...WARGH!

Well okay, it's not that bad! We've all revised plenty and are suffering perhaps a little from the good old pre-exam nerves, this being:

1) Our first proper GCSE exam
2) The longest, weighing in at a mammoth 2 hours 15 minutes (ok so there are likely longer exams to be had in the future, but I'd say 2:15 is still a pretty long exam!)

So it's Romeo and Juliet, Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy) and a selection of poems, all to be dissected each in 40 minutes with 5 minutes prior planning time per essay.

Anyone else in Britland who has the exam tomorrow (I know there are some of you) or is with another board and is yet to have it, best of luck... and maybe wish me it as well?

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We are all dying to live, yet living to die...

Don't worry, GCSEs don't mean anything, as long as you get a C in English, Maths and Science, and get into 6th form (or whatever your minimum 6th form grades are). :-)

Just doss it, because A-Levels are where the real hard work is.

Minimum 6th form grades = B+, but since I'm studying English next year and it's a grammar school sixth form, I'd be mad not to get at least an A or A*.

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We are all dying to live, yet living to die...

This is my third "proper" GCSE

I've had ICT and the first RE paper this week already. Strangely, according to my timetable the exam is only 1:45

Regardless of how long it is, I've got Of Mice and Men questions as well as the poems. Annotating my copy of the book now, in fact "If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done."

Good luck everyone taking GCSE's

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"This hole is octogo. Ogiganeel. It's Octa.. It's got eight sides."
"He's a dead man! I'm not havin' a dead man in my cemetary!"

A-Levels == Hard, University == REALLY Hard.

A lot of people next year will tell you "A-levels are the hardest thing you'll ever do".

These people are wrong.

They either did an easy course at uni, or didn't go at all.

(Pet peeve that one)

Seriously, good luck mate, not that you'll need it if you've revised - I'f offer you advice, but my english was on Lord of the Flies, and an anthology starting with Seamus Heaney poems...!

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

Did you do AS-Levels?

I was told that it was because you have to do a lot of stuff in a very short amount of time. At Uni, it's a lot more spread out.

I got the same exam, except we're doing Poe's short stories instead of the Thomas Hardy bit. At least we start study leave after it...

Good luck man.

Oh, and my school has pretty lax requirements for being a Grammar school. It's 5 A*-Cs, with at least a C in English.

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Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than to curse the darkness.

[This message has been edited by - Tony - (edited May 27, 2004).]

Good luck. I've got French on friday morning. A whole 3 hours of it... one 1 hour paper and one 2 hour paper.... all crammed into one morning :/

On a better note I did my french oral today and I think it went pretty well - hopefully i got a B.

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/fluffle

If you pick this up in the morning all you GCSE-ers, then good luck one more time - I'll be doing an exam on Coastal Mechanics and Pollution control at 9:30 - 2 hrs, so all going well, I'll be out by the time the pubs open!

Best of luck once more,

Martyn

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

First back, eh? The Poe was a doodle. They were giving away 20 marks, but the others were harder. Especially the Men and Women. The R+J wasn't too difficult either.

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Violets are blue, roses are red, living like this we were already dead.

Any of you considering English at A-Level?

No. Way. In. Hell. I suck badly enough... nopee! For me, it's Maths and Further Maths, with Physics and Chemistry.

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Violets are blue, roses are red, living like this we were already dead.

I'm hoping to take English Language at A-Level, since it's one of my strongest subjects.

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"This hole is octogo. Ogiganeel. It's Octa.. It's got eight sides."
"He's a dead man! I'm not havin' a dead man in my cemetary!"

Tony - my advice would be to do almost exactly what you are planning, except I would consider dumping Chemistry or Physics (I'd ditch Chem), and do something like History or Economics to (a) keep up your literary skills
(b) keep your feet on the ground
(c) retain your sanity.

I did maths, further, physics and history - the history was a pleasurable distraction from the numbers, symbols, equations and maths!



Just a suggestion, obviously you've put plenty of thought into it already!

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

maths and physics a-levels are soooooo easy

what the sweet **** was with the LotF question... the god damn island? ffs.

(I hated that exam. And the poems sucked too. WHERE WAS THE VIOLENCE?)

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GhostOfYoda - General doer of stuff.

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/fluffle

What did they ask about the island in Lord of the Flies?

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

Yeah, I did A-Level English Language. Don't expect it to be all creative writing, though, that's only for the coursework.
You have to have a very strong hold on grammar, that's really the most important aspect of AS English Language, and there's a lot of linguistic terminology to know and understand. Learning the phonetic alphabet is useful.
English Language is a lot more structured, almost scientific, in comparison to English Lit.
If you like grammar then you'll do fine. It goes very well with a foreign language.
I regret not doing a language. :-(



I did Maths, Physics, English Language and Sociology. That seemed like a good all-round mix, but doing a language is really useful, and I'd advise you to pick one up if at all possible.
Also, I believe Chemistry is the hardest A-Level there is.
Also, don't do Psychology, even if your life depends on it.

NEWSFLASH:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3756911.stm

A truckload of GCSE papers were nicked at knife point - a load of papers are being re-written!

Eng lit was amongst the changes, so you lads seem to have got away with doing a non-stolen board's exam!

EDIT: Check out the link to the left about the games teacher's play when invigilating to keep themselves sane - I almost felt sorry for them....

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

[This message has been edited by Martyn (edited May 28, 2004).]

I was originally taking Geography instead of Further Maths, but the opportunity came up to do it and I took it. It's all finalised too. I chose what I chose because I'm kick-a*** at those subjects. I mean, I got a frigging EP on the Year 9 SATs in Science, and a Level 8 in Maths.

The only things I have no real control over are the A-Level General Studies and Business Russian.

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Violets are blue, roses are red, living like this we were already dead.

Hehe, year nine SAT's ... the joy of the level eight paper...!

The Gen Stud is basically a glorified pub quiz - as long as you watch the news, listen to your mates doing other subjects and have half a brain you'll easy get a B.

Further Maths is cool when your class is all your mates, I have to admit - it is ******* hard though - if you find that maths comes naturally to you now, and after a while at A-level it doesn't, ASK FOR HELP - because it makes things better. I never had a single problem with maths, but about a year in started to struggle, but help is there and mega useful - I was too big-headed to take it as early as I should, but got there in the end!

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

I got several 100%s in my A-Level Maths, Further Maths was MUCH harder to do well in. The Further Maths content isn't actually very hard, it's just so much of it relies on A-Level Maths that you're under much more time pressure to learn it in. Having said that, you'll find that you'll cover the entire A-Level Maths and Further Maths course in the first semester of any science-based course at university, at which point Further Maths comes in very handy.

A-Level Physics was a joke, you could just learn some formulae and make up the explanation answers and get an A.

Damn Well, at least my coursework will be good (the creative writing I did for my GCSE coursework got a perfect score)



I think I should be OK on English Language. I'm considering taking French as one of my other subjects as well (along with History and Psychology).

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"This hole is octogo. Ogiganeel. It's Octa.. It's got eight sides."
"He's a dead man! I'm not havin' a dead man in my cemetary!"

I really wouldn't recommend Psychology.
Loads of people take it up and loads of people drop it. It's the least popular and most chosen subject, paradoxically.

If you're genuinely interested in Psychology then the AS won't be too useful or if you think it'll be a doss subject just debating human behavior then it turns out to be far more scientific than most people expect. The only plus side is that it's a useful combination with Sociology. It might possibly help with literary skills, but if you're doing English then probably not. I'd seriously reconsider doing something else, Maths or a science perhaps.

Hmm...I was interested in the Computing course as well...the problem for me is that there weren't many courses that appealed to my interests or (I felt) were useful. It's no problem though, I've got months before I need to give a final decision, and most of that is vacation time anyway, so I can think about it some more when I'm free of exams.

[edit] By the way, I appreciate the advice

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"This hole is octogo. Ogiganeel. It's Octa.. It's got eight sides."
"He's a dead man! I'm not havin' a dead man in my cemetary!"

[This message has been edited by LividDK27 (edited May 28, 2004).]

Maths is always useful, as is say physics or chemistry (though I'd definitely combine either with maths). I'm another one that regretes not doing a language - it makes you very employable.

It also depends if you want to go to university, and whether you want to further a subject you do, or pick something up from scratch - say politics or russian or linguistics...

Play to your strengths, but keep getting a job in mind



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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

Blah. Our school is totally all "this will help you get a job!" and I'm totally 'bloooo >:' to them.
The point of education isn't in order to get qualifications in order to get a job, it's simply in order to learn. The qualifications just follow on from that, as proof of what you've learnt (and my major gripe with many of the courses now is that they seem totally based around the exam, which seems like a totally backwards way of learning. school just seems to try to churn out workers).

No, I enjoy education. I enjoy learning. I want to stay in full-time education as long as possible, and I want a job that'll allow me to keep learning.

I say to you choose the subjects you enjoy learning, not the subjects you 'need' for your job. If you don't enjoy the subjects then you won't enjoy that job.

Fair point, I just see (from where I am now) the point of getting a good job - because I'm doing a masters degree, most of my friends are graduating and getting jobs very soon, and I'm still going to be here learning.

Obviously don't pick subjects you don't like, because as you say, if you don't like the subjects, you won't like the job - I didn't think that needed mentioning!

As for learning for the sake of learning, go for it! Do A-levels, go to uni, keep on learning as long as you can - you can do a phd if you want, but it costs a packet - student loans only cover your undergraduate course. I'm just starting to get a little perspective on the reason I'm in debt by around £16k - I need to get a good job in order to pay it all back! Luckily I'm doing a degree which should lead me straight into industry, where I will be keeping on learning, as well as earning a decent wage!

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

The "given" passage was the Apotheosis of simon (when he's died, and is floating out to sea), and you are asked how typical a description of the island this is, and how this compares to the way Golding presented other important events in the novel. I got some stuff down, but I felt that I'd written much better essays in the past (I was consistantly getting A*s.)

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GhostOfYoda - General doer of stuff.

That is a wierd question! You'd've probably seen the one I did if you did past questions (then again it was 1999) - it basically was a discussion of the role of the beast - we'd done a plan of that essay in our last lesson. It was a piece of piss!

I wish I had my copy to read and have a look at your question, but it's at home... I remember we did an exercise in yr 11 english where we took quotes from the book, and had to draw a map of island using them as the evidence - that would've been useful ... err.. maybe! (I do remember there being a contradiction to do with which end of the island the fort was at... funny how you remember wierd little things years later!)

I'm sure if you were getting A*'s all yr you'll've done fine

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.