Almost one year ago, I wrote a post called Reflections on 2008, summarising the year which had just gone by. According to that post, I did much the same thing at the ends of 2006 and 2007, but I don’t remember writing those posts (does this mean I’m getting old??), so all I have to go by is 2008.
And I guess it would be wrong to pretend that I’m the only one who writes these end-of-year wrap-ups. Seemingly most bloggers do, so I’m hardly unique. However, no other blogger has had the year I have had, so at the very least, the content of the wrap-up has to be unique. Read More »
Today was the all-important day VCE students everywhere have been waiting for… results day! Let’s start with the most important part: the ENTER. My percentile ranking is 97.85, which is fantastic, and more than I was hoping for so yesss! I had a feeling I would get 94, because if I got 95 I’d be eligible for a merit scholarship to my university of choice, and I felt that knowing my luck I’d probably miss out by one point.
But I didn’t. So, unless there were a ton of scholarship applicants, I won’t have to rely on the Commonwealth to pay for my undergraduate degree, and I won’t have to pay them back for it afterwards! But I’ll actually find out whether I got it in February, I think.
With that out of the way, let’s continue with a study score matrix:
| Subject | GA1 | GA2 | GA3 | SS | SSS |
|---|
| English | A+ | A+ | A+ | 43 | 42.87 |
| Geography | A+ | A+ | A+ | 46 | 46.17 |
| Revolutions | A+ | A+ | A | 40 | 41.57 |
| Philosophy | A+ | A+ | A+ | 44 | 45.01 |
| Psychology | A | A | B+ | 36 | 34.77 |
| International Studies1 | A+ | A+ | B | 37 | 39.78 |
If you don’t get what the GA#s or (S)SSs are that’s fine, because I will now narrate this table, by subject (or if you want to skip the narration, you can read the TL;DR version): Read More »
So, I am a VCE Revolutions student, and my exam is in six days. Tragically, My Revolutions teacher seems to take grave offence with my essay-writing style. Every time I send her an essay, I get this infuriated aggressive response (which is extremely demotivating) about everything I’ve done wrong. Which is, according to her, a lot.
But, ever one to take criticism in my stride, I noticed that a lot of the criticisms boiled down to the same thing: deviation from the set, rigid style of writing in which I trained myself to write for International Studies but subsequently abandoned because it is absolutely impossible to write essays in English and Philosophy that way. I’ve barely written any essays at all for History this year, which means that I now have five days to retrain myself to write the things in this strictly disciplined way. Great!
So, to make the task easier for myself, I’ve constructed a guide that reduces History essays to a fill-in-the-blanks style worksheet. The closer I adhere to this kind of structure, the happier my teacher will be (and at her happiest she’s still pretty cranky, but the less cranky the better!). Maybe it’ll be useful for others as well. Read More »
We call the shots — and we need to tell this wimpy Congress to get busy and do what we say — or else.
This is Michael Moore's description of what the American left-wing must do, now that Obama has won his Nobel Peace Prize. The first thing I thought when I read this was, "What, sans-culottes style?"
To me, this statement sounds like it means, "We are the masses, we are the people, and we call the shots. You are the government, and you do what we say, or there will be consequences." What will the consequences be? It's not like this group of people would punish the Democrats by sabotaging their campaign at the next election, because then the Republicans would win. So what do you mean, "or else"? What else can you do?
In other news, my exams rapidly approach and I spent hours yesterday reading all about the sans-culottes. That's not actually completely irrelevant news, because that explains why I leapt to that conclusion after Moore's "or else". I admit, I had no idea how twenty-first century America was supposed to coalesce to form a murderous mob, angry and vicious enough to pose a real threat to the government. I guess he must have meant something else. Like begging really hard. Perfecting their puppy-dog eyes and pouts. Teaching small children to plead correctly on their behalf. Maybe he meant, "or else we'll subject you to our pouting!" No, unless Congress is so wimpy that they're notoriously susceptible to pouting, that's not a good threat. But in this era where the vast majority of people do not care enough about their governance to exert real pressure, what is?
Sun, 11.10.2009, 12pm • 0 Comments • Tags: news, USA, History class
This week I’ve been infuriated by certain teachers’ failure to keep track of their students’ assignments, then blaming me for not doing my assignment and being about to fail me unless I can somehow get my assignment to them (again) by the end of the day. When they’re on the complete other side of the city.
I’m not used to failing subjects and I was furious when I found out I was about to fail this one. Everyone else was astonished, except the senior school coordinator, who was simply furious with me for not doing my assignment (even though I had). I got to break the news to one of my History classmates: “Congratulations! You’re the only one not failing Revolutions right now.” Read More »