I said Camden. I lied.
It's been a while since the last TCD entry, wouldn't you say? And oh boy, do I have an update for you. There's angst! There's excitement! There's cursing Biology's very name! (Although really, the latter isn't much of a surprise, considering the A-Level Biology course. "Fuck Biology" has been my refrain since about September.)
Okay. We left this tale at the first Oxbridge meeting, wherein Webster claimed that GCSEs were well important, I disagreed, Day agreed with me, and that was pretty much it. Oh, and Day left to go and hang out with famous!Taylor (as opposed to Latin!Taylor, who taught me, funnily enough, GCSE Latin), but that was it. So I'll write everything up roughly in order, relying mainly on my undeniably faulty memory. Whee!
So, Day left. I spoke to Ash about helping me with the Herodotus part of the Greek GCSE, and he said he'd totally help me with it during the Easter holidays, but I had my doubts. However, as luck would have it, I had Critical Thinking the very next lesson, and who happened to chime in to my little bitchfest about Greek than the epitome of Cloud Cuckoolander-ness himself, Mr Walden? As it turns out, he knows Greek, apparently, and he said I'd have to talk to him to arrange it all.
Unfortunately, that fell through, precisely because he is a complete Cloud Cuckoolander. So I did what I'd been secretly longing to do for a long time: I went and asked Boyten to help me instead. Those who do not know me in real life won't really understand why this is such a big deal. Suffice to say, it was a big deal. I psyched myself up for about half an hour before eventually forcing myself into the classroom and giving a long, awkward spiel about how "I'll totally understand if you say no, but ohmygodsirpleasepleasepleasedon'tI'llloveyouforever(ohwaitIalreadydonevermind)".
...He said no. Which kind of sucks, not gonna lie. His reasoning was perfectly sound, and I accept it entirely, but I couldn't help but feel rather disappointed at the time, especially since he also said I should consider dropping the GCSE entirely. Bit of a blow, there, especially since I was all excited about having fourteen GCSEs (shock! Excitement!).
But, having done a lot of soul-searching, I realised that he was probably right, and I ended up dropping Greek. I think it's worked out for the better: I know I wouldn't have been prepared for the exam, and right now I'd just be stressing about that, rather than the important stuff (coughcoughLatincoughcoughBiologycough), as I currently am.
I also went to the Oxbridge Classics open day with lohiya! That was brilliant, if slightly intimidating, and really deserves its own post, but it's not going to get one because I can't remember most of the details. It definitely sealed my opinion on Oxford (like I hadn't done that already). Unfortunately, Brasenose was closed, and Oxford apparently puts the higher emphasis on GCSEs, but I swear I'm over that. Honest. Yeah, I know, I keep saying that, but I'm actually serious this time. Probably.
One major event was that we got our January module results back--and I didn't mention that I even did any January modules, did I? Oh, well. I did two January modules. In January. Yeah. Biology and Critical Thinking. I got an A in the latter, but a C in the former, which...wasn't so good. I had a bit of a BSOD at that (although I can't say I genuinely didn't expect it). At that point, I was honestly ready to drop Biology before doing the second module, simply because I was convinced that having fewer AS Levels but higher results would stand me in better stead for Oxford than every single other applicant, but I was eventually persuaded to retake the first module, for better or for worse.
So, until a couple of months ago, everything was fine. Then the reality of AS Levels hit me, and I decided that there was no way in hell I'd get a decent mark in Biology, and thus no way in hell I'd get into Oxford for undergraduate level. I pretended I was okay with that. I wasn't. I began to truly despise Biology, instead of the rather more healthy level of dislike I'd had until then. It got to the point where I didn't dare even think about Oxford, because I (thought I) knew I'd fail at getting in. It didn't really help that I was pretty sure I wouldn't get an A in Latin, either. Yeah, the period around the Easter holidays was pretty rough.
But literally the weekend before the exam period (i.e. last weekend), things started looking up again.
You see, I'd been convinced that being good at a subject and being able to pass the exam were the same thing, even with all my adventures with the Classics papers. verbatim789 corrected me on that. So I spent all last weekend going through Biology past papers, hoping that this would be the thing that would give me a slightly higher mark than before.
Judging by how my resit paper went today, I think it may have been.
So Biology went okay. Latin didn't go okay, but that's because it went amazingly. It was supposed to last an hour and a half. I finished it in a third of that time, and five minutes of that half hour was spent thinking about a single word. And, because I wasn't allowed to leave until at least an hour had gone by, I spent the second half hour going over the Latin-to-English, and I don't want to jinx it, but I'm pretty proud of how it all went, so we'll see how that turns out. I've got my second Latin paper on Thursday, and my second Biology paper the Thursday after that, and admittedly they're both the harder of the two, but I'm feeling a lot more optimistic about the whole Oxford thing. It almost feels like a possibility again now! :D
ETA: OH SHIT I FORGOT THE AWESOME THING. I don't think I mentioned that I applied to the Bryanston Greek summer school, did I? And that Boyten wrote me the most awesome reference ever? Anyway, I'm in. Something to put on my personal statement, eyyy? :P
Okay. We left this tale at the first Oxbridge meeting, wherein Webster claimed that GCSEs were well important, I disagreed, Day agreed with me, and that was pretty much it. Oh, and Day left to go and hang out with famous!Taylor (as opposed to Latin!Taylor, who taught me, funnily enough, GCSE Latin), but that was it. So I'll write everything up roughly in order, relying mainly on my undeniably faulty memory. Whee!
So, Day left. I spoke to Ash about helping me with the Herodotus part of the Greek GCSE, and he said he'd totally help me with it during the Easter holidays, but I had my doubts. However, as luck would have it, I had Critical Thinking the very next lesson, and who happened to chime in to my little bitchfest about Greek than the epitome of Cloud Cuckoolander-ness himself, Mr Walden? As it turns out, he knows Greek, apparently, and he said I'd have to talk to him to arrange it all.
Unfortunately, that fell through, precisely because he is a complete Cloud Cuckoolander. So I did what I'd been secretly longing to do for a long time: I went and asked Boyten to help me instead. Those who do not know me in real life won't really understand why this is such a big deal. Suffice to say, it was a big deal. I psyched myself up for about half an hour before eventually forcing myself into the classroom and giving a long, awkward spiel about how "I'll totally understand if you say no, but ohmygodsirpleasepleasepleasedon'tI'llloveyouforever(ohwaitIalreadydonevermind)".
...He said no. Which kind of sucks, not gonna lie. His reasoning was perfectly sound, and I accept it entirely, but I couldn't help but feel rather disappointed at the time, especially since he also said I should consider dropping the GCSE entirely. Bit of a blow, there, especially since I was all excited about having fourteen GCSEs (shock! Excitement!).
But, having done a lot of soul-searching, I realised that he was probably right, and I ended up dropping Greek. I think it's worked out for the better: I know I wouldn't have been prepared for the exam, and right now I'd just be stressing about that, rather than the important stuff (coughcoughLatincoughcoughBiologycough), as I currently am.
I also went to the Oxbridge Classics open day with lohiya! That was brilliant, if slightly intimidating, and really deserves its own post, but it's not going to get one because I can't remember most of the details. It definitely sealed my opinion on Oxford (like I hadn't done that already). Unfortunately, Brasenose was closed, and Oxford apparently puts the higher emphasis on GCSEs, but I swear I'm over that. Honest. Yeah, I know, I keep saying that, but I'm actually serious this time. Probably.
One major event was that we got our January module results back--and I didn't mention that I even did any January modules, did I? Oh, well. I did two January modules. In January. Yeah. Biology and Critical Thinking. I got an A in the latter, but a C in the former, which...wasn't so good. I had a bit of a BSOD at that (although I can't say I genuinely didn't expect it). At that point, I was honestly ready to drop Biology before doing the second module, simply because I was convinced that having fewer AS Levels but higher results would stand me in better stead for Oxford than every single other applicant, but I was eventually persuaded to retake the first module, for better or for worse.
So, until a couple of months ago, everything was fine. Then the reality of AS Levels hit me, and I decided that there was no way in hell I'd get a decent mark in Biology, and thus no way in hell I'd get into Oxford for undergraduate level. I pretended I was okay with that. I wasn't. I began to truly despise Biology, instead of the rather more healthy level of dislike I'd had until then. It got to the point where I didn't dare even think about Oxford, because I (thought I) knew I'd fail at getting in. It didn't really help that I was pretty sure I wouldn't get an A in Latin, either. Yeah, the period around the Easter holidays was pretty rough.
But literally the weekend before the exam period (i.e. last weekend), things started looking up again.
You see, I'd been convinced that being good at a subject and being able to pass the exam were the same thing, even with all my adventures with the Classics papers. verbatim789 corrected me on that. So I spent all last weekend going through Biology past papers, hoping that this would be the thing that would give me a slightly higher mark than before.
Judging by how my resit paper went today, I think it may have been.
So Biology went okay. Latin didn't go okay, but that's because it went amazingly. It was supposed to last an hour and a half. I finished it in a third of that time, and five minutes of that half hour was spent thinking about a single word. And, because I wasn't allowed to leave until at least an hour had gone by, I spent the second half hour going over the Latin-to-English, and I don't want to jinx it, but I'm pretty proud of how it all went, so we'll see how that turns out. I've got my second Latin paper on Thursday, and my second Biology paper the Thursday after that, and admittedly they're both the harder of the two, but I'm feeling a lot more optimistic about the whole Oxford thing. It almost feels like a possibility again now! :D
ETA: OH SHIT I FORGOT THE AWESOME THING. I don't think I mentioned that I applied to the Bryanston Greek summer school, did I? And that Boyten wrote me the most awesome reference ever? Anyway, I'm in. Something to put on my personal statement, eyyy? :P