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There’s nothing like reading a friend’s blog post entitled Reflections to put you into a reflective mood yourself. I’ll start with the news first though – I sat Maths, Core 3 today. It was OKish, to be honest. I didn’t come out of it super-confident, I wasn’t at my best (it being very noisy with wind for a start!) and I kinda have the feeling I’ll come out of it with a solid B or something, and then retake in June with everyone else. Which is fine really, nothing lost, except it’d still be nice to get Core 3 well and truly out of the way. As ever, we shall see!

Back to the teenagery reflection then. The trouble is that I don’t have that much to be reflective about. I’m mildly stressed from all the work I know I have to do, certainly. But then it’ll all be over by June, and it’s not making me unhappy, and when I think about it too much I’ll just end up shrugging and going to bed. I did wonder today – “if I was ever really unhappy, would anyone notice?” – but it’s a stupid question because I’ve never really been properly unhappy. Even the day before a Physics Practical

People keep asking me if I’m excited about university, and the answer – to be honest – is no. Am I looking forward to it? Yes. Do I think I’ll enjoy it and have the time of my life? Course! But I’m not excited about it because I don’t like looking forward to these sorts of things with any emotional expectations. Everything could always go wrong at any moment, so I’ve always lived in the present and tried to make sure I was happy right here, right now. And it’s so very different to the voices at school I’ve blogged about before who want you to focus on a career and a bright shining future.

But then again, I can hardly go around advocating my philosophy. Take Andy Kings, for example. (Sorry to embarrass you, Andy.) He’ll grow up saving lives, and I won’t, and as much as I admire him I couldn’t do it because of the commitment you have to throw your life into. So maybe I’m just lucky that other people are taking the harder routes in life…

If you nosed around my school asking people why exactly they had turned up that morning, chances are most students would offer something in a range from ‘because it’s compulsory, innit’ to ‘what else am I going to talk about on MySpace tonight?’. Once you get to the Sixth Form, however, you start to (finally!) acquire a group of individuals who actually, genuinely, honest-to-god want to be there. It matters to them, because most of all they want to pass exams.

But why exactly? I was reminded today of the very clear idealogical divide that exists between two competing groups of students and teachers. On the one hand, you have the rationale that thinks it’s bloody obviously why you should want to pass exams – university, duh! And that’s going to be great because you’ll end up with a degree, and everyone knows degrees are great for getting you jobs, and hey, everyone wants jobs. Jobs = money. Money = stuff. Stuff = a really fast car painted to make it shinier, or, for the tenderer souls, a chance to buy a boat and sail off to a desert island for a while to escape that awful consumerist world back home. (Urgh. It makes you so angry that, like, the media is forcing you to buy things and you’re so glad you’re not going to conform like all those other idiots in your sociology class.)

Those are the optimists, by the way. The pessimist variant is that you better damn well make sure you succeed, because it’s a ‘highly competitive world out there’ and if you don’t get that A in English Literature Unit 2 (with coursework, naturally) someone is going to fuck you over in a job interview 20 years hence and you’ll die poor and sad and lonely in a box on the corner of the street opposite where your rich, clever friends live.

This is basically what I heard today from one teacher, who began to scrutinise a friend’s AS choices to check she wasn’t about to waste her life. Naturally, I jumped in (with a friend) to object.

“No! Don’t be silly, you don’t need to choose a career now. Do what you want to do, have fun, drink some alcohol (religious tolerances permitting) and don’t worry about it.”
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Where we left off, Manchester had come in first with an early conditional offer of AAA. Since then, Nottingham have made up for second place by offering AAB and Reading have come in with a ‘we can’t be a simple as that – 300 points and a handstand’ effort. Cambridge sent me back my nice stamped return addressed postcard today saying ‘yeah yeah we got your pieces of submitted work, ta’ so the question is now – will Bristol or Birmingham talk to me next? Place your bets now…

Although I just spent a whole paragraph on it, I am really quite glad I don’t have to really worry about unis much at the moment. It’s back on with work, and presentations on the French Revolution for English Literature, for some reason. Oh – social-historical context. Got it

We actually had one of those nice studenty teachers in our lesson who told me “I’ll always remember the White Terror now as you described it – when the people killed the people who’d killed the other people.”

I’ve just finished my application (well, almost, have to hand in a £10 cheque tomorrow for Cambridge… ) for university and I feel like a huge weight has just been lifted from my mind So yay!

For the record, I am applying to do History at Cambridge, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Nottingham and Reading. Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for news of any offers, rejections, requests for interview, etc. That’s fine. Either I get them or I don’t, but it’s out of my hands now so I can get on with what I actually came to Sixth Form to do – A Levels!

Oh, and applying online via UCAS is much nicer than the dead tree alternative. Just a pity Cambridge still insist on paper, but I’m sure they’ll change… eventually…

To those who doubt the awesome power of democracy to fully express the will of the people, let me tell you the story of my Maths lesson today.

Having forewarned us that we would be called upon to present various answers to proof questions to the rest of the class, our Maths teacher reached the last one – the ominous question 13. Sure, we had all read the answers at the back of the book, but still, for the purposes of telling an exciting story, it was the ominous question 13. Scanning along the rows of purposely non-chalant faces she picks her victim student… Robert and I crossing our fingers and quietly chanting “Fabio.. Fabio.. please…Fabio”.

She did not pick Fabio. Oh, the audible sigh of disappointment. “Aw, can’t we have a vote instead?” I joked. Well at least I thought I joked, but what I am increasingly realising is that my jokes often are interpreted as serious suggestions (that’s the reason why we’re now buying a mini-fridge for our Physics classroom).

“OK then, we’ll have a vote”
“Woaah?”
“Who do you all want?”

Feeling a duty to uphold the sacred principles of democracy, I pressed on for a secret ballot, dutifully accepted. It was probably not in keeping with the sacred principles of democracy that I would then be asked to hand out the paper slips myself, giving me time for a last minute pitch for my chosen candidate, but then, no democracy’s perfect.

Anyway, Fabio romped home with a thumping majority and ended up presenting the ominous question 13 admirably well. So three cheers for democracy, where the will of the people wins out over tyranny. Huzzah!