What I Did On My Holidays
The Future's Mint(ed)
The Merits Of Competitive Promotion
Systematic Horror
God bless Easter holidays. (I don't believe in God, or, indeed, Easter, but I digress). Two weeks reprieved from school! I don't actually think that this long enough to compensate for the sleep deprivation of school mornings, but it helps, Bacuase Easter is so late this year, we've had a really long term, so everyone is just really tired and desparately in need of a holiday. The government actually wants to make that length normal, with longer days as well, which is just an appalling idea (not that anyone asks our opinion, grrr, humph, indignation). I don't get that much homework at the moment, so I certainly don't want to swap my lack of work in the evenings for an extra hour of school. I should have more homework, it's just hit me that, hey, this time next year I will be taking my G.C.S.Es, which is not a pleasant thought.
I've spent the first day of the holidays (today) doing something constructive - thorough cleaning of bedroom and making cakes, which should make up for my probable lack of activity for the rest of it. My older brother is also home from University - we went to pick him up last Saturday, but he hasn't really spent that much time at home. He's been at his girlfriend's house, and she's been here for a couple of days - he's now gone back to Huddersfield (where his University is) to work, but he'll be home tomorrow. He spends his time at home upstairs on his decks, which is good, because he and mum argue a lot - they just play off each other badly, but the atmosphere can get quite bad. My mother is always going 'don't you be doing this to me when you're at Uni!' which I probably won't because I'm more sensible than him, but still I hate it when she says that - it's like an unfair pressure because I'm the youngest and just becuase she doesn't want to go through it again. I understand that, but I'd like to feel I have the chance to screw up. It's how we learn, right?
I hope that the future (well, my future) is minted, as in contains a lot of money, as in contains a lot of money that belongs to me. Obviously it would be nice to have satisfaction in personal life, etc, etc, but I'd like to have money as well. I know that money can't buy you happiness and all that, but I don't really subscribe to this - I can be happy with my own company, as I've mentioned, so I'd quite like to have some cash, thank you so very much. I don't have a lot of money now (I'm fifteen, for God's sake, broke is my natural condition) so it would be nice to have some eventually.
Enough uselessly trying to justify cynical, miserly and greedy attitude.
I plan to make these millions by 1) playing the Lottery the instant I turn 16 and, failing that, 2) being a psychiatrist in one of those American cities where everyone is in therapy - New York or San Francisco or somewhere. This is actually based on something other than naked money-grabbing. I'm interested in people, so I've planned to do a Psychology A-Level for a while, and then I'd quite like to do something with it. I'd like to be a therapist a la Tracy in 'Ally McBeal', who I like, although I'm not sure how much actual people would appreciate this approach. But it seems pretty simple - sit and listen to people talk about themselves, bite back sarcastic retort (this is the only place it falls down - I'm not a terribly sensitive person) and offer soothing advice from textbook or similar. Do it in the right place (see above) and money, baby!
At one time I quite fancied being a lawyer (also loadsamoney), but changed my mind when I decided I didn't want to make a living from crime (this was while I had more principles). I realise there are other kinds of law, but they don't seem as interesting. Anyway, the work is really hard (I know this from reading John Grisham - ahem) and there's lots of competition, so I have consigned this to the realm of childhood dreams, along with being an actress (I chucked this after I realised I am actually an awful actress, which unfortunately wasn't until after I had started a Drama GCSE which is now the blot on my otherwise v. good grades - I'm not boasting, they actually are. I'm best at English).
The Merits Of Competitive Promotion
It's exam week. Try as I may, I fail to see how exams are a decent measure of someone's ability.
1. Some people go to pieces under pressure. I don't usually, but I did find myself hyperventilating quietly in the corner yesterday morning, surrounded by thirty shrieking harpies. The reason for my stress is that I haven't done much revision.
2. Revision is boring. Every teacher thinks their subject is the only one you have, or at least the most important. I don't actually have time to spend half an hour a night on each of ten subjects, thank you.
3. Even if you do spend all of years ten and eleven buried under piles of notes, books, textbooks, revision guides, coffee cups and chocolate wrappers, you then have nothing listed under 'interests' in your University application so they reject you anyway.
4. Exams are too long. Life is short. Far too short to spend weeks of it in an exam hall filling in the spaces in all the letters on my exam paper, counting the number of tiles in the ceiling, searching for split ends, wondering if Buffy and Angel will ever get back together (okay, so I do this anyway) or staring at stultifyingly dull wall displays on Henry VII.
5. I could check my paper for mistakes, go back to questions I missed and other recommended exam techniques. but the first is boring, and as for the second - if I didn't know it the first time, the knowledge is unlikely to have appeared in my head throughout the rest of the paper.
6. Teachers wander round wearing squeaky shoes and stand behind you and stare at what you're doing for five minutes. Intimidating behaviour such as this is not conducive to good marks.
Today's exam stress was courtesy of Systems, my technology which is basically electronics with some computer control thrown in for the dread of the students. I really regret having chosen it, but generally the other choices were even worse.
Anyway. Exam. I didn't revise much (so really I deserved to have completely blown it). We got into the exa room, did some last-minute revision, and got the exam. I turned over and couldn't do the secong question, which is a crappy start to a two-hour exam. I'd love to say things got better, but they really didn't, though on the up side neither did I notice a particular decrease - simply a vague feeling of I-have-no-idea-what-the-answer-is or its uglier cousin I-have-no-idea-what-this-question-means. I went through, did the first section and the last section, and then went back to the middle, the dreaded design question. Aah, designing ... so many have come, so few have conquered. It was all circuitry, which is pretty much my weakest area (along with mechanisms and microprocessor control. No, that's not the whole course, there's also energy, which I know. Unfortunately it didn't come up) so I read the question and had a sudden desire to run screaming from the room. Then I noticed it was worth like a third of the paper so I took it to mean what I thought it meant and dove in there with long words and pretty pencil crayons.
I finished just within the time, and I did answer all the questions, so I was glad I didn't have time to go back and second-guess myself.
That could have been it for a couple of weeks. I could quite happily have gone home and forgot all about it. But t'was not to be; my form teacher, who also teaches Systems, was taking my private study lesson in the afternoon, had the papers and took great pleasure in waggling mine at me and grinning widely, and then smirking as he marked it. I was more nervous in that ten minutes than in the entire actual exam.
I did better than I thought (not hard), which was nice, and it was the standard of the GCSEs next year, so I've got a year to improve, which is also nice - if I can just get the hang of actual revision ...