision because I have a lot of topics to get through for my exam. I’ve also read 2 Harry Potter books while I was with my family which was great. One of my friends in my tutor group today said that she found the exam hard (she did in yesterday) and she is a very smart girl, so I really do hope I do well in the exam on Tuesday. 

My audition for a drama theatre in London is in 2 weeks and think I am prepared. By prepared I mean that I’m hoping for the best! I haven’t had much time to practice but I’m still going to go for the experience and just to have fun as well. I hope you guys have had a great start to 2017 and I’ll see you guys next week.

Omone 😀

My first week of year 13

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My first week of year 13 (more like 2 days) went OK. I actually missed the first day of year 13, which was Tuesday, because I was still in Manchester and I wouldn’t be back until Wednesday. We got the day off on Wednesday so we could complete our personal statements and our UCAS applications which I still haven’t finished. The first draft of my personal statement is now due in on Monday because my awesome form tutor gave us the weekend to complete it. I am currently applying to do psychology at university and I’ve been using The Next Chemist’s post about tips on writing your personal statement to help me with mine, so check it out if you’re currently doing your personal statement!  Read More

AS Results

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Thursday was the day I had to collect my AS results. These results (in my sixth form at least) indicated which year 12s were going to remain in sixth form because you have to get at least 3 D grades to move on to year 13. I took a coach all the way from Manchester, where I was spending my holidays, to collect my exam results the following day. In all honesty, all through summer I wasn’t really thinking about my exam results until the day before we collected our results. Only when I would really think about the consequences of getting bad grades and not making it into year 13 that I could feel my stomach turn and a jolt of worry would fill my chest. On Wednesday, I spent the last few minutes before I went to bed praying and convincing myself that I would get good results and I wouldn’t be kick out of sixth form. When I woke up in the morning of results day I decided that I would fast till noon even though we could start collecting and opening our results at 11am.

I entered the hall with my two friends who both unfortunately got slips on top of their results envelope telling them to go to the sixth form centre right away. You only get slips with that note on top of your results envelope if you didn’t get good grades and you needed to talk about your next step or if you’re going to be kicked out of sixth form. I’m quite grateful that I didn’t have one. I was left on my own to open my results, which i believe is better because in my experience you’re less nervous and people don’t right away ask what grades you got. I opened the envelop and saw:

  • Geography – D
  • Media Studies – A
  • Psychology – C
  • Biology – D

Hmmm…. well I’m glad I got 1 A. Getting a D is geography didn’t even surprise me because I hate that subject and I knew no matter how many flash cards I had made and how much revision I had done, I wouldn’t get a good grade. I was told by my form tutor, who is also one of my media teachers, that I was one of the only two people who did media studies that got an A. I am a little disappointing with my psychology and biology result but I’m honestly still willing to put in the work in year 13 to get better grades and get into good universities. Another reason why I’m dropping geography is that the grades that you get in your geography exam at the end of year 12 count to year 13 whereas, only the exams at the end of year 13 count for psychology and biology. Thankfully, my two friends that I went to collect my results with that were told to go to the sixth form centre were able to stay in sixth form while others in my year were not so lucky…

If you are in year 12, I hope you got the grades you wanted and if you’re in year 13 I hope you got into the university of your choice!

Omone 😀

Last Sports Day

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I arrived  back to my current town on Tuesday night but funnily enough I nearly missed my second coach beacuse I was asking the cashier of a store how much millions (the sweets) cost. In the corner of my eye, I noticed my coach at the station, I grabbed my luggage and ran for the coach before I thought it would leave without me. It was alright beacuse the coach driver didn’t even leave his seat to board people into the coach yet and he was so nice as well. The whole journey from Manchester to where i live took about 6 hours and I boarded a coach, took a train and a taxi, all by myself. I’m now current  living with my Uncle, while my mum and brother are in Manchester. The real reason I came back from Manchester is to finish school beacuse we’ve started our application to university and I generally didn’t want to miss 2 weeks of school. The thing is, I hadn’t missed a day of school last year or this year until this Monday and Tuesday beacuse I was in Manchester. I’m quite passionate about my attendance in school, I don’t know why…but I just am. I have had such a good attendance throughout the whole of  secondary school that one of my closest friends was very surprised that I didn’t come into school Monday and Tuesday. I didn’t have that much work to catch up on which is good, even though we’ve sort of started the A2 course.

Today was my last day attending sports day in my school which is quite sad beacuse I participated in an event (track or field) throughout secondary school. This year, I didn’t participate in any events but my form still won sports day overall for year 12s which is brilliant. It was nice to see the whole school outside, representing and cheering on their forms participants. Overall, my house came 3rd, which is really good especially because I moved to a new form in the begging of year 12. This time next year, I will be on summer holiday beacuse we finish school in May in year 13 which means an extended summer,I can’t wait!

I hope you guys have been having a good week so please comment what you’ve been up to this week 🙂

Omone

Moving Out (My 17th Birthday)

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Woo!🎉 Today I turn 17 years old although, I had to wake up at 2 am so my family could catch a coach to the Victoria coach station to go to Manchester. The whole journey took about 7 hours. We’ll be currently living at my Uncles until we find another place to live in and I could potentially be missing quite a few days of school because Manchester is about 4hr away from where my school is. Me missing school isn’t necessarily too bad because we only have 2 weeks of school left however, we’re starting a big project in Biology and starting to write our UCAS application for university which I don’t want to miss out on.  

To be honest, I really can’t believe I’m 17. I can get my drivers license like one of my closest friends has and then I can get a car. My Uncle in America last year said that he’d pay for my first car when I turn 18, so I really hope he keeps his promise! Ultimately he became one of my favourite Uncles because he bought me my iPhone 6 and my brother’s iPad mini. 

Another thing that is speacial about today is that it is Swoozies birthday!! He’s one of my favourite, if not favourite, YouTubers and it’s awesome to share the same birthday as him. If you don’t know who he is, check out his YouTube channel here:https://m.youtube.com/user/swoozie06. He does videos and animations in funny stories (which is mostly about girls) and life experiences. I wished him a happy birthday on Twitter so I hope he sees my tweet! 

I hope you guys have been having a wonderful day and please comment what you’ve been up to😊🎉🎈

The Critical Investigation

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This week has mainly consisted of starting the A2 course in school and looking over the topics we’re going to cover in year 13. I must say that some subjects have less interesting topics next year *cough*geography*cough*, but overall I’m quite exited to start the new course.

In psychology, we are going to cover aggression, relationships, biological rhythms etc. in A2 which sounds really interesting, mostly beacuse these are things that affect our everyday lives and you can notice these behaviours around you. Right now we are doing biological rhythms which is mostly about sleep, why we sleep and other biological rhythms like hibernation and the menstrual cycle. I know it sounds a bit boring, but trust me, it is really engaging. I’ve always found psychology so interesting but maybe it’s beacuse I’ve always been keen to know why people do certain things in their lives. I guess beacuse i’m so keen to know these things, it’s probably why I want to do psychology in university.

Even though the psychology A2 course will be really interesting there’s another subject that I’m doing that is really getting me excited for year 13 and that subject is media studies. In the course we have to do a critical investigation which is where we have to write a 2000 word essay on a topic/issue in the media that we’d like to do. This leads to something called the linked production where we have to create a documentary, magazine, film opening or trailer on the topic we chose for our critical investigation. For instance, if you chose to do your critical investigation on the representation of women in the media, you could do a music video or the opening sequence to a documentary on the subject of the representation of women in the media. The reason why this really excites me is beacuse I get to choose a topic that I am passionate about and I can easily convey a message to other people. Some people have been actually thinking about doing the representation of women in the media while others in my class have no clue what topic they’re going to do but, I’ve been thinking about doing my critical investigation about race and discrimination in the media and for the linked production I was thinking of maybe doing the beginning of a documentary on the representation of race in the media. I haven’t made my mind up completely on what topic I will do but I still have some time to develop my ideas before we start planning the production. I’m just really excited to see what the outcome and the production will be like and when I’ve done the production, of course i’ll share it with you guys!

I hope you have had a great week and please comment on what you’ve been up to this week! 🙂

Omone 

No More Exams…Until Next Year!

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Yes! I’ve officially finished all my exams for this year. I had my last exam for this academic year on Tuesday, which was the biology depth paper (long answer questions) and I must say, the exam paper was sort of weird. I was expecting more content of biology instead of analysing experiments and solving maths questions. I felt like there wasn’t much actual biology from the textbooks and there was more tables and graphs. Due to the fact that students don’t do coursework any more in class, I can understand why they’d add more practical experiments onto the paper however, I don’t believe that these type of questions really test your knowledge in biology. There were lots of topics that we’ve learned that were missed out on the exam paper just to put a whole page of the method and results of some student carrying out an experiment.

Overall, the exam wasn’t bad at all but there was one question that I couldn’t really get my head around until the end of the exam. The question was looking for chi-squared and I honestly had no clue what that was. There was a table with the chi squared equation that I couldn’t figure out until I went back to the question in the end of the exam. I figured out the answer to that question but there was a second table that shows if there was/wasn’t a significant difference. At that point I literally had to guess if there was or wasn’t a significant difference because I didn’t know what that table was actually showing!

Since my last exam, I have just been chilling out since have one week left until I have to go back to school. Right now, I’m just praying that I get excellent grades and that I get the minimum grades I need to get into year 13. It feels amazing not to have to worry about exams and if I’ve done enough revision. I’ve been spending my week watch TV shows, listening to music, writing etc. When I get back to school our A2 course will begin which counts to our exam next year and we will start the UCAS process for university e.g. writing a personal statement. I hope you guys have been having a good week and have a great weekend!

Omone 

I’m Nearly There

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I’m so glad it’s Friday today because I’ve done 4 out of the 7 AS exams so far,which means I only have 3 exams left. My first exam was on Monday and it was psychology paper 1, which I believe was way easier than the specimen paper we were given in class, however I wasn’t expecting the two 12 markers because it kind of messed up my timing and I don’t  think wrote enough for each 12 marker .

On Tuesday I had my geography paper 1 exam, which I must admit I didn’t revise very much for because I really don’t like the subject and I wanted to focus more on revising more my other 3 subjects that I’m going to take next year. I really didn’t like geography throughout this year and you can find out why in my post My First Personal Post…. I revised as much as I could but right now I’m just hoping the grade boundaries are low!😂

I had my media studies exam yesterday and the questions were very similar to the ones I’ve done in class so I found the exam quite easy. Out of the two 32 markers we were given, I chose the one that was about consuming media in new technologies because I thought it was more straight forward and there was more to write about with this question than the other which was about media institutions. Last week, I was told that I got an A in my media coursework so I only have to get 61/80 in the exam to get an A in the subject overall.

Today, I had my geography skills exam paper that only lasted 1hr and it went better than I thought if I’m being honest. I’ve got 2 exams next week, psychology paper 2 on Monday and biology (breadth paper) on Thursday. Good luck if you have any exams coming up and tell me what you’ve been up to this week!

Study Leave

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Today, I’ve officially started study leave which means constant revision and I probably won’t leave my house for about 4 weeks because I’m going to be revising for my exams. I have 4 exams next week, psychology paper 1 on Monday, geography 1 on Tuesday, media studies on Thursday and geography 2 on Friday. This weekend is going to be intense! I’ve got to get at least 3 D grades to stay in sixth form which I confidently say I can achieve in the end of the day. I don’t really feel stressed out as some of my friends about the exams but I’ve really got to focus on studying the next few weeks so I can get good results. 

Good Luck! If you have any upcoming exams whether it’s GCSE, A Levels, university exams etc. and I hope you achieve the grades you want! Comment if you’ve got any exams coming up and how you’re going about your revision! Other than that I hope you have a wonderful day and a great weekend!