Ok so first things first, yesterday’s French exam. I thought the comprehensions, like Annah, were nice. The first one especially although I was a bit more vague on the second one. Also very happy about the lack of questions on the grammatical terms and was it just me or did both comprehensions, on the second sheet of questions, right at the top, ask for you do change your answer a little bit from the text to fit? Hey, I’m not saying it’s breaking news for CNN or anything, this is Higher, but I’m just trying to gauge how I did and it’s not easy. I felt my oral didn’t go all too well all those weeks ago after all the work I put in. And I could not believe it when I saw “mode” on the paper after it was up a while ago. Wouldn’t care only I had the perfect answer done out but not learned…”Pffft…” said past Mr. X, “It’ll never come up! Especially not something so specific for boys and girls!” Where’s a DeLorean and a crazy professor when you need one? So the topics were okay for me but not great although I thought the listening was a thing of absolute beauty, I’m so glad I practiced it so much over the past few weeks. Although there is nothing more frustrating than identifying the phrase that’s the answer and getting it a few hours later out of the exam hall. The time period of that house shall be etched into my soul forever. But it’s done and dusted- French, you’re alright but Irish’ll just always have top spot for me. I can only hope for a good solid B.

So Biology. It’s my favourite subject and if I had it my way we’d put schematics of human systems on the back of cereal boxes. Who cares about Coco the Monkey reaching his bowl of Coco Pops through some crappy maze? And what child brings a pen to breakfast?

I thought that it was a really nice exam, but having said that I was relying on stuff revised over the past few months- I don’t envy any crammers that went in there this morning because I think that paper, more than any other year so far, cast an extremely wide net topics-wise. The short questions were a little unusual and again came from everything-really didn’t expect viruses after 2009 so I was happy about that, but again, memory. I was cramming stuff like the muscles, excretion and digestive systems…where my bitches at?? Also I have to say that I really put the effort into plants this year, structure and all that shiznizzle, and where was that? The experiments were nice I thought, should do well on them although seeing as the exam went so well for most people I think that I’ll find it hard to secure top marks on the heart, though the 2nd question of mixed questions- SEC is slipping up. Seriously, the love of Christ has penetrated their Satan-worshipping grounds. Lovely question.

My only regret is not doing an extra question in the final section but hey, I think it went pretty much okay and I’m happy with it. Let the painful, painful cramming for Chemistry begin

So now on to today’s exploits. French! How I love French. It’s one of my stronger subjects so I was really pushing the boat out for it, I learned subjunctive, strange unusual phrases, the lot. The paper didn’t disappoint – I really liked the emigration obligatory question, I basically put in about how “L’herbe est plus verte ailleurs” at the moment and how it seems to me like I will have to emigrate if I want a job…Boo hoo! The journal intime was also really cute, and I got use out of all my usual phrases (“Tous mes projets sont tombes dans l’eau! C’est comme un cauchemar!”) I did the question about fashion being as important to boys as it is to girls, which went meh as far as actually discussing the question was concerened and good in relation to the actual French. Actually, any boys out there want to tell me – did ye do that question? I’d have been interested to read some of them…
The comprehensions were not ideal, but not terrible. There were a few little questions I couldn’t get at all, so I just stuck in what I thought it could be and left it at that. The aural on the other hand….I thought it was really difficult, there were some I was just guessing. Our supervisor, who also moonlights as a French teacher (who’da thunk it?) agreed with me, so at least I wasn’t just being silly!

History. As I have said before, History is a faux ami. As I waited with my one other history classmate to go into the exam, I thought my heart would burst with the terror of what might happen.
But my God, was that paper nice. I can honestly say that it couldn’t have gone any better. The Sunningdale document was just about the best document question there could have been…For the question about whether the documents were reliable etc I just rambled on about primary sources and eye-witness reports. Perfect!
Pursuit of Sovereignity: I did the Anglo-Irish relations question. I thought this wouldn’t come up because it’s come up in some shape or form for the past few years but there it was! Somehow halfway through my Dictatorship question (paper done backwards again, of course) I took a wild notion that the paper actually finished at half 4, so I absolutely zoomed through that and then zoomed on through the Sovereignity one as well. At half four no one said anything, so I copped on. Raging.
Dictatorship: I did the Church-State relations question. I liked it, except for the zooming through as mentioned above, which resulted in me doing my last two paragraphs in point form (better than leaving it completely, methinks.)
America: I did the Berlin/Korea/Cuba question and mentioned all 3, I can’t imagine you’d get much out of only one or two of them. Nice question too.
Towards the end of the time my writing was a complete joke, my hand was broke and the back of my neck was absolutely aching. I am absolutely ecstatic.ie that it’s finished though, and I can finally push away all that History that took over my life for so many months.

Good luck to everyone who’s doing Biology tomorrow! I’ve got Art History and I’m pretty well covered so not really worried. Tired tired tired…

Valerie

Now then let me paint you a picture its the monday of oral week and I’ve got two days before I’m sitting in front of a examiner. Heres a little extract from a conversation me and my french teacher had today. “Aoife,tell me about your family”( obviously enough she said it french, but well frankly i dont know how too) “well j’ai un soeur and trois soeur, oh wait sorry trois frere. ma soeur s’appelle rebecca. elle et douze ans.” “Shes 12?” “oh no shes vingt sorry” (I lied shes 22)” And whats she doing at the moment aoife, working?”……..silence. Roughly 30 seconds to a minute later and I reply in English, “eh shes not doing much to be honest a lot a hanging around the place”. No doubt at that moment everyone in the room had a similar image of me and what I’d be doing come September. Thankfully my darling teacher moved on then to another student, unfortunately that student appeared to have memorized the entirity of “le francais oral”.

All the mocks arent back yet still waiting on history but so far have got some outrageously average results sum totalling 395. My mediocrity shines brightly with a lovely collection of c’s and a couple of b’s under my belt. Yet here I am, sitting here writing this when clearly my French speaking voice could do with a little work, but hey its not all doom and gloom. Two months to the exams is plenty of time and in fairness more than likely I’m gonna have a lot of fun getting there and so are you. So the next 8 weeks, sure they’re gonna be challenging and your gonna have that stage where you have a minor break down and curse the heavens for inventing pressure like the leaving cert, but for all you “can work harder” and “greater effort needed” students, hey theres light at the end of the tunnel and whenever you think “ah sure I’ll do a bit tomorrow”,try instead to say no I’ll do a bit tonight and in six months I’ll be plastered, but I’ll be plastered in the college I want doing the course i wanted.

LOVE AOIFE!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Leaving-CertNet/253296809652?ref=ts

Personally, I lick my lips at the thought of a nice bit’a oral in the cramped room in my school where they’re carried out. Not because it’ll be easy and effort-free however, because of course you can carry out your oral without killing yourself, but to reap the benefits, work needs to be put in. I’m lucky however, as I’ve always had a knack for the oral.

I sit down and flirt, charm, or man up if necessary, and have a right auld chat with the cupla focail en Francais that I know and come out delighted as the examiner just smiled at me and smiled at me and smiled at me. I can tell that the examiner enjoyed sucking the sentences out of me like Paris Hilton would enjoy testing Christiano Ronaldo’s Portuguese native tongue. Of course after last year I now realise that for all the beaming and confidence, you can’t beat knowledge.

To be fair I did get decent grades in mock orals, it was about the only thing I scored moderately acceptably at in honours Irish last year. But needless to say I still failed, and it goes without saying that had I practiced my oral beforehand, I wouldn’t be typing here. Of course there are questions I wouldn’t have been able to answer even if Seachtain na nGaeilge was named after me, such as what did I think about Davy Fitzgerald bringing his Waterford hurlers to a Bernard Dunne fight the night before a league game in Parnell Park after I told the examiner that I enjoyed shtick an’ ball. However I could’ve whipped out all these impressive, lengthy sentences when asked the simple questions, and that would’ve made my E a D3! Oh well, c’est la vie.

As for French, it’s very much the same. Learn, practice, and sweet Jesus if you don’t know you’re document well don’t bring one into the interrogation! I do think that sums French up.

Will I be kind and explain how TG4 and TV5 do wonders for your Irish and French respectively? Go’wan sure why not, I can’t say I’ve studied off it but I know some people recommend it. Plus, Irish is pretty shit cool nowadays innit. And we should aim to do well in it, it’s part of our culture. And as for French, that’s pretty out of this world too de nos jours oui? Learn some phrases from those and I’m sure you can throw them in to woo the examiner.;) Don’t be a Snorlax, I’m sure Annah would agree.

And remember the person opposite to you doesn’t want you to fail, they’re wicked nice, and it would only delight them to give you a great grade, and thus a great start for the written paper come June.

Oh and apologies, I’m after forgetting about the minority languages, so this one’s for the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

Fine I’ll be honest, I was just looking for an excuse to play that. But in all seriousness don’t undermine the importance of orals. Now let the innuendos and immature jokes commence!:) What’s with the word knob-rowing in Sliocht 1?:P;)

Merci Beaucoup agus Slan.

The rest of the paper was as predicted. Bímse Buan and Gealt came up, both of which everyone had predicted, as did An Mháthair and Dá mB’fhéidir Arís ár gCumman. Unfortunately by the time I got to Stair Litríocht na Gaeilge, there was less than 10 minutes left until the end of the exam and I only wrote about 10 lines on An Rúraíocht and about three sentences on Filíocht na mBard, so that’s the guts of 30 marks thrown away there. Bang go my hopes of Irish making up for English.

French today went much better, however. Foolishly I decided to leave all of French grammar until last night and was frantically trying to learn off last minute phrases on the environment, immigration and healthcare. I was blessed with the paper today; the comprehensions were wonderfully simple and the questions were very straightforward for the most part. There was enough choice for the production écrite so that no specific vocabulary was really needed. I adored that question about where we see ourselves in 2019. I wrote a passionate essay about wanting to do medicine and work with the Medecins Sans Frontiéres. Not strictly true, but I’m hoping the examiner will look kindly on my apparent compassion and desire to help others and reward me with lots of lovely French marks. The aural was also wonderfully simple and is probably the easiest there’s been in years as the people spoke incredibly slowly. Unlike Irish, I had loads of time to spare to look back over the paper and make any corrections.

Now that the big three: Irish English and Maths are all over I can actually relax a bit and do the subjects I’m more confident in. Biology is tomorrow and I’m not sure what I should be studying as the course is so huge. Sexual Reproduction, Genetics, Ecology, Respiration and Photosynthesis come up every year so I’ll probably be focusing on those. I’ve studied biology a lot over the last year and really want to do well in it, but sometimes it seems like chapters I studied even at Easter have completely slipped out of my head. Hopefully study tonight and this afternoon will refresh everything and Biology will go as well as French will.

The Paper itself was fine- I could actually understand what was going on in both comprehensions, which was quite surprising seeing as I hadn’t even attempted once since my Mock. 
The long questions which surfaced were easy enough as well-
The Internet? Could I live without it? Doubtful.
Sport? Yeah, grand, important. Got it.
Where I see myself in 10 years? Well, apparently I’ll be married to my current (fictional) boyfriend of 3 years, John, and, if he gets his way, we’ll have children. Oh, that John. He was discussed in my (disastrous) French Oral too- lovely guy. Always getting me presents. Just, smashing.
I even had time to do a Diary entry at the end too- myself and my good friend Anne had a bit of an argument about a boy called Claude- I called her a cow, she called me a slut- Toute est allé á vau-l’eau.

I  left a couple of minutes early as I felt like getting some chocolate before the Aural, which was also fine. The only thing I had any bother with was answering what a certain Supermarket chain donated to young people following a tornado. School bags, apparently. I should have guessed it really- so obvious! I wrote down Pencil Cases instead. Foolish, foolish Jennie. Tornado survivors don’t want them!

Like most Leaving Cert students now, I’m counting down the days until I can go home and doss, guilt-free. I’ve just two exams left- Biology (Which I should stroll through- My favourite subject!) and Chemistry (Nothing too worrying there either). I can almost taste the alcohol-induced vomit already.

As the week has passed, I’ve grown ever more complacent, favouring late night Internet-binges and a couple of extra minutes in bed to last minute cramming.

On an aside, in my school, we don’t have to wear our uniforms for the exams either  – something which I’m very thankful for, as those monstrous wine-coloured polyester-rags left a lot to be desired.
However, because I’m rolling out of bed at the last possible moment, I do look like I’ve been getting dressed in the dark. My strange combinations of clothes are quite the site to be honest, but I’m comfy out so all’s fine.  As I may have mentioned on this very blog at least a million times- I’m a female repeat in an All Boy’s School (Yes, it has been fun. Thanks for asking) – so as it is, I already stand out a mile.
Today’s combination of odd shorts and ripped tights with an overly revealing top went down a storm with my supervisor. A new, male one- now that the core subjects are out of the way and I’ve been moved from my repeat-y room to the main Study Hall.
Every single time I glanced up, he was staring RIGHT at me. And not at my face. I hate to flatter myself (This is a lie) but PLEASE SIR, no more of that.

After the exam as well, a photographer with one of the National Papers (The Examiner, I think) was knocking about outside, begging me for a Photo Op.
We gave him one alright- a Porn-like Image of 2 girls straddling a boy in a grassy area, with a French Paper tactfully placed in the centre of the photo. The laughter involved in preparing for it is not to be reckoned with. I’ll link it from the blog if it flatters me/ actually is allowed to be printed.

Anyway, Biology. The Male Reproduction System’s tipped to come up as a full question- looking forward to it. I’m almost excited about tomorrow- nothing feels as nice as Acing a paper and seeing as French wasn’t as horrendous as I’d expected, everything’s looking good.
YOWZA!
8 down, 2 to go.

Today’s paper was fine, in my opinion. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful so I’m just glad to have it out of the way. Hopefully I’ve got an A, but it’s very hard to say. It’s the subject I’d like to do best in, in any case.
The two Higher Level poems which had yet to appear surfaced today, as was predicted, which worked out pretty well for those of us who had decided to risk studying only 2/8 poems in detail this year. In the “Filíocht Ainmnithe” section we got exactly the same poems as last year, which was against predictions, but so be it. The questions for the drama, An Triail, seemed fair enough as well- we were asked to discuss the life of single mothers in the 60s, or talk about how the men cause a lot of the problems in the play.
Being female, I obviously jumped on the “Damn men! Causing all the trouble” bandwagon. Sorry guys, but in this context, you do.
For the Prós section, I talked about the good ol’ Bean Og and the traits of “béaloidis” found in an Cearrbhach Mac Cába. Nothing too challenging, although I did think the question on An Bhean Og could have been worded better.
The only part of the paper that really didn’t agree with me was Stair na Gaeilge. I was hoping to pick up a few easy marks here, but the topics that came up were rather horrific. I had “An Rúraíocht” and “Annála na gCeithre Máistrí” learned pretty well, so that wasn’t too problematic, but I had to make some stuff up about “Na hAisling Polaitiúla” which was quite dismal. I pretty much told the examiner that it was a type of poem whereby the poet falls asleep outdoors and a fairy comes to him in his dreams, enticing him. Enticing him where? I don’t know. Just enticing him. I hadn’t looked at it since last year, so really it was just a random guess. I know there’s something to do with a fairy anyway. Isn’t there?

So, yes. Tomorrow I have French- my least favourite subject.I don’t just dislike French, I abhor it. It frustrates me so much, and the sooner I get it out of the way the better.
I wonder if it’ll be possible to fit a year’s worth of French into a single night? I haven’t gone to classes in quite a while, and I found my folder this morning covered in dust, just lying on my bedroom floor, untouched since my rather dismal French Oral. I’m hoping something about the Recession will appear, that awful “crise”.
Eugh, I suppose it’ll be over “en un clin d’oeil”. I’ve plenty of Red Bull stocked up in any case…

What an absolute disgrace of a language/ subject- one which, as of yesterday, I shall never be speaking again. Ever.
I still have to sit the written exam, but there’s no reason why I have to speak it again. Ever. I’m never going to France or any French speaking countries in the future. Ever. On principle.
I’ve just spent the last 6 years learning it to forget it, basically.
As far as I’m concerned, France can just go burn and die, and take its hideous language with it. When I’m the leader of the world, I’ll exterminate all francophone country-dwellers. Mark my words.

So yeah then, my French Oral.
Well, it’s all been a bit of a mess and I’m afraid, to paint the full picture, I’m going to have to give a bit of background information.
I think I may have some major bad karma built up, because this week has all been one big stroke of massively unfortunate luck!
On Friday evening of last week, I started feeling pretty horribly sick and, to cut a long story short, was brought to hospital on Saturday where I spent three delightfully drug-filled days.
Now, much as I’d like to see myself in a hospital in the future, it’s not as a patient. Becoming a doctor would be quite delightful, grimacing in an uncomfortable bed just days before my French oral, well, it’s not the dream.
I had my “Shortcuts to Success- The French Oral” book clutched to my chest when I was in there, but it was pretty hard- nay, impossible- to get anything revised during my lovely little trip there.
I’m grand now like, but very tired. Very cranky. I’ve been better.

My French Oral was meant to be on Wednesday, but all things considered, I wasn’t bet into the idea of trudging into school and smiling idiotically at an examiner at that stage. I’m all for dishing out lots of ridiculous clichés and idioms through the medium of French, but not when I was feeling so damn sorry for myself. The school took this all into account, obviously.
It was a struggle to change out of pyjamas, never mind flashing the examiner my winning smile. Or just plain flashing her- anything for an A.

My oral was rescheduled until Friday, i.e., yesterday, which was a relief of sorts, but I still wasn’t exactly in the full of my health, eagerly anticipating it.
Because I missed my slot on Wednesday, I had to go follow the examiner on her tour of Waterford, so on Friday I had to go to another school to do it. Bear in mind, I’m not from Waterford- I don’t know where stuff is. At all.
The school in question, renowned for its high pregnancy rates and slight skanger-element, was difficult enough to find, let me tell you. I left my house an hour in advance, hoping to reach it at 12.15, 15 minutes before my oral, but found myself shouting at my father to accelerate at 12.25 when we weren’t even near the school.
I eventually got there, choked down a bottle of rescue remedy and found where I needed to go. I wasn’t particularly worked up, but I suppose the nerves were hitting a bit at this stage. There I was, in a scary different school, in my foreign uniform with nothing but a folder of French notes for protection.
I met the deputy principal of said school, a delightful lady, and she told me not to worry- the examiner was a fox. Actually, she said she was nice or something, but the examiner WAS a fox. A fox being a largely good thing, please note. So I met the examiner in question and realised, well, she was actually a lovely woman. She put me totally at ease, made me feel comfortable and made me forget about the pregnant, knife wielding masses of girls probably looking at me from every direction. She’d obviously been told I wasn’t well and was lovely and considerate! I had to sign about 10million different roles (Slight hyperbole possible) but soon enough we were on our way.
She was dead keen on all the basics, something which I did find a little off putting when I tried to introduce topics like “La Drogue” and the Health System, but which I had been warned about by others who had been examined by her. I slipped the subjunctive in just twice – “Il faut que j’aie presque 600 points” and “Il faut que je fasse la cuisine” when asked what I do to help around the house (A slight lie- I don’t cook!). I didn’t even get to use my delightful “IL FAUT QUE LE GOUVERNEMT PRENNE DES MESURES POUR AMELIORER LA SITUATION AVANT QU’IL SOIT TROP TARD” line which I love enough to capitalise.
We spent ages talking about Medicine, her grinning at me, me sitting there wishing I’d done more preparation. I decided, being an honourable student and all, I’d accentuate my illness like nobody’s business and tell her I was tired and weak, barely able to get out of bed. Granted I was actually quite tired and weak, but I wasn’t “tres tres TRES faible” and in quite as much pain as I decided to let on. Meh, as I said, anything for pity and hopefully, an A.
She was really interested in Irish as well, for some reason, which sucked majorly. How cruel is it to focus in on Irish in a French oral, even though I showed nothing but reluctance to speak about it? Obviously I switched “car” for “mar” once or twice there, losing my beloved French accent and making my words sound like they’d been coughed up by a cat.
I had a document prepared on Barack Obama, which I decided to NOT bring in with me for fear of the difficult questions I’d be asked. Meh times infinity.

Overall, I’m glad it’s over. But to be honest, it was a disgrace of an exam. I’m definitely going to have to work on my written section now to so much as match my grade from last year! I can’t believe it had to be so crap, but at least my little streak of poor health didn’t fall at the beginning of June!
Now it’s Easter, so I’ve two weeks to wallow around the house in self pity.
I just spent the last 4 hours playing soccer, eating ice-cream and going for a long stroll with my friend though, so looks like I’m not too bad! Meh.

I HATE being sick.

How did everyone else get on? Any great stories? Go on then, comment away.

…then I woke up and it was all a dream.

Yeah I just said that. That ending to every story that you think is the best twist since Bruce Willis Was Dead at the End of the Sixth Sense, until you’re told by your Junior Cert English teacher to never, ever use it to end a story.

It’s true though, on Wednesday night, two days before my exam I had that horrible horrible nightmare. Luckily for the real thing I brought along the right document, didn’t burst into tears and had the nicest examiner I could have hoped for. No nasty questions were asked, the strangest one I got was to talk about the Basque region which was fine as my parents do tend to go on about it to me somewhat. I was so grateful that the examiner managed to seem interested and enthusiastic even though I must have been the 110th person to speak about a music festival. There was no economy, no politics, no international relations, no health system, no environment, Just Me, Myself and I (and the Basque Region)

I even managed to throw in a cheeky little off-the-cuff subjunctive despite my nerves!

German didn’t go quite so well. The general questions were alright, though I got stuck on the question “what sort of music do you like?” which really just requires naming a load of bands, but I completely blanked and couldn’t rememver any music I liked, which was silly seeing as my Projekt was on a music festival!

The rest of the questions were fine though and I managed to stick in my little piece on how hard German is compared to French. The Projekt was fine, I remembered my big long spiel thankfully, though I did get asked “what do the girls have in their mouths?”. They had whistles, I hadn’t a clue what whistles were in German so I just admitted I didn’t know the word and tried to smile (but probably ended up grimacing)

For the roleplay I got the Fish one, the one I really really didn’t want. It was ok though, even if I forgot one of the tasks and stuck it in a minute later making the conversation go like:

“well would you like a hamburger then?”

“…besides, this fish is cold! The sauce wasn’t bad but is now also cold!”

“I understand…how ’bout that hamburger?”

I’m happy with how both orals went though and it’s such a relief to think that 25% of each exam is over and done with. I had no idea how exhausting they’d be as I’ve slept for 22 hours in total since Friday night. From now until Tuesday will be spent watching TG4 and calling it study.

To everyone else doing the orals next week- Go n-eirí an t-adh libh!/Bonne Chance!/Viel Gluck!

had to integrate X to the 3

She said “X to the 4, over 4 I am sure”

But was out by a constant of C!

I’m afraid I can’t take credit for the above piece of genius, but I thought I’d share it with you all. Anyone want to guess what I was kicking myself over as I got my maths mock results? Yup that’s right, I forgot the +C, at least once. This would be understandable if I hadn’t written “DO NOT FORGET +C” at the top of my paper, or a lot of +Cs all over the integration section. So now someone out there, who I will probably never meet, thinks I’m a complete idiot. Despite that stroke of stupidity my maths result was good enough, for me. I got a C1 which is nothing to some but great news for me! For medicine all that’s required for HL maths is a D3 so at the moment if doing fine, it would be nice to drag that up to a B3 for June though. I was happy when I got the result considering I was just cramming loads, but I really believe if I’d gone to bed the night before when I’d wanted to I’d be down at least a grade. See kids, cramming really does work!

I didn’t write much about Valentine’s day, as this isn’t really the blog for that, but if anyone’s interested I spent it fawning over my boyfriend in the cinema and Luigi Malone’s in Temple Bar (lovely restaurant!). You know who didn’t have a happy Valentine’s day? Our English examiner, that’s who. Our theory is she is a middle aged woman whose marriage has broken down and spent a very bitter Valentine’s night alone with her seven cats correcting English mock papers. Writing about “An Amish Rug” probably did myself no favours as it brought back painful memories of her marriage. This would explain why half the year got such low marks (the highest grade she gave, that I know of, was a B2) and some of the other half got As.

A B2 is a good grade for English, but it’ quite disheartening to write almost word-for-word an essay that got you an A1 in class only to see it marked as a B2. There was no more study I could have done for that paper, I fulfilled all the requirements set down in the marking scheme, but it just wasn’t “good” enough I guess. It’s easy to work on things like structure, length, fluidity, but being “good”, well that’s a tad ambiguous.

French I was much happier with, scraped an A1, and to my surprise got an A1 in the aural, which was really really difficult and I’d really thought I’d done terribly in. Like maths, the extra hour study I did instead of going to bed seems to have paid off!

The last result I got back was music. This was pretty bad, I got aB3. A B3 isn’t a bad grade as such, it’s just the questions were answered badly. I got just 6 marks for my two page essay because I misinterpreted “musical examples” and didn’t realize I’d actually have to write notes or rhythm patterns. My melody was pathetic. Almost funny. Sort of. Basically I got 12 marks out of a possible 40 which is a spectacular failure. Having spent so much time on the harmony (which I didn’t even do that well in) I was really rushed for the melody. Because of that I could only make it a 12 bar melody instead of 16 and when I modulated I started reading the treble clef as the bass clef and ended up making a mess of the whole thing. At least I know now that timing is an issue and I’ll hopefully not fail as awfully in June!

On Monday I was outside the Music Room about to check if our mocks were back yet and I saw a list of names for the music practical outsider the door. Says I to myself “I’d better get my name on there” and when I found the music teacher she corrected the month on the list from March to February and told me it was actually the mock practical. So now I have my mock practical tomorrow, when I only found out on Monday. Cue big panic to try and find some way of recording a piano accompaniment. Finally managed to do that today but the sound quality is pretty poor and I haven’t learned one or two of my pieces completely yet. Hopefully it will bring me up from the abomination that was the paper anyway!

More mock results might be coming back this week, I really hope there are some good ones in there to cheer me up from English and Music! I know the results in French, Music and Maths fairly reflect the work I’ve put in so far, but I’m still a bit worried about English. I can’t really say “well I know I deserved better so I’d get better results in June”. What do I know? I’m just a 17 year old girl, if an examiner tells me my paper is a B2, well then I guess that’s it, it’s a B2, I really hope I have a more generous examiner for the real exam!