Exam Stress

It has recently occurred to me that if I want a job that requires a set of sixth form exams (which I’m not entirely sure I do), then these next few weeks are probably the most important of my life so far. Which is scary.

I won’t lie- these past few weeks have been the most productive of my entire life. I have literally never done so much work, and don’t plan to ever again! Though I’ve also done so much more of everything else. I now have the beginnings of a body fit for summer from exercising, I can rollerskate without falling flat on my face, and my guitar playing has progressed in leaps and bounds! Though none of that is going to help me pass my exams.

Despite this, I don’t think my dedication to things other then revision is bad. While many of my friends are about to collapse from exam pressure, when I feel like I’m going to be crushed under a mountain of maths equations I pull out some juggling clubs. I put energy into things that take my mind wholly off work and exams and allow me to concentrate on something else. My hobbies are escapes, and I think that’s something more people would benefit from discovering.

I’m not trying to say that people should just stop revising and take up the ukulele, because revision is pretty vital for anyone who’s been offered a conditional university place! I just think it’s important to have a thing or two that can help you forget about it, even if it’s just for an hour a day.

Over and out.

Birthday Resolution

I am completely aware that this is not a remotely normal thing to do, but I’ve decided to start a birthday resolution. It’s like a New Year’s resolution, but it starts on my birthday, which is conveniently placed smack bang in the middle of the year.

My birthday resolution is to be less lazy. This may seem odd, but believe me I need it! It’s got to the stage where my excuse for everything is ‘I’m lazy.’

Will I change to go out later? No, I’m lazy.

Will I put make up on? No, I’m lazy.

Will I go to the gym? No, I’m lazy.

Will I do some juggling? No, I’m lazy.

Will I go upstairs to grab a jumper? No, I’m lazy.

This has got to stop! And, from the sixth of June, it will. I will not be lazy, and I will do things when I want to, where I want to. I shall not be hindered by my laziness any longer!

I think this is a great idea for me, and I hope it actually works out. It’d be even better if it would start working out now, because I’m too lazy to revise for my exams which is likely to be problematic in the near future...

Over and out.

I'm a Copy Cat

I was reading Hannah's blog today (Infinitely Pi, though I don't know how to put in a link because I'm not quite as tech-savvy as I pretend to be!), when I came across this questionnaire. Hannah mentioned that she had read it on Bryarly's blog and decided to do it herself to let us know a bit more about her. I decided to do the same. So that just makes me the ultimate Copy Cat!

1. Sexual Orientation

Straight.

2. What I'm really bad at.

Drawing. Though I can draw a damn good stick figure.

3. My Best First Date

Despite the fact I've had boyfriends before now, I've never been on an official date. Which, come to think of it, may be one of the reasons I dumped them!

4. A description of my self-esteem.

Not too shabby!

5. My favorite book.

Mr God, This is Anna has held the spot for a good few years. Although recently The Night Circus has just blown me away.

6. What I did yesterday.

Revision. Oh, and I ate my body weight in chips from the local fish and chip shop.

7. Biggest turn-offs.

Massive over-confidence, weedy (both in body and in mind!), no musical appreciation, being weirdly obsessed with something and shoving it down other people's throats.

8. My favourite animal.

Marmosets. Ideally pygmy. In the future I hope to own a marmoset. Again, ideally pygmy.

9. My favourite songs right now.

5 years time.

10. How my last kiss went down.

I did have a fairly amusing story written here, but it could be seen as mean to the boy so I decided to delete it incase he ever reads this...!

11. What I find attractive in the preferred sex.

Can take it and dish it out (words!), athletic, musical, stronger then I am, taller then I am (by 4 inches is ideal so I can wear heels all the time), likes the outdoors, keen to try new things, can tell when I don't want him all over me! (Yes, I'm picky...)

12. All of the pets I've ever had.

Fish. He was a goldfish. I won him at a fair when I was 13 and kept him lovingly for two years before he died.

13. Favorite flavor of ice cream.

Marshmallow

14. The one place I want to be right now.

On a horse trek in Colorado.

15. Where I have lived before.

Oxford, London.

16. Most embarrassing moment.

There are so many! I think possibly falling into the aisle of the church in the middle of the sermon was pretty high up there though...

17. Two of my insecurities.

The tops of my arms and the flub around my shoulders. Eww!

18. What I would do if I won the lottery.

Pay for university. And then pay for my brothers to go to university. Stupid rise in fees!

19. What I love most about myself.

My personality.

20. What bands I've seen live.

One Direction, Little Mix, G4, Madness and a bunch more I can't remember! Also a bunch of solo artists, but they're not bands so I'm not listing them.

21. How many kids I want in the future.

Minimum 4. Max, as many as I can afford. If I won the lottery, that has the potential to be a lot.

22. My idea of a perfect date.

Him teaching me his sport then us going somewhere stunning to camp (preferably by canoe) and playing guitar together by a campfire.

23. Where I would like to live.

Redwood Forest. Near Mendocino County. I've never been there, but for some reason have always wanted to live there.

24. My biggest worry currently.

Exams and my imminent failure of them.

25. What my last text message says.

"I bloody well hope not." Yes, I am that English.

Also I'm going to stop pretending, just for one second mind you, that I'm blogging to millions of adoring fans. Hi to Lizzie (Random, Zesty Thoughts of a Devious Ginger) and Hannah (Infinitely Pi). You guys are awesome for not abandoning me!

The Cupboard Collage

I'm on study leave at the moment. It's the middle of exam season and the idea is that, if you don't have any exams for a few days, you can go home and study there. And yes the clue is in the name- you are supposed to actually study.

Being the creative child that I am, I came up with a whole list of things I could do that were productive enough to postpone revision for. One of these was to decorate the room I'll be staying in for 10 months next year. We're renting the house and can't stick anything up on the walls, so I decided the cupboard was going to be my best option. I laid out all my pin-board things on the floor and prepared for action!

Look at the lovely neat piles! 

Since the age of 11, every single room I've lived in has had a massive collage of photos and things somewhere within it. At my school, not doing your pin-board was practically a cardinal sin! In my bedroom at home, every wall I own is covered in photos, baby pictures, cinema tickets and anything else you could think of. Having the same in my room for next year was a no-brainer!

Despite years of training, I have yet to master the whole 'tidy up as you go along' thing. Needless to say, having covered only the following amount of cupboard...

Tiny bit of cupboard covered.

This happened:

There go my neat piles...

Despite the fact that I planned to only do half the cupboard in one session, my inner boarding school girl came out, and I couldn't stop myself. I did, however, manage to pause for a photo of the half done cupboards:

The top half of my cupboard collage.

As I said, I couldn't stop myself. I'd gone into full-blown pin-board mode, holding up various items and deciding that there was too much red in one area, or that there were too many paper items, or something just didn't suit being next to something else... I went about sticking things on this cupboard with the same insanity I tackled my room every term in school! Eventually, I finished the 'base' and was left with this:

The base.

This is the part where you might think I'm a little mad. You see all the little tiny bits of cupboard showing? Well I do, and I don't want to! Over the years I have collected a variety of different sized items to fill these different sized holes. I then obsessively matched each item to a piece of wood to produce the picture below:

The finished product!

Can you see any difference between the two? Do let me know if you can- I'd like to try and convince myself that I'm not completely insane! 

Anyway, this was my 'productive' afternoon. I may need to do a bit more revision tomorrow to make up for lost time...!

Over and out.

Little Green Journal: April 2013

You remember that little green journal I wrote a blog about fairly recently? I decided to read over the last month of entries. After a good 20 minutes of sitting in bed giggling to myself, I thought it might be fun to share some of these stories with you all!

I concluded that at the end of every month I'll read back over all the entries and pick one to post here. Hopefully you'll find them vaguely amusing and they'll make your day that little bit brighter! I will post them exactly as written, so we may end up with some oddly formed sentences but oh well. So here's April. This pretty much describes a typical Saturday at school.


27 April 2013
Today I rolled out of bed at 10:35 and went to maths at 10:40 with my skirt over my pyjamas. It was a pretty unproductive lesson! I then spent the afternoon avoiding all work, the height of procrastination being having a nap. Despite the fact I wasn't tired. Then came dinner. Lauren forgot to tell me when the taxi was, so I was told when it arrived and I was still in my pyjamas! I have never changed so fast! And then at supper, we were on the verge of being thrown out the Indian place. First we couldn't say any of the food names. And then my friend burped really loudly. And then I got hiccups. My super mega loud ones. It was bad.


So that's that. Have an awesome day!

Over and out.

Individuality

This is something that was recently brought to my attention when a friend described my Twitter summary (the same one I use everywhere on the internet) as ‘indie’. A couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have minded a dot. I probably wouldn’t even have known what she meant! It’s only since people have started to use ‘indie’ to describe the huge volumes of youth actively trying to be different, that makes me think that being ‘indie’ isn’t such a good thing.

What I find most confusing about the whole concept is that the word is meant to describe someone who is different to most people. With so many people determined to achieve this status, indie has lost its meaning. It’s become the new normal for practically every teen I know!

It’s a bit of a contradiction that indie has become so mainstream, which is largely why I don’t like it. I’m different, but I’m not trying to be. Can you imagine how huge a waste of time it would be if I blogged and juggled and unicycled to stand out from my friends and didn’t simply do them for enjoyment?

I think it’s good to be different, but it’s better to be you. If you are the lunatic in your group who thought learning to slackline on a dodgy ankle was a brilliant idea, then great! But if you’re the one who’s happy to just read, surf the net and go out, then that’s just as great. In my humble opinion, it’s best to be you, even if you’re just like your friends. So be yourself, because that’s all you need to be.

Over and out.

The Big Wide World

It has recently occurred to me that I have six days of lessons left in my life. This wouldn't be an issue if it hadn't also occurred to me that I am hugely unprepared to become a functioning member of society. I have to life in the real world. And make new friends. And join clubs outside school. And work.

I have to earn money to live!

As you may have noticed, until now these things seemed like a part of my distant future. The plan was that I'd just waft through life and everything would just somehow fall into place; I'd simply progress into the world of work with the ease of a fish learning to swim. It was going to be wonderful.

And now it's a bit scary. I'm not going to university this year- I'm taking a year out to work and gain worldly experience. I always thought this was a great idea because, when I graduate, I'll be far better prepared to take on the world then most of my peers! This idea still stands, though first I have to somehow survive 10 months working with people who are on average 20 years older then me and who all have an innate interest in what they are designing. I can't even use photoshop- how on earth am I supposed to take on 3D manufacturing programmes?

Despite all this, it is exciting. While I lose the comfort of knowing I have somewhere to go back to after every holiday, I gain the excitement of not knowing what's going to happen every day. I might not be quite ready for the world, and it might not be quite ready for me, but I'm coming anyway. Whether I like it or not.

Over and out.

The Funny Things

I’ve always had trouble writing diaries. No matter how I started them and no matter how determined I was to finish them I never managed to write one for longer than a month.

I tried using them for rants and got annoyed as I couldn’t write as fast as I thought. I tried using them to say what happened each day but got bored and gave up. I even tried writing in point form on my computer but got sick of it because I didn’t enjoy writing the entries. But I have now found a way I can capture each day of my life, and it’s a way I’ve stuck at for longer then ever before.

Since mid-way through January, I have been filling a little green journal with funny things that happened each day. It’s usually not something of huge importance or even something that matters remotely in my life at all, but it gives me great pleasure to know I’ll never forget that I broke 13 saw blades within two and a half weeks of lessons at school.

I have also become acutely aware of how much my life resembles a comedy show or, more specifically, the life of a clumsy teenage Miranda Hart. It must be an all girls school thing! Whatever it is, it’s something I’ll enjoy reading about in several years time.

It’s not conventional diary writing, but it works. I actively don’t put in how awesome I felt when I got my Gold DofE or how annoying I found a certain person at the time of writing. When I’m older I’m not going to want to remember hating people in school for petty reasons and all the good moments I should remember anyway, if they’re important enough. It’s a collection of all the funny, stupid things that happen to me in my very normal life.

I know I’ll treasure it when I look back on it as it contains the little things I might forget. Now I know they’ll always be remembered!

Over and out!