History exam… tragic or triumphant?
The first paper was the sources-based questions on Russia in Revolution. Unnervingly, our paper was entirely about 1905 – and we’d spent countless hours learning about 1917 in painstakingly detail 
however I did know about 1905 so it wasn’t terrible. I’m just not sure my answers were quite as tight or insightful or un-rushed as I’d had liked them to be, so I’m a bit unsure about that paper. We’ll see, I guess!
As it happens I was more confident about Russia last night so this morning I spent my time revising the second paper, on Civil Rights in America. I drew up an A4 sheet with a time-line of dates and about five random statistics which I managed to memorise, hurrah! Given this, the exam question was a gift to me – concentrating on exactly the period I revised. It did mean I picked the other option from, ur, everyone else I spoke to afterwards… but never mind. I feel good about that paper. 
Sorry for all the exam-themed posts. Tomorrow I will learn everything there is to know about Physics for the exam on Friday morning, then I’m free! (Well, for a week. Then A2s start.) You should see normal blog service resumed then.
Just finished a Mechanics exam which (barring any retakes) wraps up Maths AS. I have to say, without tempting fate, I found this paper pretty straigtforward – far more so than the practice exams. There’s one question I know I lost a mark or two, and a few I’m a bit unsure about, but on the whole I finished with plenty of time to spare. Yay! Mechanics is easier in Maths than Physics. Fancy that.
Now time to dive right into History because that’s tomorrow. Fairly confident about Russia in Revolution assuming I manage the time well and my hand doesn’t explode, Civil Rights will require more work. Tonight. To memorise things. Lots of things. Descriptive today aren’t I?
Enjoy the sun! 
English Literature exam today, on Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance and Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife. Bumbled along happily with Wilde for an hour, although sadly not in a particularly witty section of the play, but with a decent enough question all the same. Then we got to Duffy – where the question was about how a male journalist (Mark Lawson, I found out later) said he ‘felt threatened’ by Duffy’s poetry.
[Sigh]I’m not saying it was a bad question that shouldn’t have ever been set. But it just seems like, every single year, AQA’s format is:
Q. Duffy is a Big Scary Lesbian Feminist, eh eh?
A. No, because….
Yeah, sure, it’s a nice way of catching out the 0.01% of readers who don’t like Duffy. But for the rest of us, isn’t it possible to move on and discuss the themes that actually are in the poetry? She says herself her work is “not to threaten men or anything as tedious as that” – so please, move on!
There’s not much to report about my Maths exam this morning. It went reasonably well, with the usual exam hiccoughs along the way. Strangely, I found Core 1 slightly harder than Core 2 even though it’s obviously ‘easier’ – mainly because I couldn’t check things back on a calculator. It would have saved me from the embarrassing detour as I forgot what 270 / 3 is, anyway… 
I mean, on a calculator paper, if you have to prove that something or other is 12, and you do it, and your calculator tells you it’s 12, and you write it down… how wrong can you be? Fingers crossed anyway!
Next Exam: Friday, English Literature. Should be fun. Then it’s half term anyway, and a couple of days in Paris, ‘revising’ naturally.
By the way, it’s good to see that the plans to change the system so you apply to university after A-level results come out are rumbling ahead, albeit slowly. The present system is so obviously broken – you wouldn’t apply for a job before passing your degree, would you? All it does it benefit the arrogance of private schools who over-estimate grades, pushing state school students out of the system altogether before the results come out.
Sorry to build up into a disappointing climax, but Physics Practical went really quite well after all. Sure, I forgot the units of resistivity, and used volts instead of millivolts (although Hiten did that too…) but that shouldn’t dent me too much and overall it was OK and much better than it could have gone. So yay.
In more interesting news, a fly decided to kamikaze into my eye on the way home!
Right, have had a complaint from Clare saying that she isn’t mentioned often enough on my blog. Sorry, Miss Clariss. Even if you were the shout-outee a mere, ooh I don’t know, 2 weeks ago.
You know what? I’ve run out of things to say. *Posts*
Helen on It’s (waiting) time.: “Fabulous news, congratulations to you both! X” Jun 8, 21:51
