The History exam was really a two-pronged attack. Firstly, the content itself is not easy and while I knew about 90% of the facts, getting it all to gel was difficult, especially in the section on Indian Independence. Worse though was just the sheer amount of writing. I’m really bad at writing short answers and managed to completely fill the 16 page answer book in 2 hours. (OK, it was more like 15 pages since the front is mostly instructions and the like, but still – that’s a rate of around 8 minutes per A4 page.)
The good news is that I did complete every question – didn’t run out of time at the end although I literally had about 3 minutes to go. My handwriting of course deteriorated but hopefully still legible enough to get marks. Really no idea on how well I did overall – but I figure that with all the facts I did put it, I can’t have flopped it, even if one large mark question had me a bit confused as to what they were actually asking!
As you can imagine, I was also pretty glad for my bottle of water.
Tomorrow afternoon is English, which should be slightly easier but still a mass of writing. And poetry, which I’m not looking forward to. The second section is more creative writing though, so hopefully will be able to pick up some marks there. Hmmm… we’ll see!
On a blog-related technical note – Captchas are currently not working due to Freetype not being installed. GD, however, is installed (see the PHP into page) so we might be able to get something working eventually. Until then pre-moderation for all items will continue I’m afraid, at least until I weather this round of spam.
Overnight, I got 130 pieces of comment spam. Luckily, the first few started trickling in before I went to bed so, fearing the worst, I turned on pre-moderation for all comments. Unfortunately, this will now remain until I figure out a better way to deal with this. (For those of you screaming Captcha – my initial tests suggested it wouldn’t work on here, or at least not without fiddling.)
I think the main problem is that the master blacklist doesn’t seem to be keeping up. For now, I have put all the URLs spamming into a text file to download and I suggest that anybody relying on the Blacklist adds these to your personal list ASAP.
Ironically, since all links are tagged with rel=”no follow” the whole spam operation is meaningless anyway.
…and probably not even to them either. But hey, I was bored. Enjoy.
If so – good news! You’ve got advantage when doing a GCSE English exam. For the two pieces of non-fiction text this year were a Nissan Micra advert (non-fiction? haha) and a hilarious piece from Bill Bryson about America’s addiction to cars. Decent questions too, so no complaints there, despite the theme of cars.
Section B offered a choice as usual, I went for the slight gamble of writing the text to another advert for a car aimed at young men. It was called the Skaro SVI and features a ground-braking “noise control” system that allows you to choose how loud the motor is. Oh, and metallic paint! Genius, I’m sure you’ll agree. Slogan?
“It’s not your father’s car. The new Skaro SVI.”
Before I get carried away with the fun of creative writing in English, I should remember that tomorrow is History. We’ll be sampling the delights of India’s Road to Independence as well as a whole bunch of stuff that happened in the USA after WW2 (Civil Rights, Women, Watergate, McCarthy, etc..) and suchlike.
Today was the first (and only) day with two subjects on the same day, and my neck is hurting from having to lean over the low table. Apart from that, it went well 
ICT was first and went as expected. I had finished, checked and double checked after 1 hour 15 minutes, so I had 45 minutes left to drink some water, lean back, read the case study, go up to 1000 on my calculator simply by pressing +1, go back down to 0 by pressing -1, re-read the case study, count the number of lights on the ceiling, read the nutritional information on my water bottle, and finally stare at the clock. Seriously, the ICT exam is easy.
“Peter is 12. What two things might he do online to pursue his hobby – golf?”
Well, getting a life would help. Golf?! At 12!?
Anyway – then came 2 hours of Maths (non-calculator, higher tier) in the afternoon. And it was actually quite a good paper, although I won’t use the word “easy” like our head of year did. Screwed up on a question about cylinders and ignored an algebra one, but apart from that I was quite pleased with it. Especially satisfying when you get the vectors question (it’s a little puzzle!) and when you’ve got a mass of equations down to something nice and simple.
My Maths GCSE now really lies in the second paper, and how generous they are with the grade boundaries.
Tomorrow is English Part 1 – but without any poetry. Thank god.
Helen on It’s (waiting) time.: “Fabulous news, congratulations to you both! X” Jun 8, 21:51
