Things I have been doing instead of livejournal and irc
A's Coursework From Hell
A is a student who went to a fieldwork centre last summer after her AS-level exams and before starting the A2 course. She spent a few days cataloguing invertebrates in ponds. Then she was supposed to go away and write up what she'd discovered. She didn't. Hence April came around and her school asked everyone for their biology coursework so it could be sent off to the exam board, and it didn't exist.
Now, I don't even know anything about A2-level biology, but I do know about coursework. And there seems to be some sort of chronic shortage of biology tutors. So guess what - I got asked to help with it. Bah. What I should have done was say “Give me £300 and I'll write it for you”, but I Have Ethics and believe that the student Should Be Learning Something and that they Should Do Their Coursework Themselves, and most of all that they learn the lesson of Writing It Up As You Go so you can remember what you did later. So I swear that she basically moved into my house for a few days while I demanded information from her and questioned bits of the method that didn't make sense until she remembered the order they were really done in, and made her read out her incredibly messy handwritten tables so I could type them in correctly, and did Google searches for information about the invertebrates she didn't know anything about. And reminded her of GCSE concepts like pyramids of numbers and trophic levels, and taught her how to use Google Books, and how to use a spreadsheet to do your statistical test in one go rather than taking hours to do it on a calculator. I'd like to hope all of that was useful to her, but I have no faith that any of it will stick.
Anyway, after spending up to 8 hours a day staring at a computer screen for that, I haven't been feeling like doing anything social on a computer. So instead I have been:
Getting “Gamerpoints” on the Xbox 360
I wrote about this before - how I want to finish Rock Band properly before importing the songs to Rock Band 2. I have been exploring the various online modes and discovering that I like Tug of War A LOT, and don't like Score Duel so much because no one ever seems to be playing bass and I don't know a lot of the guitar parts that well. I've also been playing Beautiful Katamari online which really is fun, and getting the skill points for that.
Going to Revision Classes at College
This should be at the top of the list really, but I've been too exhausted to write about them. Having to get taxis to and from the station because my legs are too bad to walk it. Ugh.
Revising
Oh, who am I kidding? You think between A's coursework and the revision classes that I've had any spare time when my brain works for my own revision? Come off it.
Am incredibly, incredibly stressed about my exams. Thinking about trying to see my doctor a.s.a.p. for emergency psychiatric treatment. Don't trust anyone else to deal with it.
A is a student who went to a fieldwork centre last summer after her AS-level exams and before starting the A2 course. She spent a few days cataloguing invertebrates in ponds. Then she was supposed to go away and write up what she'd discovered. She didn't. Hence April came around and her school asked everyone for their biology coursework so it could be sent off to the exam board, and it didn't exist.
Now, I don't even know anything about A2-level biology, but I do know about coursework. And there seems to be some sort of chronic shortage of biology tutors. So guess what - I got asked to help with it. Bah. What I should have done was say “Give me £300 and I'll write it for you”, but I Have Ethics and believe that the student Should Be Learning Something and that they Should Do Their Coursework Themselves, and most of all that they learn the lesson of Writing It Up As You Go so you can remember what you did later. So I swear that she basically moved into my house for a few days while I demanded information from her and questioned bits of the method that didn't make sense until she remembered the order they were really done in, and made her read out her incredibly messy handwritten tables so I could type them in correctly, and did Google searches for information about the invertebrates she didn't know anything about. And reminded her of GCSE concepts like pyramids of numbers and trophic levels, and taught her how to use Google Books, and how to use a spreadsheet to do your statistical test in one go rather than taking hours to do it on a calculator. I'd like to hope all of that was useful to her, but I have no faith that any of it will stick.
Anyway, after spending up to 8 hours a day staring at a computer screen for that, I haven't been feeling like doing anything social on a computer. So instead I have been:
Getting “Gamerpoints” on the Xbox 360
I wrote about this before - how I want to finish Rock Band properly before importing the songs to Rock Band 2. I have been exploring the various online modes and discovering that I like Tug of War A LOT, and don't like Score Duel so much because no one ever seems to be playing bass and I don't know a lot of the guitar parts that well. I've also been playing Beautiful Katamari online which really is fun, and getting the skill points for that.
Going to Revision Classes at College
This should be at the top of the list really, but I've been too exhausted to write about them. Having to get taxis to and from the station because my legs are too bad to walk it. Ugh.
Revising
Oh, who am I kidding? You think between A's coursework and the revision classes that I've had any spare time when my brain works for my own revision? Come off it.
Am incredibly, incredibly stressed about my exams. Thinking about trying to see my doctor a.s.a.p. for emergency psychiatric treatment. Don't trust anyone else to deal with it.