Back in October, I planned to study for my 2 A-levels and be completely prepared by this May. It didn’t really work that way. With computing work, my lack of willpower and the newly found distractions of flickr, bloglines, eBay etc. (I’m not claiming these are valid excuses, just reasons), I haven’t been as diligent as I would have liked. I got through all the work, but revision has been lacking, to say the least. Pure 3 was my biggest worry as first time round it was my big spectacular failure, and I was hoping to walk out of the exam having found it reasonably easy. I didn’t, but it could have been worse.

At 0930 I was pretty much ready to give up on life and go live in a forested kennel. P3 was very, very hard, and to make it worse there were questions I knew I’d once understood, but couldn’t remember. About 20mins later I had a bit of a breakthrough, thankfully, and in the end I managed to complete four questions and attempt three, out of a total of eight. The other question was on vectors and wasn’t worth too many points. The last time I took P3 resulted in a U, but this time definitely went much better - hopefully at least a D. If I work on the other maths exams I’ll hopefully be able to deag my overall score up somewhat.

P1 was far, far easier, and I’m hoping I did quite well. I got stuck for 10mins on the final question due to muppetry on factorising (don’t ask) and didn’t quite finish, but that’s only a couple of points lost.

I’m very, very relieved that P3’s done. So very relieved. Very, very, very relieved.

I arrived at the school, found the correct corridor and hung around behind the melee of students, trying not to look too awkward. After being told about how the questions were divided, we split off into different labs. We were told which desk to sit at (confused teacher couldn’t figure out what I was doing there until he asked) and checked over the exam paper and equipment. Then we started.

You know what’s weird? Although I walked into the exam room, my physical intuition didn’t. I was entirely reliant on equations and what I knew to be true. I was so nervous that I just couldn’t figure out what *should* be happening, so had to go with what worked. For example, one experiment involved balancing a metre rule over a prism and attempting to determine the mass of a marble placed on one end of the rule, using moments. Not too tricky, but I was so worked up that I couldn’t figure out whether I should increase or decrease the distance of the fulcrum from the marble. I just changed it until it worked. I knew that if I could only calm down a little I’d be ok, but I couldn’t manage it. Still, at least I didn’t completely panic
The first experiment involved passing a current through a (an?) LED and a resistor and measuring the resistance of the former. We then had to swap out the LED and resistor, and try all combinations. Thing was, the resistance of the LEDs seemed to change depending on which resistor I used, which confused the hell out of me. As far as I knew, LEDs were like normal resistors and didn’t change their resistance. However, I couldn’t argue with the results and I couldn’t see anything wrong with my setup, so I went with it. I’m now pretty certain that the resistance of an LED does indeed change, and I’m not sure whether I should have known that. Still, hopefully I didn’t mess anything up too badly.

The most entertaining moment came when I was asked to measure the diameter of a ping-pong ball, without using calipers. As Ben pointed out, quite why they should ask me to do something so pointless is a good question. I couldn’t think of a clever scientific way of doing it, so I ended up holding the ball between two set squares and holding them over a ruler. Similarly, at one point I was asked to effectively find the height of a right-angled triangle, given only the hypotenuse. Well if there’s a way other than just measuring the damn thing, I don’t know it. Naturally none of the supplied rulers were long enough, so various contortions of set square arrangements ensued.

A couple of students were friendly enough to chat to me afterwards, which was nice of them. One more practical left, then it’s only ‘normal’ exams left.

I’m back. It could have been worse, although it wasn’t a breeze by any means. Weird diode readings and broken slopes caused problems - I shall explain after I’ve had lunch.

I’ve expressed my love of Scrubs before, but I’m going to do it again. It’s just the best sitcom around, I think. I’ve said before that it’s expert at changing tone, and an episode on Sky last week went from very funny to terribly, terribly tragic in about half a second, without being cheesy or over the top, and kept coming to mind for the next couple of days. The show’s very much on my wavelength (”I missed that, son, I was thinking about soup”) which could explain it. I think it helps that all the characters are actually decent people underneath, as opposed to a fair few sitcoms where they’re pretty unpleasant. Maybe I’m a sucker for idealism, but I just enjoy the show so very much
I’m going to bed now. Well, I’m going to lie in my bed now. I have a Desperate Housewife to catch up on (steady), but after that I shall attempt to fall asleep in preparation for getting up at 0700 tomorrow. It’s terribly unlikely as I haven’t fallen asleep before 0100 for months, but I’m damn well going to try anyway.

I’ll let you know how the exam goes. Hopefully the post won’t consist solely of sobbing.

In possibly the most uninteresting beginning to a blog post ever written: This morning I put on a pair of nice clean jeans.

Bear with me.

I have been revising for much of the morning, yet as of 1300 these trousers are covered in drool, mud and grass stains. Guess whose fault that could be. Mad animal
Update: Megan also claims responsibility for the SullyCam showing a close-up of the carpet all morning.

Update 2: She cannot, however, accept responsibility for surreptitiously adding a tube of cleaning wipes to the image. Megan simply wouldn’t be so gross. No, that is entirely down to my father. Right, this calls for revenge.

In other news, it turns out that tomorrow’s physics practical will have very little, if anything, that relates to materials physics. So that’s a relief. I should have realised straight away, but I panicked somewhat. Once tomorrow’s exam is over I’ll be concentrating on Pure 1 and Pure 3, which are both next Monday. Pure 3 is the exam I’m worried most about, and while I don’t think I’ll do brilliantly I’m hoping to get at least a C-equivalent.

I met the Solihull School exams officer today to go over times and places for the various units I’m taking. I have to wear a shirt and tie (ugh, but needs must) and trainers, entertainingly, because most exams are sat in the sports hall. We also looked into the physics labs and spoke to the head of the department, who told me that the dates on my timetable were wrong! The physics practicals are in fact on wednesday and exactly a week later, as opposed to tomorrow and saturday. So that was worth knowing We checked out all the other dates I’d been given and they were fine.

I got something done this afternoon that has needed doing for quite a while, and that’s the last major blip on my horizon dealt with. Hopefully I can concentrate fully on the exams now.

My physics AS consists of three exams. The first is on “Mechanics and Radioactivity” and the second is “Electricity and Thermal Physics”. The third unit is a choice between Astrophysics, “Solid Materials”, “Nuclear and Particle Physics” or “Medical Physics”. When I went to Solihull School back in March, he asked which option I wanted. I said that I’d prefer particle physics, but astrophysics was fine too. He said he wasn’t sure they did the former and he’d let me know. I received the final timetable last week after phoning up and chasing it.

So I was lying in bed this morning, and it occurred to me that I didn’t actually know which option I’d be sitting. I’ve just checked, and it’s solid materials. Great. I haven’t learnt that. Physics 3 consists of a practical and a written paper, and the practical is this coming Tuesday. So that’s this afternoon sorted, then

Ok, I’m back to revising full time now. I admit I wavered for a few weeks, but now the exams are Real and Scary I’m getting my act together. Currently on a 10-min break from differentiation, and just read this on Ben Hammersley’s blog:

When ever I write an article about the BBC’s latest new media offering, the newspaper I write it in always gets a ton of letters from aggrieved businessmen complaining about how their ability to start a, say, sports new service, is unfairly hindered by the BBC. It’s not fair, they say, for the BBC to be online at all. Given the license fee 1 (To have a TV in the UK requires a license, the proceeds of which pay for the BBC) it’s entirely anticompetitive for the BBC to be on the web. What chance do real businesses have in making any cash at all in the areas the BBC are in? 2 Laying aside the two responses I twitchily come back with. One, dude, society doesn’t owe you a living and but it does owe itself a maximisation of the common good, which this arguably is, and two, your business plan involves competing with the BBC? Idiot..

That’s possibly the best rebuttal I’ve ever heard The full article, here, concerns the launch of BBC Backstage, which provides APIs and feeds of pretty much all the BBC website’s content for you to do with as you will (non-commercially). You can publish your own BBC News website, if that’s what you feel like doing. One person has done exactly that, but has added automatic Wikipedia links for capitalised phrases and acronyms, as well as Technorati feeds so you can see who’s linking to that particular article and what they’re saying. Very cool indeed.

I’ve had word from the college, and my exams are officially as follows:

18th May:
Physics Practical 1

23rd May:
Pure 3
Pure 1

25th May:
Physics Practical 2

7th June:
Mechanics 3
Mechanics 1

10th June:
Physics 1
Physics 2
Physics 3

16th June:
Physics 5
Physics 4

20th June:
Pure 2

24th June:
Mechanics 2

27th June:
Physics 6

Graphically, June looks like this:

Although there are a couple of nasty days, it’s not as bad as it could be. Pure 3 is early, but I’ll be devoting all of next week to that. Then there’s a decent gap before Physics starts properly. It does occur to me that I have no idea what actually happens in Physics practicals, mind, and my first one of them is next Tuesday!

Bit better today, although pretty lonely. That always happens after seeing Kate, though, and normally fades after a day or two. I did manage to get a lot of things done that have been outstanding for a while, so that’s good. I’ll upload a picture of my newly reorganised desk tomorrow, and you may want to prepare yourselves for a shock: there’s actually wood under there.

I really have to knuckle down to studying, starting tomorrow. Because the maths has been increasingly difficult recently, I’ve been getting disillusioned and taking every opportunity I can not to work. Which is dumb. I’ve been trying to kick myself back into gear, and a fair few things have come to a natural end over the last week or two, so I’m going to grab the opportunity. If I don’t really try then the period of self-loathing I went through after my first a-level results will be nothing in comparison (and those of you who remember that will appreciate my reasoning ). So it’s going to be six hours solid working per day, until the exams are over. I’ll still be blogging in the evening etc., but there’ll be less from me for a few months.

Just off to watch the final episode of 24, series 3. I’ve had at least three close calls at seeing clips from series 4 over the past week, and I don’t want that as I need only see a face to know who lives and who dies in s3.

I’m lonely without my comments! Shall get on with what I’m doing whenever I have time. If only IE weren’t *such* a pain I’d be done by now
My exams are sorted! I saw a very nice man at Solihull School this morning, and I can even do my practicals there, which is fantastic. The only slight niggle was the choice on Physics 3 - you can decide between four different modules - as they don’t offer all of the papers. Hopefully particle physics or astrophysics will be available, but even if not it’s not too hard to learn something else. Phewness and wiping of brow occurs. While I was in Solihull I picked up another Pure 3 textbook that seemed much clearer than the one I’m currently using. I’d best go start, really.

Pure 2 is now finished! I admit I didn’t go through every question in the final exercise; there are only so many times one needs to go through the trapezium rule before it’s ingrained. Incidentally, what’s with that? We’re taught integration, which finds the area under curves perfectly, then we have to learn this trapezium rule which takes twice as long and is annoying and fiddly and only gives an approximate answer! I suppose it’s for times when we don’t know the equation of the curve, but it’s still annoying.

Anway, Pure 3 tomorrow. Gulp. This was my worst module by far at college. Hopefully it’ll be less scary this time.