Summer '09 :)

I’ve again managed to neglect this blog, this time without such a good reason!. I’ve been really busy over the summer though, catching up with friends and going to three different places on holiday, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed.

My first trip was to Provence, in Southern France with my parents and some family friends. We stayed in two places for a week each, both very charming in their own ways: the first was on the outskirts of a quiet village called Correns, where we canoed; cycled and relaxed by the pool (it was very hot all week!). The second house we rented was near the centre of a larger town, called Vaison-la-Romaine, and was also lovely, although some of the decoration was a bit old-fashioned! (think 70s-style lime green chinaware). We were staying there on French national day, and were lucky enough to have an amazing view of the town’s fantastic firework display – we lay by the pool on the deckchairs and watched them explode directly above us – it was amazing! It was, however, a bit scary when pieces of (thankfully, cooled) firework landed all around us (one landed on my head!). In the morning we had to phone the man in charge of the pool to clean the bits of firework out of it for us!! All in all, it was a lovely holiday and it was good to get away from the English weather for a bit, although of course it was lovely back home the moment we went abroad!

The second holiday I went on was to Merseyside Christian Youth Camps (www.mcyc.co.uk) which was my third time going there in a row. It is always a truly amazing week, getting closer to God with the support of wonderful leaders who can really relate to you, and surrounded by and having funny, funny times with your friends. This year’s camp exceeded expectations, and I had a lovely time while really growing in faith which was awesome

My third holiday was in Devon, with my best friend Hayley and her family in their caravan. We went for ten days and stayed in Woolacombe, on a campsite 5 minutes away from the beach. We learnt to surf and had some classic quote moments – a great holiday, despite the issues with the great English weather!
Since arriving home, I’ve caught up with some friends and visited my mum’s cousin and her family in Norfolk, where they own a 500 acre organic vegetable farm. It was lovely to meet them again, and we had a nice weekend with a mini family reunion on the Saturday.

A couple of Thursdays ago was the day I’d been waiting for since finishing my GCSE exams in June: results day! My dad dropped me off at school for 10am, and I went in and collected them, before talking to everyone about the Summer and results and thanking teachers for all their help. I had a nice catch up with my favourite teachers in the music room. I got in total 7A*s and 3As (and an E in additional maths, but that was not at all unexpected!), but will have 8A*s and 2As in the end, when my biology coursework is all sorted out.
I start college on Thursday, so I’ll hopefully drop back in here with my impressions of that – I can’t wait!
xxx

Career Choices

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Over the past few days I’ve been really thinking about my career choices and have, almost without realising, done some unofficial work experience in two of the fields I’m most interested in. Last week I went into a Primary school for two days with the mother of one of my best friends who worked there (and my friend). I helped out in the nursery classroom and really enjoyed the interaction with the kids, although I confess I didn’t really feel stretched enough in that environment: I didn’t have to think enough, and really relied on instinct, which was fine too and I loved spending time with the children, but I just felt that academically the challenge of teaching Key Stage 1 was not enough for me…. However, obviously I can’t really get a full picture of the job in a couple of days so I won’t rule that path out completely as I definitely enjoyed it and my passion for working with children was reconfirmed…

On Wednesday, I went into work with my Mum, who works for St Helens Council as a director of children’s services, and spent some time exploring the child/educational psychology route. I talked to the head educational psychologist (or EP as they call themsetlves for short) and he explained more to me about what they do in detail, and what their role is in a community etc. He was really nice and didn’t patronise me at all – he spoke to me as an adult, and asked me things like whether I thought it was right to search for labels for children with difficulties, such as Autism, ADHD etc when they are not necessarily correct , helpful and/or obvious (often children display traits of several different disorders and contradict their own diagnoses etc.) which I found really interesting to talk about on an intellectual level.

I then went out with one of the other EPs to test a child with suspected ASD and ADHD. That was really interesting because I got to interact with the child on a one-to-one basis, and loved the mental challenge of logging his behaviour in my head and tracking it through to look for a pattern. The particular child I met seemed to, as I explained before, have many different traits of different disorders, so looking for a certain predominant one as he played and talked to me made me feel almost like a detective and was a very interesting concept. When we got back to the office, the EP I had shadowed (a very nice woman) showed me how to score up the WISC test the child had done and plot the results on a graph to, again, look for any pattern. She then began to write up the report for the visit which was a lot less boring than I might have imagined - it just basically described what had happened with the child from the notes we'd taken, and it was a bit like an essay so I was happy :)

Have not come to a proper conclusion still about my future job, especially as I have not yet really explored my other main area of interest - paediatrics..... Will keep thinking...

Reasons for my Neglect...

Sorry I’ve neglected this blog recently – exams and things have got in the way, making every moment I spent not revising feel snatched and guilty. I hate revision – although that seems obvious because, well, who likes it?!. But it isn’t just usual laziness that everyone has – on the whole I love doing school work as long as it’s not too pointless and repetitive – for example I love writing essays (call me crazy!) and really enjoyed doing homework like maths questions and german sentences to translate… The real problem I've discovered I have with revision is that I am not really motivated to do it because I can never be satisfied with what I’ve achieved, which I;ve noticed to be very important to me personally – I am happy when I’ve finished all the maths questions set, for example, and can then rest before moving on quite happily, but the knowledge of ‘have I ever done enough?!’ really makes me totally uninspired… Anyway, revision is over now, and I’ve got a lovely long Summer before starting at SJD 6^th form college in September :)

Quote of the Day

(In chemistry, revising solution mining)

Lottie (reading from questions): ''what can be a negative result of solution mining?''
Anna (giggling): ''urm....you get hot cross bunnies?'' :P
Lottie:'' nahhh...they'd be hot cross brinies''

....we're simply too cool, but at least we remembered then that brine (or sodium chloride) is used in solution mining :p

Good times, eh?!

Singing Club

I love Voices Together :). That's the school singing group, and it currently has 7 members :D..but it's cuz we're cool. I look forward to it every week and everyone thinks I'm a weirdo for being so excited about it, but it is so great because I get to sing and chat and spend time with several awesome people and some lovely teachers...

Today was very funny at singing - while we were waiting for Sir to photocopy the music, we found some paper clips and decided to make a paper chain :)...which became crazily organized - we all had jobs like sorted out the next paperclips to add, adding them, making sure the chain didn't tangle etc. Then we got all excited and took pictures with it draped around us (including Sir :P) and went out into the corridor and did transverse waves which were ridiculously cool - they were massive! Then we decided to measure it and I knew I was 158cm (from biology the other day) and so I lay alongside it and AD put her hand where my head was and I moved along until we figured out that it was 11Xmy height :). Then we did 11X158 and found that our chain was 17m and 38cm :O :))

So of course then MF had to sneak into the closed school library and get the Guiness Book of Records (reference only ;) :D) and looked to see if we had the longest chain, but no-one with a paperclip chain was in there....so we decided we'd won :D

But then, sadly, Miss had to break (well, shorten) the chain to clip together our music sheets....
Basically we ended up doing very little singing but having a fantastic time :)

I love singing club almost as much as I love singing itself :)

Anyway, until next time, arriverderci :)

Update :)

Hello again :)

Well, it's Monday night of half-term and I already have no spare time for the rest of the week! I was planning to revise all week with maybe one or two days of relaxation and 'friend time'....but it kind of took over :D ooops :P

Today was awesome! It was one of the best days ever :). I had my first ever KFC, ate the most I've ever had in one day, actually managed to cut something straight and wrote down a ridiculous amount of funny quotes :D

I went to Becky's Nan and Grandad's house and we were basically allowed to do whatever we wanted which was amazing :). We drank copious amounts of Mountain Dew and Root Beer (I am brushing my teeth three times tonight, seriously!) and went home feeling extremely sick but in a way that means you've enjoyed eating loads of rubbish!

Quote of the day:

Becky's Grandad: (from other room, talking about our pizza) "Put it away"
Becky: "Oo-er!"

:D


I love you Bec :p

Now I've gotta get changed and ready for Masterchef :)

Quote of the Day

Anna: "Lottie...I think we melted the bung!"