Shane's blog » Exams

Great unexpectations

Shane — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:38:27 +0000

The exam today didn’t go as well as I expected… I didn’t do horribly, but not as well as I hoped when walking in. They decided to abandon the judicial creativity quest completely, which messed up our revision. We were told, and understandably so, that judicial creativity was a topic that always came up, 100% of the time. And it did since the beginning of this subject. Today though, they decided to miss it out… Instead, I had to do justice, and just make up a tonne of stuff. I’m more curious than worried about if I’ll have the grades to get into university now… I hope I will. If not, I have next year to reapply and maybe retake an A2 unit or something, part time.

In Warcraft news, I really wanted to do Deadmines tonight, with Ratio, but my connection is being so stupid.

I went to the job center today! I felt crappy going in, like I failed at life or something… I know there’s nothing wrong with using the service, but I don’t feel like it fills its purpose since both my dad and mum have been going since… well, ever. I was pleasently surprised though; there are tonnes of jobs all listed on a touch screen computer and you can print off the details and stuff. I even though programming, PHP and HTML jobs. I printed a bunch off and I’ll start working on those Monday. I’ll probably start this weekend, but I doubt I can do anything (like phoning them up and stuff) till Monday.

Apparently, I’m entitled to job seeker’s allowance, but I really don’t feel like I’m entitled to it. I mean, I am seeking, but I’ve not given the government any money at the moment, so I feel like I’d just be 100% selfishly using other people’s tax money to fund my non-productive lifestyle…

A clear outlook

Shane — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:08:55 +0000

I only have one exam left now, which is one that I’m expecting to be hugely easy so I’m not at all worried about it. Getting an A in it would be awesome though… It’d definitely help me out with UCAS points, since I’m really worried about those at the moment. Looking at my AS results, I really don’t feel like I can get what I need for Brighton – which is a near impossibility – I might just scrape DMU, which is a sucky thing to say since I slated them for giving me a really low offer… I guess the main lesson I’ve learnt with A Level is that even if you think they’re likely to be easy, you still have to put in the effort. Kinda like even if you’re a level 42 hunter, if you take on six level 30 you’ll probably get beaten.

I’m not at all worried about getting into university though. The way I see it is that I’m likely to get into DMU. If I miss that, it really won’t be by much, in which case I can fight my way through clearing. If all fails miserably, I’ve still got all of next year to reapply. I can even resit an A Level unit or two if I really have to, not getting into university won’t push my timetable back at all.

The problem of this being my last exam though is that I’m actually unemployed once it’s over. Dad’s nagging me that my child support money will stop in September so I’ll have to get a job to pay him the money he’s losing out on. What I think he meant though was that I needed to get a job in order to pay him board money. Which is really a dumb thing to say, since I’m hoping to have moved out of this house long before September anyway. I just have to start looking for a job now; I’m not really sure where to start though. I’ll make an appointment at the Job Centre tomorrow, I guess.

Meanwhile though, I’ve bought shamess.info and I’m using part of that to advertise freelance, hosting and SEO services I can start offering. That’s something I wanted to do before, but never really had time in between World of Warcraft and college. Now it’s just World of Warcraft I can start focusing on that full time, till I get a job, then I can focus on it full time.

Side note: I’ll start to move this blog over to shamess.info too soon (probably tonight) so things may get a bit confusing, since I’ve never migrated a WordPress blog before. I figure I won’t touch the files, and just change the ServerName. Hopefully, most people won’t even notice the URL change, if I set it up right.

Oh, also, I’m going to start updating DebianTips again. It still gets okay traffic for a neglected blog. I need to touch up some of the older posts with stuff I’ve learnt new though, before I start doing more stuff.

Taking a break

Shane — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:25:26 +0000

I had my law unit two exam today, and I think I did fine. I’m not even thinking about my next exams (next, next Friday), so I’m having a break from worrying this week. Meanwhile, I’m gonna learn how to … Continue reading →

To-do for law 2

Shane — Sun, 18 May 2008 17:48:37 +0000

I have a law (unit 2) exam Friday. That gives me four and a half days to learn it all. Well, not all but a good chunk of it. I’m … not exactly confident, but still, I’m not considering suicide.

I figure when I get back home (I’m at my mom’s at the moment) I’ll start a vigorous revision cycle. Unit two consists of four 15 mark quests, they’re pretty predictable too.

What do magistrates do
What do judges do
Advantages and disadvantages of judges
Advantages and disadvantages of magistrates
ADR methods
Advantages and disadvantages of ADR

So, if I learn those, I’ll do fine.

Today has been productive

Shane — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:11:21 +0000

Don’t be fooled into believe that I love to tell you all what I’m doing every second of the day, I’m actually only here because World Of Warcraft is doing for maintenance. Why do they take off every realm at the same time? I thought I’d play my dwarf (PVP server) whilst my main is down, but that goes down too. Sucks. So now I’m here.

I still have the problems with graphics on both WoW and GW, with no idea what the problem is. I’ve updated drivers and everything. WoW support have told me to do a memory test, which could take hours so I might do it for when I got to bed. A small part of me wants the memory test to find an error, so I can get it fixed. But at the same time, I don’t want Toshiba to take him again…

I’ve actually done a lot of revision today. That makes me even less nervous. I was shocked to see that my first exam is Friday though… it’s a computing resit. I haven’t actually looked at it at all, to be honest… Tomorrow I shall though, and make sure that I understand all the terms in the specification. As all exams, you only need to learn what they want you to learn, even if it’s not relavant.

What else have I done today… Oh, I’ve started reading a C++ book, which my computing teacher lent me. It’s… huge. I got bored at first, where it’s teaching about variable types and stuff, which I already know. I’m reading it though, since I may miss something C++ specific that’ll confuse me later on in the book.

I suppose I’ll go to sleep now. Wake me up at 1100, when the server is back up.

Examiners should stay away from HTML, or get someone who knows it.

Shane — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:18:48 +0000

Question 7 is disgusting. In fact, take a few moments to read through the question paper and point out a lot of the errors. But it’s the badly form HTML that bothers me most. Why does the exam board want to teach us incorrect information?

I expect that that web page in newer browsers would just break, or it’d be outraged and refuse to show the page. The other HTML questions are awful too. I only got a few marks in one question because I used

, rather than

. The thing is, depending on how well the person marking my exam knew HTML, I would have gotten full marks for that bit.

Okay, I guess I was intentionally using CSS because I knew they were looking for

, but still, my point’s still valid. AQA shouldn’t be teaching us invalid code.

Thanks for all the help, AQA

Shane — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:55:50 +0000

I just started looking over the stuff for business unit 11. The way I revise is by answering past exam questions. I head to the AQA website to find some, and there’s none there!? There’s an examiner report about the exam, but no actual exam. Not helpful at all.

I guess I can work from the specification, but they never actually tell you what you need to learn; that’s why I like using the exam papers because you can actually see what they’re going to ask and how it’s going to be asked. Take law for instance, the questions don’t mention defences at all but you’re still expected to put them in. You wouldn’t know you’re supposed to unless you’ve seen past mark schemes and exam papers.

The examiner’s report is actually quite helpful though.

I’m just going to go ahead and learn all of my text book.

Exams I’m taking

Shane — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:04:05 +0000

As a token of how unorganised I am, I wanted to make a post saying what exams I’m taking.

May

In May, I should be (at least, I think I am) retaking computing, unit 2 (CPT2) and law, unit 2 (LAW2). Both of these are AS resits because I failed them last year, which is always fun.

June

A2 exams I’m taking in June are law, unit 6 (LAW6) and unit 4 (LAW4), computing, units 4 (CPT4) and 5 (CPT5), and business studies, unit 11 (BUS11).

I’m resitting law, unit 5 (LAW5).

Jolly good, only seven eight exams. Plus three sets of coursework. Before July. Joy.