Posts Tagged ‘school’
Scholarly credentials
As those of you who follow me on Twitter will know, I’ve been in the process of writing a very large Philosophy essay (by A-level standards) recently and it has got me thinking about the kind of work I will be doing at university as I imagine there will be plenty of similarities. The task is to write four thousand words on one of a small selection of topics and then convert this into one thousand words of notes, and reproduce the essay in exam conditions – on a computer, so with my typing speed this makes the whole activity a complete farce since it will be thoroughly checked and perfected by my teacher and I before knocking out words to convert it into the thousand words of notes ready to be reproduced in a four hour session. Fairly ridiculous for something that words out to be 20% of the A-level as a whole which is more than any of the other individual exams. Everyone in the class is aiming for full marks or very close to that. But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy writing the essay itself. I sat down about a month ago and just typed away on a laptop for most of a Sunday (with breaks at various points, making it take up the better part of the day) and, mainly from memory given that we’d discussed the whole thing at such length in class and I’d read various other things, produced the first draft of the essay. What makes the whole thing even more ridiculous is that we had a photocopied chapter of a book that basically answers the very same essay question. I drew ideas and argument order from this but little more though, and cited it where appropriate.
The whole idea of making an interesting essay that illustrated its points and flowed along nicely really appeals to me. What’s also great is that I’d got to the point (with this particular topic only I note) where I was spontaneously quoting from other books and then having to go find the attribution rather than the other way round: searching in those books for something to quote. So I remembered a good way of expressing something and then grabbed a book and started flicking through to find the line in question. I assume that this is what university Philosophy will be like to some extent, reading various sources and bringing together some form of argument. If it is, I very much look forward to it. The problems begin to arise for me when it comes to changing the essay in order to make it more suitable for the exam. I was told that while my content was fine and the essay was elegant it wasn’t structured clearly enough to be marked by an examiner, despite being a good read. So over the past two days I’ve been working on making the argument clearer and clarifying some examples, but in the process I’ve completely overshot my word limit. This has really made the whole exercise seem a lot less worthwhile since I liked (and my teacher liked) what I had originally. But unfortunately I remain stuck in the grip of national exams which I must pass to go where I want to go in October.
So I now wonder how good I actually am at studying a wordy subject, unlike Maths which I am generally happy to just sit down and do. History last year was awful for me because I really didn’t know how much work to do at any one point and I was constantly tied up in wondering how much work to do for exams. But I am really hoping that that will change after this summer. I hope that at university exams really won’t be the constant concern or checking point for everything academic I do and that finally I can be free to explore subjects as fully as possible. I really hope that I can actually become good at being a scholar: reading (at a reasonable speed, which I fail hard at at the moment and this puts me off doing any reading at all) others’ works, working out what is useful, and building something of my own. Someone said to me recently that they thought I’d go down to Oxford and never leave. While I’m not convinced I’m good enough for that, I would now like to just be an academic, a lecturer of some form probably, as a career. There’s nothing that I care about enough other than my subjects to put my lif e towards.
Results again
There is a definite difference between rationally deciding upon something – whether it be an opinion or an action – and psychologically totally accepting it. I find it is when the latter occurs that something special has happened and yet telling others about such things is never quite the same. I may have been preaching an obvious opinion for years but then when I truly realise it it is an excitement that is very hard to get across to others. I don’t know if this happens to others but I imagine it does. The other day it was exam results day and I experienced one of these moments on the bus in. For a great deal of time I have railed against our exam-focussed culture and have claimed that what matters is the expansion of one’s mind through education as opposed to the completion of certifications of various forms. Exams have only ever been for me a challenge in getting certain grades as opposed to something that actually matters – or so I tell myself. In reality I have long been concerned. Posts on here show that. However, finally on the day of this round of results a few weeks back I finally realised that I no longer cared. Now that I have my university place and the knowledge that as long as I don’t do anything stupid I will meet the grade requirements for it, it is very easy to say this. But it really was a wonderful moment when I finally realised that the results meant nothing more to me than a gateway to this next advancement. And I thought it was worth writing about here. It is wonderful to know that I can truly enjoy the intellectual aspects of my subjects (aside from the intolerably dull Medical Physics) without being concerned hugely by exams, especially given the low percentages I need in the summer to get straight As. I do not mean to sound too comfortably secure here – the lack of enthusiasm I was able to show for friend’s results a few weeks back annoyed me. But I’d really like to think that were I not in this comfortable position regarding results, I would have eventually come round to this opinion regardless.
Turnings on the path of life
I’ve been meaning to blog about a few things that have happened lately but I don’t seem to be able to settle to do anything that requires some expenditure of effort at the moment. Even simple e-mail replies to friends are taking days because I just don’t seem to be able to get them done. My posting frequency on here has returned to the pathetic once a month on average. It’s rather rubbish, but I suppose given that it’s now the holidays it’s alright and I hope to be back to my usual form by the time 2008 draws to a close. I’ll have to as of course the usual January exams loom and I shall be revising hard for those. For the past year my school has had a building site on the field as a new school is constructed as the current one really is falling apart. We’re finally moving into it after this Christmas holiday, but said exams are due to take place in the mobile buildings that form part of the old site. According to a charismatic religious education teacher I know, the one that my maths exams are to take place in has been recently nicknamed ‘the fridge’ so we’re going to have an interesting time with that.
One reasonably major change that happened recently is that I’ve stopped living at my father’s house during the week. Since my parents split up about ten years ago, my sister and I have switched between the houses with a very complex system that no-one else seems to understand, spending time at both during weekdays and then alternating over weekends – and carrying or sending piles of stuff (mainly school books) back and forth. For years I have got on poorly with my father and have tried to get away from living there whenever I can, and now that I’ve turned eighteen my mother says she isn’t going to stop me anymore and is happy for me to live more at her house during the week. So now I only go to my father’s alternate weekends. I’m obviously not entirely happy with this turn of events: it’s a bit rubbish that I dislike living with one of my parents and my sister thinks I’m being very selfish. I don’t think this is a very fair assessment. I’ve done it because the general atmosphere in the house is rarely pleasant as my father and I clash continuously over trivial things and this is especially true on week nights when I’m dashing off to ringing, coming home late due to after school activities and trying to get homework done. My sister and I have an even worse relationship (always have) so to me it makes sense to try and defuse this situation where I can by spending less time together. You may well disagree, and as I say I don’t think it’s ideal. But given that I think in the long run people will have a pleasanter time during the week, and it’s not as if I’m leaving entirely, it makes sense to me.
Something else that has happened is that I’ve been asked to leave freenode‘s staff team because I clearly don’t have the time these days. I think I should have voluntarily given up the responsibility given that I knew this myself, but I just loved the place and the people too much to do that. So now I’ve been retired and told that if I do have more time in the future, I can always reapply. I’ve had a fantastic time with freenode. I’ve met some great and dedicated volunteers who I am definitely not going to lose touch with, and I’ve learnt a great deal about dealing with the more difficult users of the network. I do hope that I’ve been useful in the other direction and freenode has benefited somewhat. I will be sticking around the place and I am still on the network for SilentFlame and Wikimedia channels. I am going to try and focus more on my Wikimedia responsibilities with the extra time: I have jobs that are ideal for the amount of time I have and I shall very much try to do them effectively.
Far more exciting than the above notes is that I received a letter yesterday to inform me that I’ve got a place at Oxford at the college I wanted (Balliol) to study Maths and Philosophy for four years starting from October 2009. I just need, of course, to get the three As at A-level required but assuming I don’t do anything really stupid I think I’m on target to get this. This is fantastic news for me – I feel like I can do anything if I’ve managed this. After going down there to stay for three/four days to be interviewed about ten days ago, I really could imagine myself having a great time there. All the students looking after us were very nice, even if the sixth formers were loud and constantly trying to show off a lot of the time (I befriended two quieter Maths and Philosophy students and lo and behold all three of us got in!). The environment is of course very impressive in terms of the buildings, and the college library is such an amazing place to learn in. Accomodation is basic but fine and the food is okay but is served in a hall of epic proportions. The Balliol tutors who interviewed me were also lovely and I can imagine learning a great deal from them. And of course there are things such as the Oxford Union Debating Society, THE place for debating; all the usual university societies such as gaming and lots and lots of ringing; and it’s not at all a bad city to live in. After such a long time of waiting around and wanting to know I can finally imagine myself there with reasonable surety that it’ll happen.
The interview experience as a whole is a very convoluted affair. The amount of variation between Oxford and Cambridge and between the individual colleges is pretty astonishing at first. I stayed from Sunday evening until Wednesday evening and the vast majority of this consisted of sitting around and reading or revising material for interviews. Everyone gets an interview at the college of choice that they applied to and then at least one other at another college in order to try and give no disadvantage to applying to particular colleges which may, in any individual year, find themselves oversubscribed compared to others which may not have ‘enough’ applicants. The problem is that such extra interviews are arranged in a very haphazard way. When I arrived, the noticeboard holding interview details was about a metre wide and hadn’t extended too far with sheets of paper covered in names and times for various subjects. However, with people arriving and departing all the time and more and more interviews being arranged, the board spread out to the right rapidly, filling the common room’s noticeboard gradually across – including duplicates making it necessary to read everything to ensure you didn’t miss something aimed at you. I was also rung up when further interviews were arranged. By the end there was a dismissal notice up for all the maths and related courses but there was a special section at the bottom asking me to stay a bit longer to be interviewed again.
I ended up being interviewed by three colleges, but two of these had seperate interviews for maths and philosophy so I was interviewed five times in total which was rather a lot. Interviews themselves varied very widely. In maths, in one I was asked reasonably difficult but not exactly brain-mashing questions; in the second I merely chatted about recent topics studied and about the entrance test (which apparently I did pretty well on but I wasn’t told my percentage score); and in the third I was guided through a very hard problem (attempting to define a function of n that would tell you the number of zeroes on the end of n!; got there too). In philosophy, I was asked several technical questions relating to the problem of induction, and some interesting political and linguistic questions that I probably shouldn’t share on the web as they do like to reuse them.
And now it’s Christmas day and thanks to the above I have the best present possible. It’s been a very eventful year and it’ll likely be an equally eventful January, but I’m enjoying the fact that I have an absurd amount of family members over for Christmas right now before I start thinking about such things. In our tiny little three bedroomed semi, we have fifteen people: two grandparents, three aunties, two uncles, five cousins, one father and one sister to give their relations to me. My father’s girlfriend’s house is being used to house some and others are staying in a local bed and breakfast. I went ringing this morning while they all strained at the leash of present opening (I pointed out upon entry that calling people to worship is the whole point of the day *nods*) and now I’m at home writing this and am going to put the turkey in the oven for the non-vegetarians (i.e. the other fourteen people) while they’re out for a walk, which after walking all the way up to and back from my mother’s (fifty minutes each way) to get my Oxford letter yesterday and walking all the way to the cathedral this morning (about an hour) I think I’ve done enough.
Ack time what where
I very much thought that this school year would be less busy than the last, affording me more time to do things other than direct school work. So far, I’ve been sorely mistaken about this: despite doing one less subject, I seem to have just as much work at present to the point where I’ve fallen behind on pretty much everything else. I have a million items in my RSS reader: comics, blog posts, lolcats and the like; my inbox is utterly out of control; and I am missing deadlines for things like the recent election to the new board of Wikimedia UK. On top of all this I’m supposed to be applying to university, organise/enter various debating things, and of course it would be nice if I could do some, you know, reading of those things called books. I just don’t seem to be very efficient at getting school work done, probably because I’m usually such a perfectionist regarding such things, and hence I have no time for anything else. Any hopes of doing Wikimedia stuff this year aside from my minimal jobs as I did last year have very much vanished.
This conception of things getting easier as I advance through stages of education is of course a very common one. A friend of my father rung me up the other day to ask after his website which I am supposed to manage (another thing which I have fallen behind on) and hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that this is simply never the case. Education always works by insisting that the current stage is vastly more important than the last. GCSEs mean nothing once you start A-levels. Presumably A-levels will be entirely insignificant once you start university. And once you’ve done a degree you’ll probably be told that everyone has one, and you should try and get a masters. And then a PhD… and it just goes on. Currently I have an idea that once I get to university things will be better because I won’t have to worry constantly about passing exams and I will be able to just enjoy my subject and let it flow in naturally but of course this won’t happen; they’ll just be more exams. This silly idea I have that once I get into university everything will be marvelous and I will be able to breathe a sigh of relief is just as unreasonable as a belief that GCSEs are the be all and end all of education.
Applying to university is a process I’m currently involved in, as noted. These days it’s been privatised to within an inch of its life and is done entirely over the web, and is known as UCAS, or the University and Colleges Admissions System. Applying involves filling in lots of information – qualifications, employment, contact details and the like – but also in writing a personal statement, or set of reasons why you want to do the courses (up to five at five institutions). This is by far the hardest bit. We’re told to mix academic achievements and enthusiasm with hobbies and interests, but linking all of this together is very difficult. The other problem is that I could fiddle with my statement for ever, messing around with wording and clarifying and the like, and I’d end up never submitting it, so it’s just a case of getting it written and as good as possible and then just hoping for the best and hitting send. Conflicting comments don’t help either. While my form tutor says the statement is ‘perfect’ and that she would eat her hat if I didn’t get in to either Oxford or Durham (my top two choices), my family are more criticial of my wording. What’s also difficult is selecting my other three choices of where to apply. Open days and prospecti generally provide little more than advertising material and while I’ve obviously looked into and visited my top two choices there doesn’t seem much to gain from the others. Yet the chance of not getting into my top two is high and so I need to pick places I will eventually be happy with; I don’t trust my form tutor’s hat-eating at all. So I think I’m going to put Birmingham, York and Nottingham down, all for Maths and Philosophy, and we shall see what happens.
Sorry for a very all over the place post. I’ve just got so much to do and think about at the moment.