A Little Failure

Starting Sixth Form College was a new experience. Hardly anyone in my classes had known me before, my classes were half an hour longer (Now lectures have reverted to 50 minutes, for which I am thankful!) and I could barely recognize many of my old classmates because they were wearing completely different headscarves.

Classes were going well. In Further Maths, we tackled C1 (Or, what I call, Enhanced GCSE), the splendidocious C2, and the devillish D1. In Physics, we looked at things you can't really see with the naked eye, or even eyes with glasses on. English Language was, of course, very language-y and we were building up to the coursework element of the course. And then there was Critical Thinking, where we had to think.

This being Sixth Form, from the first minute on we were being prepared for exams. Going through work on the syllabus, doing mock exams, and so forth. The Mocks passed and, boringly, I got As and a Physical B.

The solution to this was simple: work on Physics a bit more, and all else could happily take the hit. The January season of exams rode into play, and it was all exam rooms and revision and the after-exam questions of "What did you get for Question 4?" (The answer to this question is is "Either a correct or incorrect answer,"). I walked out of D1 thinking that I had royally screwed up the final question, the most significant question on that paper. I walked out of Physics unsure. My other papers I walked out on feeling fairly confident. 

Cue six weeks time for results day, giving the examiners time to read the scrawls of plenty of silly students. I could hardly wait to log in to the student network and find my results.

I wanted to hide in my room until the end of Time (and it hadn't even started yet). Or until I became a zombie and so didn't care any more.

I forced myself out of my room and down the stairs. Moth was there, wanting to know how I did. I said I got As. I couldn't force the rest of the words out that the last exam had gone really really very quite badly.

The words loosened a little bit as I took the twenty minute walk to college. I kept on telling myself that I had to face up to it. I still had solitude when I arrived at English, my first class of the day. However, it soon became a babble of excited students going "What did you get?" "How did you do?" and feeling proud of their Bs and Cs. I held back tears as I bluntly told the others about the 4 As and the other one.

Reactions generally went along the lines of "WTF happened there?!" Gradually over the day the upset cleared and my normal state of emotional indifference returned.

Walking to Critical Thinking that day was tough. I was very reluctant to go, but I told myself I had to. At the beginning of the class everyone was talking about their results. Even the teacher was perplexed at my result.

Normal life soon pervaded. The deadline for paying for resits was about a week afterwards. I went up to the Finance desk while the area was not very full. The lady on the desk recognised me as my mother's daughter - Moth being a member of staff there at the time. And because of that, I ended up going to speak to another lady at a different desk and having to wait in the now growing queue for the finance office. So I could get a £1.10 discount which promptly went towards a bottle of Sprite in the shop.

I accepted it all, got obsessed with the xkcd Time (which had started not long afterwards), and prepared for the resit and the other Critical Thinking exam with vigilance, going to extra sessions and so on. I made sure to ensure I was prepared for the other exam or I'd have to resit that in a year's time due to the abolishing of the January exams. I tackled those papers with determination.

The resit relented a C. The other paper - which was on arguing - didn't argue and handed away an A.

I Don't Know...

...how I got a B in Physics Unit 4. The paper was really evil in itself and should have been killed with fire.

(Still got a C overall in Physics, though, but that's fair enough considering the other grades)

This morning before going in I was all like this:

I slipped into my persona of confidence (who also has her own name but is still attached to me) and walked in and got my A*AC which I needed for my university.

Happy Results, one and all!

Large Font

I'm taking today off. Instead, take this page of large font writing.

Large fonts are typically used by students to disguise the fact that they have not written much. It is a fairly common happening in a school situation where a teacher does not specify the font and font size of a piece of work.

Teachers rarely ever specify these things. Especially not supply teachers.

For schoolwork I almost always use size 12. Other students will amp this up to 14, 16 or even 18. And a paragraph in size 12 looks diminished compared to these larger fonts so it will look as if I've done less.

And so about 1,500 words looks like just a 'beginning' to the work (that might be wanting about 4,000 words - and boy will they be shocked when you say this!) - the teacher is used to size 14. Two and a bit pages in 12 pt Times New Roman turns into 3 and a half pages of 14 pt Verdana (16 pt goes to 4 and a half). A significant difference.

So, teachers, make your text fonts standard. Before you really annoy someone.

A Question Of PE

Physical Education: welcome to the most trialing lesson there is.

Stick a load of 9 year olds together and get two of them to pick people in their class to be on their teams. What happens?

Well, somebody's got to be always last.

Get those teams to play football. What happens? Miss Always-picked-last is enthusiastic and wants to be part of it. Trouble is, she can't even kick the ball right, let alone pass it to someone else on her team, so she's usually left out of the action.

Try some rounders instead. What happens? Miss Always-picked-last rarely gets the chance to bat because of the sheer number of people on her team. She always misses anyway and she's slow around the posts so it doesn't really matter. And on field, her catching is mediocre and her throwing at the same level.

Okay, ditch the teams. Move onto badminton. Try a rally like this one:

Try it without any instruction on serving. What happens? Miss Always-picked-last misses the shuttlecock and then fails on serving several times before passing the shuttlecock over the net to the next person by hand, causing her enough embarrassment that would make her give up on sport if her unrealistically optimistic enthusiasm never got in the way.

The result of all this? One halfway-good game of cricket makes her think that she must be brilliant at this despite having played before with little success, and this leads her to give up time every week to go to an arranged group that was really supposed to be for people who were decent at this game. And then get disparaged when she found she wasn't all that good. Tch.

Cue high school. A larger range of activities, proper instruction in lessons, more time devoted to the skills in each sport rather than just playing it. And when they did play it, it was more common that the teachers did the team organizing themselves rather than letting two kids pick their groups. There were also a lot more times where teams weren't needed in the first place. It was better all around, and Miss Always-picked-last even spent time going to sporty clubs in her second year of high school (Dance, Trampolining, and Badminton). She had far more realistic expectations of her own abilities and could enjoy these activities as they stood.

The problem is, loads of schools don't have the space to host varying activities. Loads of schools don't have the equipment to bring a variety of both team and individual sports to the table of PE so that kids who have difficulties with the mainstream sports (which almost always are team sports and rely on the kid's classmates to be fair - which will never happen) can find something that they enjoy. PE as a lesson is often tailored for the kids who already are playing footie at the bottom of the playground, and doing extra activities, rather than those who don't do much extra. And a good proportion of those who don't do extra activities are driven in to school and spend their free time on video games and watching TV (or just sitting/standing around in the playground at school). And the other proportion are klutzes like me who do get exercise but who don't particularly perform well in sports for various reasons, and plenty of them are not impervious to that fact.

We have a problem with obesity at this very moment - and it's in kids as well as adults. And the answer to getting more kids to exercise, unfortunately, is not more PE, in the current state of the subject. It's better PE, and a change in parental attitude as well. Better PE means doing a variety of activities that will get kids interested and engaged, and will help less sporty kids find an activity they well may like. Not everything can be done in a school, of course, but you can be creative with the supplies you have, and focus on the techniques of each sport you can accommodate for. And finding an enthusiasm for a sport can lead to the kid going to extra activities. And the change in parental attitude? Walk the kids to school, don't drive them. (or in the case of high school pupils, let them walk by themselves) If this is an impossibility due to practical reasons (the school's more than a 45 minute walk away), then take a walk with the kids at some point every day, even if it's just 10 minutes. Get into the habit of walking daily, and the kids will too.

After all, a little exercise goes a long way.

The Horrors of Groupwork

One of the worst things to hear in a classroom is "I'm going to put you into groups," or the even worse one "Get yourselves into groups." From the exact second this is uttered, you know you are doomed, and nothing will save you now!

The first nightmare is the one of knowing who your teammates will be. If it's a "get yourselves into groups" situation, this becomes the most embarrassing and awkward situation ever. You had to drum up the courage to actually ask somebody, and if they rejected you for having the amount of people needed already, it would be even harder to approach the next person - you would go by familiarity with the person, with the most familiar person first.

What's worse: The teacher calling the class out on it, citing it as bullying that you're left out, while all the time you just want to hide in the corner, and you're wondering how it is bullying exactly because you're sure that you've had plenty of worse problems with people and most of the time you're happy to work by yourself anyway.

And working by yourself is what happens when you end up in a group who just want to chat about films all of the time and not do any work. In these cases, where the work can be done by one person, it invariably will be. Where you need the group to work (like if you're mostly observing them so that you can light them up appropriately later), but you're the kind of girl who has a problem just asking someone a simple question (see above), this is definitely not going to work for you. Ever.

And what is also not going to work for you is where the group is actually a decent one, but the person taking leadership is pressing everyone else for ideas and saying that they're doing all of the hard work. Instant guilt trip for the person whose social inadeptness (is that a word? Well, all words are made up, and so are the rules surrounding them, so why do I need to care?) obscures their path into suggesting an idea they are unsure of anyway, and actually makes them less likely to say anything.

In summary: Groupwork doesn't teach you anything that teachers want you to learn. Also, you don't want to work with the person who is always distracted by people in other groups talking to her, and invariably ends up in arguments because her interpretations of social interactions is on the plane r.(3i+2j+k)=13 whereas most people's social plane is r.(2i-j+4k)=-6.

So, kids, be glad you're not working with me.

An Accurate Portrayal of My Thoughts and Feelings in Lessons

Ahh, lessons. The times where you were made to do whatever was planned by the teacher, or else manage while chaos reigned. So, let's get on with today's class, shall we? This is my teacher voice.

Maths

Year 4: "Fractions fractions fractions! I LOVE fractions!"

Year 8: "Those two boys I have to sit in between are both jerks and I don't know why they have to bother me all the time,"

Year 9: "My teacher is just fantastic!"

Year 10: *helps Year 11s*

Year 11: "Cool, I got an A. What, one mark off A*? Damn!" *one re-mark later* "Yay, A*! Now all I have to do is try and ignore all of the people in my class and do something productive, even when they're right up in my face!

English

Year 1: "Seriously? It's like I can't read! This is so dull."

Year 3: "I before e except after c," "How does the 'i before e' rule explain the word science?" "Oh no, that's different!"

Year 5: "Yay, stories!"

Year 7: "They've got me down as a 4b, but I thought I was a level 5..."

GCSE: "This class is a nightmare! Get me away from (some of) these people!"

AS-Level: "Ahh, this is real English Language,"

Science

Primary school: "Yay, experiments!"

Years 7+: "Not experiments!"

History

Year 5: "I want to learn about World War Two," *looks at it on the internet*

Year 6: "I want to learn about World War Two," *looks on the internet*

Repeat until

Year 9: "Yay, World War Two!"

Year 10: "I guess this stuff is interesting,"

Year 11: "Yay, stuff relevant to World War Two!"

Geography

Year 5: "This compass is not working." "That must be the broken one." "This map is not working."

Year 9: "Why are we doing this stuff that isn't even Geography? What is this stuff? Economics?"

Spanish

Year 7: "I'm not too bad at this stuff, but why do I have to share a class with these people?"

Year 10: "All this work, ugh,"

And that's all the time we have today, kids! Remember to do your homework!

School Trips

School trips are cool. You get to get away from school for a bit and see other things for a change.

The day starts fairly normally (if an early start is not needed). Then, at some point, you get on a coach or bus of some description.

This was the fun bit. Being on the bus, looking forward to the day, not having to sit next to anyone except maybe the odd teacher who was with us on the journey. Looking out of the window and singing would be my two top activities on the coach. The worst bits were feeling a little bit coach sick, and, worse, when someone else was actually sick, which made me feel nauseous in response. However, that wasn't always common, and it wasn't a big deal.

At some point or another we would stop, as we were at the location we were supposed to be at. Cue a good likelihood of being impressed by my surroundings, or else the building we were going into.

Then the fun of the day would begin. Whether it was making pictures with sticks or watching badminton or just getting settled there for a couple of days (and doing all the stuff over that couple of days) it would still be cool.

And in any case the bus journey would be worth it.

And the missing lessons was also worth it.

Sometimes there would also be students from other schools who also attended the trip. These were the times when I was hopeful to find a buddy I could swap email addresses with. I didn't particularly have friends at high school (or even at primary) but I was hopeful that I'd meet someone nice (not really understanding that I'd have to Talk To People to do so; if I had realized that I wouldn't have been so hopeful). 

School trips would end on the journey back. The journey back wasn't as good as the journey ahead (unless we'd just gone swimming and were heading back to primary with wet hair, or the time we were coming back from France and ate on the ferry), but it was just about the only decent ending to any trip.

Woohoo.

A Run

I used to be a bit of a talker.

I could spend forever talking about anything, from books I'd read to a possible answer that appeared a couple of times in a Maths Challenge paper (Yes, I literally, actually spent a whole lunchtime talking about the possible answer "More Information Needed" and making jokes about it - for some reason I found it really amusing!).

My pals, who I'll call Alice and Jenny, didn't seem to be fond of this, as evidenced by what happened next.

It was a normal day, and I was gabbling away as usual, yada yada yada, when:

Alice: You should take a lap of the field.

Me: Why?

Jenny: Well, Alice has done one, and I've done one, it's only fair that you do one.

I hadn't seen either of them do one, but I had nothing to say against one, and I didn't have any suspicions that all was not as it seemed.

It was a simple route.

I started running.

It wasn't exactly an easy run, but then, I wasn't exactly a runner. It didn't take too long to take the run, and it filled some time. I got back to my starting point...

...to see that nobody was there.

This puzzled me slightly, but I put that aside. I had to find out where Alice and Jenny were, and rejoin them.

I staggered around the grounds, searching for them, hoping that they would be findable. It was still ages until lunch would end.

I didn't find either of them.

Lunch ended and still I hadn't found either of them. But as Alice was a form mate and it was tutor next I saw her then. She made a passing comment about the incident, and we left it at that.

It took me a couple of years to connect my chattering to what had actually transpired next. I just believed that they'd got bored or something and moved off.

Ahhh, naivety.

(Psst! Next post appears to be Number 100! :D Anyone else feel like celebrating? Anyone got any suggestions on what we could do? If you do, post them below in the comments)

Little Tip

You know that guy who sits next to you in Maths? No, not the really annoying one on your right, but the still-slightly-annoying guy on your left?

Never, ever, try to get him to call you Malvina.

Don't.

No matter how much you love the name.

From,
Known as Melvin since Year 8.

(P.S. Go for Marvin instead. It's a much cooler name.)

Speaking And Listening

As part of my English GCSE, I had to partake in a couple of Speaking and Listening assessments, to test if I could listen to presentations given by classmates and go through the trauma of talking to 30-odd students, with a loud minority and a decent (but somewhat talkative) majority.

This is the nightmare of the first presentation.

From an early age speaking has never been one of my greatest attributes. I was completely non-verbal at nursery (so how they figured I knew my shapes and numbers and colours I'll never know), but at home I would gabble piles of invisible garbage, most likely in 'carrot language' (a language I made up but the name makes no sense seeing as a carrot cannot actually converse in any sort of language except 'Help me! I'm going to be eaten!' language).
Later on, I I had anxiety about approaching people I wasn't familiar with and groups of people, which never helped with the regular occurrence of 'get into groups, please' and my strong wish to socialise. (I was once told I was freaking people out when really, I was just trying to gather the courage to join in, as well as spot an opening where I could join in.) Even when it comes to group conversations these days, it's pretty hard to join in because I can't really detect when someone's coming to a close, but the other people in the group can and so are quicker to it.

Back to the presentation. Before we started to work on it we were taught stuff about speaking and listening in general. This was what the presentation was to be about. Then we were led to a computer room  to work on the presentation. In pairs.

We were the last pair to be paired. I felt he would be all right to work with (Because selective memory makes a bitch of us all sometimes) and he was the one that suggested it in the first place. I'll call him Aaron from now on.  That first lesson was a pretty good example of collaboration and being co-operative. Well, apart from the loud minority being a pain, but then again, when are they anything else?

But by the end of the preparation sessions, things had taken on a different turn. Aaron was now as collaborative as an out-of-control fire is to a fireman, and he had declared that he was not going to speak at all during the presentation. There was a slide where we were supposed to talk about our own experiences and had both our names on, and I decided to keep that there, just in case.

The presentation day came. I went to English as usual, and different people were called upon at different times to present. I spent most of that lesson thinking "I hope it's not me next... I hope it's not me next... Oh, it's those two. Safe. I hope it's not me next..."

In retrospect, I really should have hoped to be next - the waiting was as agonising as rubbing your body over with a cactus, and after it was done it would be over. Eventually, after everyone had said everything you could possibly say about how we speak and what influences that, it was our turn.

The few moments between being set up and starting were filled with anxiety and looking at this bunch of assorted students. The class felt more like an auditorium rather than a normal bunch of students.

It began.

I stumbled my way through the presentation, clumsily talking while trying my best not to look at the blue sea of carpet below me. I did all of the force times distance. (Force times distance = Work Done) It came to the slide about our own experiences, and I talked about mine. When Aaron's name popped up, he refused to speak about it.

At the end I was given a passing grade and some feedback.

He got a U.

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A Play and a Creep - But Mostly the Creep

In Year 10 as part of our Drama GCSE we went to see War Horse. We didn't know exactly what we were doing except watching War Horse at the New London Theatre. We didn't really know that the relevant work we'd be doing on it would be done over a year later, either.

It was a fantastic show (I recommend it to you if ever you have the opportunity to go!). Sound was a bit too much for me at times - I jumped a lot (so for the average range of people it should be fine). This was followed by an "Are you alright?" from the creepy guy sitting next to me.

Reverse and explain time.

There was a guy in my Drama class. Well, no, there were a couple of guys, but we are focusing on one. Derek.

Derek claimed to 'love' me.

Derek: Will you sit next to me on the coach to the theatre?

Me: (Not liking to sit next to people on coaches much) No.

Derek: Aww, please?

Me: Fine...

He tried to hold my hand a lot on that trip. I pulled away. Apart from not really wanting to hold hands, Derek's hand was not a very good sensory stimuli. It felt horrible and yucky.

If this was everything about him, I still wouldn't have minded it all that much. At that age I was all:

But Derek was also a total jerk - which is how he got unfriended and never friended again - hey, I'm making new terms! - on Facebook. Wait, three dashes in one sentence?! Even though he wanted to be refriended, what he really needed was slapping in the hope it'd get him into a sane mind or at least a nicely insane one.

Fortunately, War Horse captivated me so much I forgot about the person sitting next to me.

And I had my fun on the way back.

Me: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...

Derek: What are you doing?

Me: Counting cars. 22, 23...

*some point later*

Derek: Could you stop that?

Me: (ignoring him) 666, 667, 668...

*A bit later*

Me: 999, 1000!

Derek: Finally, I might get a bit of peace!

Me: 1001, 1002...

(Okay, it wasn't exactly like that, but it's a fairly good representation! And I think I got to 1064, but that could just be my brain making stuff up)

There Was a Way Out, But I Didn't Know

It's time to get locked into a school building.

My old school was made up of a cluster of buildings. And a hut. There was the main building, the sports hall, the science block, the drama block, and the art block.

The drama block and the art block have misleading names. The 'Drama' block housed drama, textiles, cookery, and an IT room. The Art block housed art, woodwork/graphics, and some rooms for RE/Citizenship. And the upstairs area where two of three of the RE rooms were was also where my form room was.

Here is a little map of the area.

That main area became a place to go when you got in quite a bit early, as I and Alice were both prone to do. And over time other people would come and go there as well.

Near the beginning, the teachers, or some of them, seemed very keen to lock us out of the area, in the freezing cold outside. Others were more likely to say "Hello" rather than "Get out."

But it soon became habit to check the other door, which wasn't very consistently locked or unlocked. This door was also a good check-place after a lunch break as the front door would often be locked over lunch.

One time, I decided to go upstairs rather than stay down below. This was also common for me. I could perch there and it would be relatively quiet. I could still hear if people were talking downstairs, and I could also see through a large window at all of the people below.

So this one day, I hear voices downstairs. Not uncommon. I see Alice leave the building. This also wasn't uncommon. Okay, so I did have a suspicion or two. But I disregarded any suspicion and carried on with looking out of the window.

It was only when I saw people looking at me and crowding around the area that I moved. I snatched up my bag and rushed down the stairs seriously hoping that it wasn't.

It was.

The door was locked. And my measly muscles couldn't open it. Panic set in.

Somebody mentioned the other way.

I rushed off to the other way.

But that was locked too.

I went back to the main way, and stood there. My mind was a mess of panic, more panic, even more panic, and the thought of fire.

That is how I got locked into a school building. And the ending was so dull that I'm not going to bother talking about it.

Let's just say that the teachers need to access their classrooms sometimes.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

I received my GCSE results today!

I have 2 A*s - the Maths which I already know about (I took it in November) and Chemistry. My sister would be proud if she ever bothered to keep in touch. But I'm only following up Maths anyway.

I also have 2 As - Biology and Physics. What else? I was hoping I'd get an A in History as well, but I still got a B and I don't intend to carry on the subject anyway.

I have 4 Bs - English and English Lit, History, and Spanish. Now I have achieved the baccalaureate. (Maths, Science, English, a Foreign Modern Language, and either History or Geography) I got a B in Spanish - interesting when it was only this year I could separate the words during listening.

I have 4 Cs - Citizenship, Drama, Media Studies, and RE. I had expected to fail Drama, so that's a bonus. I expected that grade for Media. And the other two don't matter 'cause they're only halfs. I was benign in the Cit exam, cos I was sitting in seat B9.

The only Ds I have are based on a different system - they both stand for Distinction and are Sport and ICT. And then there are the Ps, English and Maths Functional Skills (They're piss easy). I have no idea how I got Distinction for PE BTEC - I had a Merit when we all knew and I haven't done any work on it since. At least our teacher didn't force us to do PE GCSE because I am certain I'd fail it. Some teachers did that with their pupils (which made for a very empty English class...)

I have 11 GCSEs (15 if you count equivilants - which I don't). And I have not failed a single thing. I am happy.

:) :D :) :) :) :) :) :) :-D :-)