It was fun. I feel like I should run around with a plastic gun in my hands firing lasers at my friends more often, really. Not to mention gorging myself on pizza, something that I always love. But then again, there are lots of things that I feel that I should be doing but just can’t be bothered to.

At the moment, I feel slightly… directionless. Like there was something more to the whole sixth-form routine that I’ve simply forgotten in the chaos of university applications. Which, I have to say, are looking good. I’ve got a conditional offer of AAB from Durham University, and have interviews/visit days for Manchester, York and Bristol coming up.

Then, the Cambridge interview. Which will be at Churchill College, some time between the first and fifteenth of December. I’m less nervous than most people seem to be, mostly because I actually look forward to the interview. The thing is, I love talking about computers and most of my friends (even those who take Computing alongside me) don’t really keep up enough to have a proper discussion with.

I’m not talking about “Hey, what do you think about the new iMac? Do you want one?”, I’m talking about Biocomputing, Quantum Computing, Computer Vision. The cool things that I’ve been imagining could be possible since I first heard about them. There are plenty of gadget geeks and programmers, but nobody who likes the theoretical side. So yeah, I look forward to an interview.

I should be in bed, really. The next couple of days are going to be packed. Tomorrow, I need to be in Hecky for 10 to do some maths interview practice. Sunday, I’m buying a suit and practising a set which hopefully I’ll be performing at Matty’s open house in a week. Monday, I’m competing in the Senior Team Mathematics Challenge, in the regional final.

And being busy is probably a good thing, because then I can’t spend hours sat at my pc doing nothing before deciding to write a blog post at gone 1am in the morning. Whoops.

~ Godders.

I have to admit that he was right, thus far. I’m listening to Rumours, an album by Fleetwood Mac. And it’s brilliant, to be frank. I’m really, really looking forward to the rest of the stuff he picked out if it’s all going to be of this calibre. My only complaint is that all of the songs have a fade-out at the end and as such the album feels a little disjointed.

In other news, it’s my last day at work tomorrow (will be today by the time I’ve finished typing out this post) and I can’t believe how quickly the past four weeks have flown past. It seems like no time until I’ll be back in the grind that is A-level education, although I’m looking forward to seeing everybody again.

Between now and then, I have some Computing coursework to do, some Maths (lots of Maths) that I want to learn and the bulk of my EPQ assignment to do. I still haven’t started that: Score one for procrastination. It really does bug me how much of my time gets wasted, but at least I have actually done something useful recently.

Tomorrow should bring ratings for a lot of my music, and hopefully also some progress on the Computing/Maths/EPQ front. Currently listening to The Chain – Fleetwood Mac. It’s a good song.

~ Godders.

It’s not even like I’ve been doing a lot, I’ve just not been on my computer a lot. Missing one night’s sleep earlier this week completely hit me for six, and I’ve not caught up on it yet. Lie-in tomorrow though, don’t have to be in until 9:40 (success!).

That said, I honestly see no worth in this last week of 6th form. I’ve done nothing other than miss my coursework deadline in Maths (that said, Sitong hadn’t handed his in as of this morning, and is liable to get 0 marks on his coursework. At least mine was in within four days of the deadline)

Today, I did a grand total of nothing.
Period 1: Skills, was cancelled because there’s nothing to do. Played cards in common room.
Period 2: Maths, printed coursework for Dr. O and did nothing else.
Period 3: Free. Played cards in common room.
Period 4: Further Maths, got some work back and went through a question.
Periods 5-6: Maths. Ate cake and watched “The Story of Maths” (documentary by Marcus Du Sautoy)
Lunch: Played cards in Room 41.
Periods 7-8: Chemistry, cancelled. Wandered aimlessly around school.
Periods 9-10: Computing, cancelled. Collected my A2 textbook and sat doing random maths with Yifan.

And tomorrow I’ve got 40 minutes of travel for a 5-minute interview with my form tutor to receive my report and justify getting Effort 2 (or possibly even 3!!) in Maths and Further Maths (before you ask, I cba with ‘easy’ Maths. So yeah, lack of effort there.)

Other than this, I am ever-so-slightly pissed off. I got a new Halo 3 disk the other day: My brother and I have done Legendary on Co-op. Except when I signed in today, the Xbox 360 had mysteriously forgotten all of my Halo 3 stuff. Everything. So, despite having done every single level on Legendary, I have no achievement for it. Annoyed.

Mostly annoyed because it means we have to do it all again. And it wasn’t exactly easy (admittedly, it’s taken us a grand total of 5 days to do, and one of those was purely on the last level) the first time.

I’ve also been playing some Oblivion, having bought a pre-owned copy to replace my mangled one. Loving it again, mostly doing thiefy-type stuff and assassinating people for The Dark Brotherhood.

But yeah, lots of doing nothing and Xbox 360 while I chill out before full-time work commences on Monday. I’m looking forward to it, just hoping that there’s more of the website structuring than website updating: It’s far more interesting making websites than just adding new content.

That’s about it,
~ Godders.

And yet, I don’t feel stressed at all, which is a tad weird to be frank. I’ve got quite a lot to write though.

For once, we’ll start at the beginning of the day: The Doss Skills Lesson. Was checking out Warwick’s website and it looks like their CompSci course is actually crap. They might be slipping down the list by the time I actually submit my UCAS application. Everyone else was working on Personal Statements because like fools they hadn’t finished their first draft yet.

I can’t be so cocky about Maths coursework though. Draft is in for Monday and I’ve done next to nothing on the writing front. All the maths is there, but I dislike all the wordy crap. Sigh.

We’ve started Mechanics 2 on the Applied side of Maths, but Friction honestly isn’t that interesting – at least not with the examples we’ve been doing so far. I imagine it’ll get more complex soon though.

I was going to get a Statistics 2 book (as I intend to be doing an AS in Additional Further Maths: 3 extra modules which are looking like being Mechanics 3, Statistics 3 and Further Pure 3) but I forgot. Go me. I’ll have to be sure to remember that tomorrow.

At lunch, I had my singing lesson. Which, as always, was great. Absolutely love it, and I like the approach that is currently being taken – start with basic techniques, then get thrown into the deep end, then go back to the basics and realise they’re easy. It works. (Con: I then spent the rest of lunch singing in Room 41, haha)

Chemistry proved, as usual, to be pointless. One week of crappy lessons to go, then it’s done. Thank goodness for that. And Computing was cancelled, so I hung around with Matty B etc. for a bit. We went around finding all of the pictures of Leonidas (from 300) that have been stuck over people’s faces on various posters all over the school.

Period 10 entailed some preliminary work for when I hopefully have my Cambridge interview in the winter. Mr Crowther, despite his awesomeness, doesn’t do computers, but thankfully he has a transcript of a previous student’s CompSci interview and lots of it is logic/maths based anyway.

The questions were quite cool, to be honest. I like the whole concept of thinking on my feet for each question and needing a fairly broad knowledge of my subject. The four questions we covered involved Permutations, Logic, Problem Solving and optimizing the solution and Natural Logarithms, all of which I can deal with. If it doesn’t get any more complex, then the interview could well be a doddle.

I came home and played on Forza Motorsport 2. Getting 115GS in one day is satisfying – I completed the Arcade side of the game (Exhibition Races and Time Trials) but still have a ways to go on the Career side. I’m going to play more of Infinite Undiscovery this weekend though.

Then the cricket highlights. Our tail-enders performed well, Swann and Broad are turning into excellent all-rounders, and I thought our score of 435 was respectable. Then the Aussies came out. I think not bringing in the spinners early was a mistake but then, I’m not the captain. My prediction: High-scoring draw. Unless they fold tomorrow, or we fold when we finally skittle them out.

The day was rounded off with Torchwood. Most dramatic episode yet, but holy crap it almost brought me to tears at the end. It was one hell of a shock seeing their plan go belly-up, and I think that tomorrow may well be the end of Torchwood. I may be wrong.

So yeah… Hectic. And I didn’t even mention everything.

~ Godders.

I woke up this morning and promptly started a sneezing fit. This is not unusual. Well… It is, but I get it quite frequently (read: all summer) due to my hayfever. The pills don’t last 24 hours which means that between 7am when I take my pills and 6am the next day when I wake up, they wear off. Bad times.

Then, the thrill of lessons. First up is Computing, where I did some coursework and then obviously didn’t play a few rounds of the Wikipedia Game. Not too bad. Then Maths, where we are doing potentially the most boring coursework since GCSE Statistics. Yes, it’s that dull.

Lunch was slightly ruined by the fact that I’d forgotten my student ID card and wasn’t allowed into the dining hall, plus I have a Further Maths lunchtime lesson. In which we’re covering work that I’ve already done. Which is obviously massive fun.

Physics was ok, except I was worrying about what I’d done to piss a certain somebody off. Turned out I hadn’t, they were just having a bad day too. Half-lives and exponential functions aren’t difficult, but aren’t boring either. Then in Chemistry, we’re doing Equilibrium. Which involves lots of calculations so I don’t get quite so annoyed at attending lessons for the subject I’m definitely dropping before September.

Somewhere between lunch and 3:35, my hayfever came back with a vengeance. This is not good. My eyes are pain. Had an interesting conversation on the bus, and found out that Jack’s Mannequin are playing at Leedsfest (as well as Rise Against). Might be worth getting a ticket then. Choices. Damned expensive though.

So yeah, that’s my day so far. Hayfever and boring lessons. Yay for summer, eh?

~ Godders.