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The Surprise 18th

Posted on by mymidnightexpressions

This week has been so hectic, not just in school work but outside school as well. One of my oldest friends parents planned a surprise party for her birthday, so we tried hard all week to pretend that we weren’t going to be doing anything for her birthday and I’m not going to lie, I nearly spilled the beans when we were walking to school! My friends and I got to hide behind her gazebo and when she walked inside we shouted happy birthday and let out lots of party poppers. I was glad that she had no idea that we had planned a surprise party for her 18th and she thoroughly enjoyed burning her sociology folder, the subject she hated and dropped at the end of year 12, LOL.

My first whole week of year 13 has been busy and hectic due to the workload not only from teachers but from completing our UCAS application which includes our personal statement. I gave my first draft of my personal statement to my form tutor on Tuesday and she’s commented on what I need to improve on, which is quite a lot, so I’m planning on completing my second draft tomorrow. I know I can’t complete a personal statement in a week but I really can’t wait for this UCAS process to be over. I have a considerable amount of homework and wider reader I have to look forward to this weekend. I’ve gotten used to people asking me about my situation with my family in Manchester and me staying with my uncle, which makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable when I’m asked because it reminds me of how much I miss them.

This post is quite short but I really hope that you have a had a productive and enjoyable week. Please comment below what you’ve been up to!

Omone 😀

Packing Up

Posted on by mymidnightexpressions

I am so excited right now because it’s my birthday of Sunday and I’ll be turning 17!☺️🎉🎈 Although it might not be a great time to celebrate my 17th birthday because my family are currently preparing to move out of our current flat. It was quite a surprise when I found out we were moving out 3 weeks ago even though I knew my mum didn’t like how small our home was and the way things always broke e.g.the taps. Last year we were moving from our old house to the place we’re still currently in and we’ve only been in our current home for around 10 months, so not even year. I’ve moved houses several times throughout secondary school but this this the first time I’ve lived at a place for under a year. The main reason why my mum decides to move is due to the cost of houses especially when you live in an affluent area like the town I live in.

It’s hard when you’re a single mother, who has to provide for 2 kids especially when you live in a pretty posh town. We would have moved to Manchester last year if it wasn’t for my A-Levels but right now my mum is seriously considering moving to Manchester which is 4 hours away. I’m glad we’re not going to Manchester because I would miss my friends way too much. The main reason why we aren’t moving to Manchester now is because I’ll be going to university next year and I’ve already started the university application in school and she doesn’t want to do anything that could stop that process.

I’ve not really told my friends about the reasons why my family move houses a lot, I usually say it’s because “We want to move to a bigger house” or “My mum didn’t really like our last house, things just kept breaking”, these reasons were somewhat true but I didn’t want to tell them that it was because we couldn’t afford the rent or eviction. I’m not a person who really shares personal information about myself or share information about my home life because sometimes I’m unsure of how I feel about it myself. Most of my friends have lived the same home all their lives and even though I know that moving houses is common, when you do it too many times it starts to have negative effects on you.  I don’t really talk to my friends about things that are happening at home for several reasons but I just getting away from it by spending time with them.

I hope you guys have been having an awesome week so please comment below on what you’ve been up to. Also, I’ve been thinking of maybe doing a Q&A blog post so please tell me what you think about that!

Have an awesome weekend guys,

Omone 🙂

The Critical Investigation

Posted on by mymidnightexpressions

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 

University?!

Posted on by mymidnightexpressions

Even though coming back to school for 5 weeks wasn’t the best thing that happened to me this week, it has been a pretty Exciting. In my last 2 lessons on Monday we started the UCAS process, which is where you send applications to university, and began to browse through universities that we wanted to go to. We were also given booklets about what type of university we want to go to which has to be completed by July 15th.

On Tuesday, my year went to a trip to a university convention in Bedfordshire University, which took us way too long to get there than I expected. Unsurprisingly, we were the only school who had to wear our sixth form uniforms while other schools came in their ordinary clothes because as our head teacher says “you are representing our school” *sigh*.There were talks on different subjects you could take at university and there was a fair where different universities had stands with their representatives. I got the chance to watch 3 talks by university professors which were criminology, psychology and forensic science, which were all interesting. I’ve made up the decision that I will defiantly be doing psychology at university beacuse I enjoyed the psychology talk with the professor and I genuinly liked the topics in the course. I was also lucky enough to pick up a few prospectuses from universities I might apply to e.g. Sussex, Surrey, Warwick, Queen Mary etc. These Universities have high entry requirements like all A’s or 2 A’s and a B grade but due to their popularity and great facilities, I can see why.

In the next few days, I made an effort to research universities and to note down opening days for universities I’m interested in. I used useful websites like UCAS, uni stats and university league tables to narrow down my search due to few factors like student satisfaction, entry requirements, distance and accommodation. My friend told me today how important it was to visit universities before you totally decide which one’s you’re going to apply for beacuse different universities give off different vibes. I have had my eye on these 6 universities in particular: Surrey, Nottingham, Loughborough, Leeds, Exeter and Southampton but ultimately I need to choose 5 to apply to. I’m excited but nervous at the same time because this time next year I would have left sixth form and picked which university I wanted to go to. Time really does go quickly…

Please tell me what you’ve been up to this week and I hope you have a lovely weekend!

Omone 🙂

My Much-Needed Break

Posted on by mymidnightexpressions

Technically, I’ve been relaxing for just over a week because my exams have ended however, I have to go back to school this Monday 😢. I’m so happy that I had a week off before returning to school because I don’t have to worry about studying, homework, essays, UCAS or anything. Most people say that doing A-levels was the worst time of their lives due to stress and the humongous workload you’re given and sadly I’d have to agree. You might think that doing only 4 subjects would make it easier to cope with however, there is so much work and lots of content you need to know for the exams/coursework and especially for subjects that have a lot of essay writing e.g. psychology and biology. Most of my friends are having a hard time keeping up with all the work in sixth form and they even say they hate sixth form. One of the reasons a lot of people in my year hate sixth form besides the stress is the fact that some teachers still treat us like 12 year olds but I’m not going to lie because most of the boys in my year are extremely immature so the teachers have to treat them like children. Most of them joke about not getting the grades to move on to sixth form next year, because you need to get 3 D grades to move onto year 13, and lets just say that I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t get the grades to stay in sixth form.

I, however, have been trying my best to keep my head above the waters so I don’t drown myself in the stress of all the work we’ve had to endure this whole academic year. I think it’s pointless that we have to come back to school for the last 5 weeks to start our A2 course and our university application process, why couldn’t they just let summer begin now? I must say though, this week is getting even better because my brother is on a school trip to France so I don’t have to deal with his annoying habits until Monday, which is when he returns. My family and I are moving to another house in about 4 weeks so lately my mother has been doing some small packing so we don’t have to rush when the time gets closer. I’m just going to carry on doing what I love to do in my spare which is basically listening to music, watching films, TV shows and anime until I resume school.

I hope you guys have been having a fantastic week and please comment and tell me what you’ve been up to this week!

Omone 🙂

1 exam to go!

Posted on by mymidnightexpressions

I’ve done 6 out I the 7 AS exams I have to do this year and my last exam is in two weeks! On Tuesday, I had my psychology paper 2 exam which was very similar to paper 1 in the fact that it was neither easy or very hard, but it went OK. Psychology is one of the subjects I want to do really well in because I want to study psychology in university and then become a forensic psychologist, which deals with prisoners and crimes. I thought the 12 marker in my paper 2 exam went much better than the two 12 markers I had to do for the paper 1 exam so I’m quite happy about that.

Yesterday, I had my biology breadth exam paper which is basically tick boxes and short answer questions for those who don’t do AS biology. I must say, it went better than I thought even though OCR (the exam board) tried to add in some weird questions. You’d probably think that an exam made up of tick boxes and short answer questions would be pretty easy but there are always questions that are about tiny details that no one would have thought to revise e.g. What is the length of a mitochondria? 0.2nm, 0.8nm, 1.2nm or 0.02nm. Like, who would have bothered to remember that? Also, I can’t believe I put 1.6 million as an answer to the length of DNA. After the exam, I was discussing answers with one of my friends and I told her I put 1.6 million for that question and she looked at me as if I was crazy. I think she got 0.7 or something. LOL. Overall, it wasn’t a bad exam and I’m glad that the exam is over because I usually do worse in my biology breadth exam paper. On the 7th June, I have my second biology paper which is long answer questions.

However, half term in next week so I’m planning on going over all the topics I’ve done for biology so I can get a better mark and hopefully that pushes my grade up overall. I’m also going to be taking a break from revision, since that’s all I’ve done these last few weeks, and catch up on my favourite TV shows and anime. I’m currently watching Sailor Moon Sailor Stars and I’m 30 episodes into Hunter x Hunter!

Tell me what you’ve been up to this week and how your exams have been going!

Omone 🙂