I Wrote A Letter To My Uni Friend Today. Along With It, I Sent Her Some Homemade Star Confetti, A List

22/2/2020

We love tutorials! Photo is a bit bad but it’s late and I feel bad for neglecting this account haha

19/09/18 - 8/100 days of productivity

I had an awesome day today! I have a new chemistry teacher and she’s really lovely, and straight after her lesson I had German, where we studied Der Vorleser. I had a free period lesson 3, so I edited my personal statement for the 500000000th time, and then in French I wrote an essay under timed conditions about L’étranger. And then lesson 5 was the genetics topic in Biology - I freaking LOVE genetics!

Right now I’m going over a load of flash cards for German on Quizlet and then I’m going to write up some biology notes and I might finish off some more German homework if I have time. If not, I have 4 frees tomorrow so I can do it then :)

I hope you’ve all had awesome days 😊

Life is mean. It builds your hopes up and then lets them crash and burn in the most brutal way. But pick yourself up, soldier. You are stronger than the harshest disappointment and more resilient than your grief.

I haven’t been that active on here recently, but I feel it is important to do what I can to support the BLM movement.

Saying this is probably futile, but I don’t want to stay in the shadows. I have a voice of privilege and I need to use it somehow.

I will start by saying this. As a white person, I do not claim as my brethren those who think that discriminating against another person for the colour of their skin is acceptable. I don’t associate myself with hateful people. If those people were family members or friends, they aren’t anymore, as far as I’m concerned. I am ashamed of those who carry out, condone and defend racially-motivated attacks and police brutality.

I am doing all I can, as one single, unimportant individual, to support the cause, including speaking up to racist comments - but I could always be more educated. If anyone could recommend any books, podcasts, documentaries, films etc that explore racism, I’d love to hear about them.

General advice for GCSE and A levels

So I was asked a question by a follower and I thought it might be beneficial to post some general advice for all the future candidates whose GCSEs and A levels aren’t cancelled because of a pandemic. Here’s a short list of what helped me get through these exams.

1) Getting exam technique down is IMPORTANT! Do not underestimate this importance - knowing what the examiners want from you is (sadly) almost more important than knowledge of content (though you do have to know that, too!)

2) Understand the question words. For example, explain means give detail, and list means don’t waste time with such detail.

3) Answer the question as it is written, not what you want the question to be. Some questions are really long winded - they’ll wrap up the question with some background material that you haven’t learnt about per se but is still relevant and applicable to your course. You have to be able to unravel the core of what the examiners are asking. Don’t worry about the wall of information. Do read it as be ready to glean clues from it, but find the question first.

4) Read the mark schemes AND THE EXAMINERS’ REPORTS! Last year’s documents are locked because teachers like to use them for mocks, but if you’ve already done those papers, ask your teachers to send you them. These are gold! Use the mark schemes to know which buzzwords and details the examiners will reward and use the examiners reports to see which questions candidates struggled to answer. There is almost always detailed analysis of common mistakes and advice to future candidates there!

5) Look through the teacher-oriented documents. I know for OCR A Biology A level, there were sample documents that gave examples of full marks, mid marks and low marks for long response questions. They literally hand you “what a good one looks like” (and it was easy to find because of how new the specification is). I was never given these documents in class! Nobody you have contact with knows the course better than a teacher who is meant to teach it. For A level languages, I read every single document, no matter how boring it seemed, which perhaps was a bit overkill, but it helped me know what exactly was expected of me. I’m talking everything from the specification to exemplar work and speaking exam conduct (which actually was useful because I then knew what would happen if I got too distressed to continue for example, as I knew what the teacher/examiner would be required to do in that case). It sounds nuts, but seeing it from a teacher’s perspective helped me. I knew the structure of my course by heart; I knew weightings of different aspects of exams and the learning objectives by which I was assessed. A lot of it is irrelevant admin, but there are actually some useful documents so do have a root through!

6) Don’t be afraid of old spec questions if the subject matter is relevant.

7) Revising using past papers is always the best way, ultimately. If you run out of past papers, make your own questions and file them away and come back to them! I buddied up with a friend and we tested each other, swapping our own exam-style questions at periodic intervals and marking our partner’s answers. You get to be the examiner, the marker and the candidate in one simple activity!

8) Learn from your mistakes. Don’t look at a lower mark and think you’re doomed; rather, think about where you went wrong. You’d be surprised at how many marks are lost to silly mistakes for which you’ll absolutely kick yourself in hindsight! Little mistakes might be avoided by doing something as little as slowing down, taking a toilet break to clear your head and generally being aware of them.

9) If there’s a certain type of question you struggle to answer, it may help to make a checklist of what to include. For example, whenever I’m asked to draw a graph, I write down things like “suitable axes using more than half the available space, x is independent variable, labels, title, units, correctly plotted points, line of best fit” in a corner somewhere out the way - and I’m at university rn! I do this before I start fumbling about with the question; it takes less than 30s to jot it down in a shorthand I understand.

10) Teach someone else, or pretend to! Even now, I remember stuff and understand it better if I’m “explaining” my thought process out loud as if I were teaching it. Understanding things will make subjects like chemistry a lot easier, because then you can apply what you know rather than blindly rote learn a bunch of examples. Mechanism you’re not quite sure of? Draw it out and talk it through! You’ll quickly pinpoint exactly what you’re struggling with.

11) Breathe and look after yourself. It’s not impossible; so much of success is about confidence. If you convince yourself you can’t do something, you absolutely won’t - attitude is everything and so is your health.

Good morning, sunshine!

My eyes snapped open at 7:30am so I figured I’d have a wash, stretch out my aching muscles and do some maths. After this I’ll go and grab some breakfast :)

It’s finally half term so the pressure is momentarily off and I can catch up on all my outstanding tasks.

I feel like I’ve achieved a lot in the past couple of hours I’ve been up!

Have an amazing day!

Work experience!

So a bit of background: a charity called The Talent Tap approached my school last academic year for the first time ever and said they were looking to fund 2 weeks worth of work experience in London (and around it, in my case) for disadvantaged state school kids, would anyone like to apply?

I decided to put my name forward for interview, got in, and now you’re all caught up!

What a ride these 2 weeks have been. I spent week 1 at a biotech lab in Cambridge, where I actually got to do loads of lab work as well as meet people from all around the company.

Back in London for the weekend, there was a public speaking workshop on Saturday. I hate public speaking but I decided to put my all into it despite that. (And put my all in I did - my punishment for ultimately winning “best speech of the day” was to speak at the final drinks celebration on Thursday 18th July 2019.)

Week 2 was at a property investment management firm in London. We did a marketing project there... and while I quickly learned marketing really isn’t my thing, we did have a ton of guest speakers in - including a patent attorney or two, who piqued my interest.

My speech at the final celebration went amazingly (tip: wine helps) and I was congratulated by many of the businesspeople there. I was scared, but I tried my best to be brave. I was actually the only first year on the programme to win an award for being one of the best ambassadors for the scheme.

I am now working to secure placements for next year - one being with an IP law firm. Bring it on!

BOOKS! The Cambridge MML library is amazing

Nah nah nah it ain’t the genders that get you, it’s the cases. I used to chant them in my head but sometimes it wasn’t in my head and people looked at me like I was the girl with the knife.

*demonic chanting*

der die das die

den die das die

dem der dem den

DES DER DES DER

9/1/18 - 3/100 days of productivity

Today has been awesome. I had chemistry first thing, and then double German (my favourite class!), then I had some Galette des Rois in French and ended the day with Biology. No frees today but a really positive time all round :)

I’m sat doing homework now and I’ve promised myself I can watch a new TV programme that’s on later if I get it done haha