Archive for September, 2008
School recommences
It’s back to school this afternoon – or, in some sense: we’re merely going in to confirm the subjects for the year, and then in order to have a ‘clean start’ lessons don’t actually start until next Monday. I can only take the word of the staff that it takes that long to sort out timetables. But in any case the holiday is effectively over. And, as usual, I’ve achieved so little this holiday compared to what I intended to. I had a rather long list of things to do and things to read but I’ve ended up doing a very small fraction of those. I think this is a combination of two factors: firstly, I simply don’t think of things that I want to get done unless I’m in a position where I can’t do them. For example, I’ve barely been into Oxfam because I only think about it at the weekend when I can’t ring them up to book a shift. This is not a pathetic excuse, and I don’t think it’s okay that I’ve not been in, but this is the reason why. I am simply not in this world enough to be able to keep track of things – or so my mother might put it. The second factor is likely time management. When I actually get going on something I can do it. It’s just a case of /remembering/ to do this getting going. I’ve long been like this and after this summer I’m beginning to wonder if it’s something that I can possibly get out or if I am stuck in this aspect of my nature, which would be a shame.
I am really hoping that I will have more time during termtime this year for activities such as Wikimedia, something else which I’ve not exactly been fantastic this summer about actually getting on with. By dropping history I should have a lot more time because that was always my most heavy subject in terms of homework last year. So now I only have maths, physics and philosophy. The former two will get harder in terms of content, but they’re never subjects to be particularly work-heavy once I get the concept at hand. This holiday we were set an essay for physics that I really struggled with because it wasn’t really an essay. There was no argument, no point, simply a regurgitation of a lot of information taken off the contents of my folder and the Internet. Thus I struggled to make it flow and I’m really not happy with the result. Hopefully year thirteen should be better for this kind of thing. Less facts, more arguments. We shall see however, and there is always physics coursework looming in early 2009. And of course exams will be really important this year. However the lack of history is a big bonus and we shall see where it leads. I’d probably be more interested in doing history than physics at this point, but not in the workload and unfortunately my choice has to come down on that here given how much I disliked Y12. Which is a shame, as history is more important to me at the end of the day.
Hopefully there will be some good pen and paper RPG sessions next year as we’re looking to play both DnD 3.25e and Exalted 2e, that is the usual Dungeons & Dragons plus a new group for Exalted, a game which in the view of many of us who played it last week with Kvetch to see what we thought of it is a lot better than DnD. It has social combat, a concept called stunting which gives an actual mechanical benefit to describing the actions of one’s character, and more realistic damage (seven instead of fifty hit points). Power levels in Exalted are very different. All characters are demigods and the backstory of the world can’t be seperated in the way you can have a DnD campaign in any generic fantasy setting. But we’re going to try to get a group going for it and we’ll see what happens. Nevermore is hopefully going to run the game which will be nice as for once I will be able to be a player instead of making up adventures as DM. So that is something to look forward to.
So we shall see how this year goes. Last one at school, in fact.