(no subject)
Completely thrilling recap of exams this week:
The non-calculator maths paper was positively tame; I finished checking it with twenty minutes to spare and spent the rest of the time shading in all of the graphs and drawings in a pretty way. It was a relief to see several of the questions on there, since as far as I know they almost never cover the same topic on both Maths papers and the questions on the calculator paper are invariably harder. So, yeah, I no longer need to worry about not understanding most of the data handling stuff for the time being.
English Literature was tougher, but I think I did all right. When you think you did all right that usually means giving up all hope of a decent grade, but compared to some of the horrible essay questions we've had to look at, they weren't so bad. Other than - well, do you know how annoying it is to think of perfectly good sentences like "'Sonnet 130' can be read as Shakespeare's Take That against sappy romance writers of his time, and uses insulting imagery to describe his mistress so that the reader can identify with her" and having to rephrase all of them into proper essay language? It's not very nice.
Of course, Japanese was a pushover in its entirety and now it's totally done. First question on the writing paper: five things that you might take on holiday. Some milk, a textbook, a dictionary, a dog and a pencil - hey, they're nouns, so they count.
Biology, in contrast to everything else, was hell. Fortunately, it's my worst science - my hopes for sixth-form are riding more on the other two, which don't happen for ages. Unfortunately, well, it's definitely my worst science. The paper is 45 minutes, which is nowhere near enough time. Also, before the exam I and a handful of other students accidentally went to the wrong exam hall because of an ambiguous school announcement (seriously, if they say all the students with surnames from this letter of the alphabet, how are we meant to know they meant just the students from that letter, not any letters after it?), which did not help my composure.
Coming up next, right before half-term, is German reading. I have no way of knowing whether that's going to be ridiculously simple or a nightmare. Why can't they all write in French? French is easier.
The non-calculator maths paper was positively tame; I finished checking it with twenty minutes to spare and spent the rest of the time shading in all of the graphs and drawings in a pretty way. It was a relief to see several of the questions on there, since as far as I know they almost never cover the same topic on both Maths papers and the questions on the calculator paper are invariably harder. So, yeah, I no longer need to worry about not understanding most of the data handling stuff for the time being.
English Literature was tougher, but I think I did all right. When you think you did all right that usually means giving up all hope of a decent grade, but compared to some of the horrible essay questions we've had to look at, they weren't so bad. Other than - well, do you know how annoying it is to think of perfectly good sentences like "'Sonnet 130' can be read as Shakespeare's Take That against sappy romance writers of his time, and uses insulting imagery to describe his mistress so that the reader can identify with her" and having to rephrase all of them into proper essay language? It's not very nice.
Of course, Japanese was a pushover in its entirety and now it's totally done. First question on the writing paper: five things that you might take on holiday. Some milk, a textbook, a dictionary, a dog and a pencil - hey, they're nouns, so they count.
Biology, in contrast to everything else, was hell. Fortunately, it's my worst science - my hopes for sixth-form are riding more on the other two, which don't happen for ages. Unfortunately, well, it's definitely my worst science. The paper is 45 minutes, which is nowhere near enough time. Also, before the exam I and a handful of other students accidentally went to the wrong exam hall because of an ambiguous school announcement (seriously, if they say all the students with surnames from this letter of the alphabet, how are we meant to know they meant just the students from that letter, not any letters after it?), which did not help my composure.
Coming up next, right before half-term, is German reading. I have no way of knowing whether that's going to be ridiculously simple or a nightmare. Why can't they all write in French? French is easier.