So yesterday, I wrote about how I'm not currently sure which party I support in British politics. However, at the moment I'm also losing my faith in politicians both inside and outside of Britain because of the whole Wikileaks' scandal.
I think of Obama, I was very supportive of him in the election because he'd always put himself forward as someone who was very much in support of human rights and justice for the people. He himself condemned what had happened at Guantanamo Bay and said he "condemned all torture". He's also made many speeches in which he supports democracy, such as the one he made in China. But yet now, when Julian Assange is exposing all of the governments unknown human rights' abuses and countries wrong doings in order to try and make them more accountable and transparent, he seems to be making Sweden pay two women to say that Assange raped them, so that his work is halted and he tries to justify by saying that Assange is "posing a danger", when he clearly isn't. So how much does he really support human rights? Does he just support them when it suits him to do so?
I also think of Hilary Clinton, she also seemed to be very much in support of human rights and justice, and before she dropped out of the election I supported her. But yet I see her doing exactly the same as Obama, she says that Julian Assange is 'sabotaging peaceful relations' between countries. In a way it doesn't surprise me because it was revealed a few months ago that she wanted Britain to cover up CIA torture evidence. But this has made me lose even more respect for her. These are politicians who condemn corrupt countries, where leaders oppress those who try to expose government wrong doings and yet when this happens to them they oppress the person whose exposing their wrong doings. I'm not trying to say that they are as bad as those leaders, because they aren't nearly as bad but the way they are carrying on in this instance is nevertheless hypocritical.
Admittedly in the case of Cameron, he hasn't spoken out quite so much for Human Rights. In fact he was the one who was even threatening to withdraw us from the Human Rights Act if the Conservatives
were in power. So maybe it's less of a surprise that he's also trying to stop Julian Assange from carrying on with his work.
I also have to admit that in all of this, it is a minority of politicians who are condemning the actions of Assange outright. But what annoys me is, that none of the politicians are speaking out against the way in which Assange is being treated, and that they seem to think it is fine to carry on in this way.
What also annoys me is the way in which all the countries involved in the imprisonment of Assange are just doing it because that's what America wants and America is the financial capital of the world, so they feel they have to, even though they have the Human Rights Act as part of their constitution. But why should someone's rights come second to money?
The way that the politicians are behaving is a disgrace given that we're in the 21st Century.
Saturday, 11 December 2010
Friday, 10 December 2010
My political beliefs
At the moment I'm really struggling with my political beliefs. Before the election of this year, I was a Liberal Democrat but since they decided to make higher education more expensive than it already is and pushed through some budget cuts which really do seem rather unfair, I really am having second thoughts about whether I support them.
The problem I'm having is that I don't know how much of it was really their fault because Labour did leave the government with a lot of debt and so they have had to make some harsh budget cuts as a result. However, even they concede that they were actually planning to make budget cuts when they were in coalition talks with Labour and the Conservatives despite the fact that they said they were against the Conservatives making cuts i 2010. Clegg said that he had had a change of heart because other countries in the EU were starting to make budget cuts because they were starting to realise that they also had to cut their debts and so he now thought we needed to take this approach but if this was the case, then why didn't he say this before we all went to the polls? What really annoys me about the fact that he did this, is that he had always tried to make out that the Liberal Democrats were an honest party but in doing that, they hardly seem honest.
Nevertheless, I cannot forget that they have done good things, that might not have happened if the Conservatives had been in a majority government. For instance they stopped the Conservatives giving tax breaks to married couples and withdrawing us from the Human Rights Act. Furthermore, they and the Conservatives have stopped people wanting to do a part time degree from having to pay up front and they have scrapped some of Labour's other ridiculous policies. So I'm left wondering just how much difference there would have been between a Conservative government and the current coalition's government.
But the fact that I'm disillusioned with the Liberal Democrats doesn't mean I support either of the other two predominant parties anymore. I dislike the Conservatives because they support the interests of the rich more than the interests of anyone else, I cannot forgive them for what happened whilst Thatcher was in power and I really cannot stand the views of their more right-wing members.
And although I lend more of my support to Labour than I do to the Conservatives. It doesn't mean I would necessarily support them at the election because I think they sometimes take their issue of equality a bit too far by doing things such as encouraging too many people to go to university in order to bring about "the equality of opportunity", and they try and dictate how governmental organisations should work far too much when half the time they don't even know what they're talking about and I'm very angry that they took us to war with Iraq.
So I'm considering voting for the Green Party but I'm still eager to stop the Conservatives winning in my area (because where I live the Conservatives often win, and they've won every election in that seat since the 1950s, and the only other party who has a chance of winning is the Liberal Democrats), so I'm still trying to work out what would be most worthwhile in the current situation.
The problem I'm having is that I don't know how much of it was really their fault because Labour did leave the government with a lot of debt and so they have had to make some harsh budget cuts as a result. However, even they concede that they were actually planning to make budget cuts when they were in coalition talks with Labour and the Conservatives despite the fact that they said they were against the Conservatives making cuts i 2010. Clegg said that he had had a change of heart because other countries in the EU were starting to make budget cuts because they were starting to realise that they also had to cut their debts and so he now thought we needed to take this approach but if this was the case, then why didn't he say this before we all went to the polls? What really annoys me about the fact that he did this, is that he had always tried to make out that the Liberal Democrats were an honest party but in doing that, they hardly seem honest.
Nevertheless, I cannot forget that they have done good things, that might not have happened if the Conservatives had been in a majority government. For instance they stopped the Conservatives giving tax breaks to married couples and withdrawing us from the Human Rights Act. Furthermore, they and the Conservatives have stopped people wanting to do a part time degree from having to pay up front and they have scrapped some of Labour's other ridiculous policies. So I'm left wondering just how much difference there would have been between a Conservative government and the current coalition's government.
But the fact that I'm disillusioned with the Liberal Democrats doesn't mean I support either of the other two predominant parties anymore. I dislike the Conservatives because they support the interests of the rich more than the interests of anyone else, I cannot forgive them for what happened whilst Thatcher was in power and I really cannot stand the views of their more right-wing members.
And although I lend more of my support to Labour than I do to the Conservatives. It doesn't mean I would necessarily support them at the election because I think they sometimes take their issue of equality a bit too far by doing things such as encouraging too many people to go to university in order to bring about "the equality of opportunity", and they try and dictate how governmental organisations should work far too much when half the time they don't even know what they're talking about and I'm very angry that they took us to war with Iraq.
So I'm considering voting for the Green Party but I'm still eager to stop the Conservatives winning in my area (because where I live the Conservatives often win, and they've won every election in that seat since the 1950s, and the only other party who has a chance of winning is the Liberal Democrats), so I'm still trying to work out what would be most worthwhile in the current situation.
Friday, 19 November 2010
My work at the Citizens Advice Bureau
So this week I was finally allowed to answer the phones at the Citizens Advice Bureau. It doesn't sound that great but it's nice to finally be given a bit more independence, after having to sit and listen to other people taking the calls. Although the only downside was that the first person I had calling was a polish person, so it was hard to spell her name correctly, especially as the telephone line isn't great!
Nevertheless, no matter how limited my independence there has been, I've still found it very interesting. Obviously I'm learning lots about law but it's teaching me a lot about society, and the injustices still present in society, and it's making me question the way some things are in the English legal system. Most of what the office of the Citizens Advice Bureau that I work in deals with is employment, debt, and housing issues, but it varies with each office of the CAB because it really depends on the issues that are more predominant in the town/region where the CAB office operates.
The enquiries that are most complicated to deal with, are enquiries relating to employment, because whether their employer is in the right or the wrong depends largely on the contract that they are under, and so we often have to give them an appointment so that someone can review their employment contract and work out whether they have a valid claim.
What I have found so far by working at the CAB is that quite a few of the people who come to the office with problems, have often gotten themselves into the particular problem because they haven't done some of the simplest things. For instance, the first call I ever listened to was from a woman who was facing a repossession order because she lived/lives in social housing and she hadn't kept up with her rent payments. The reason that she hadn't kept up with these payments was in fact because she had become a self-employed worker, and so she could no longer afford her rent payments but in reality all she needed to do was ring up the authorities and tell them that she had become self-employed and then she would have received more housing benefit to help her with her rent payments.
Another case that I still remember very clearly, is the case of a woman who had lent her friend a large sum of money, which the friend was refusing to give back. The background to the story was that her husband had had a stroke and she became friends with this woman after this had happened because the woman's husband had worked in the same business as her husband, and after her husband had the stroke, the woman did lots of things to help her such as picking her grandson up from school, etc. But then one day this friend said that she needed financial help, and so she lent her all or the majority of her life savings (£10,000). But when she started asking her for the money back the friend would not reply to her in any way or form, and she appeared to have used this "emergency" money to buy a house. She tried to get her lawyer and the police involved because it was essentially a case of theft at this point but because she had no proof that she had even given this friend the money, apart from the friend confessing that she had borrowed this money from her, there was nothing they could do and she couldn't take it to a small claims court because they don't deal with claims that exceed £5,000. I don't know whether she gave the friend the money in cash or as a cheque, but it's crazy to think that she wouldn't have even had this problem, if she'd just made out a cheque and spent 5/10p photocopying it, and perhaps made the friend sign a written agreement that she would pay back the money.
The other case that has contributed to this point of view was the case of this woman, whose husband had lost his job. She called us because they were trying to just pay for everything by living off their savings and the money was beginning to run out, and they had quite a lot to pay for because they had a mortgage and some loans/credit card debts. But they could have solved this problem by taking simple steps because what her husband should have done was signed up for Job Seeker's Allowance and what they should have done was call the bank, and credit card/loan companies they had debts with to explain that they had less income coming in and would have to pay less money back to them each month.
Nevertheless, no matter how limited my independence there has been, I've still found it very interesting. Obviously I'm learning lots about law but it's teaching me a lot about society, and the injustices still present in society, and it's making me question the way some things are in the English legal system. Most of what the office of the Citizens Advice Bureau that I work in deals with is employment, debt, and housing issues, but it varies with each office of the CAB because it really depends on the issues that are more predominant in the town/region where the CAB office operates.
The enquiries that are most complicated to deal with, are enquiries relating to employment, because whether their employer is in the right or the wrong depends largely on the contract that they are under, and so we often have to give them an appointment so that someone can review their employment contract and work out whether they have a valid claim.
What I have found so far by working at the CAB is that quite a few of the people who come to the office with problems, have often gotten themselves into the particular problem because they haven't done some of the simplest things. For instance, the first call I ever listened to was from a woman who was facing a repossession order because she lived/lives in social housing and she hadn't kept up with her rent payments. The reason that she hadn't kept up with these payments was in fact because she had become a self-employed worker, and so she could no longer afford her rent payments but in reality all she needed to do was ring up the authorities and tell them that she had become self-employed and then she would have received more housing benefit to help her with her rent payments.
Another case that I still remember very clearly, is the case of a woman who had lent her friend a large sum of money, which the friend was refusing to give back. The background to the story was that her husband had had a stroke and she became friends with this woman after this had happened because the woman's husband had worked in the same business as her husband, and after her husband had the stroke, the woman did lots of things to help her such as picking her grandson up from school, etc. But then one day this friend said that she needed financial help, and so she lent her all or the majority of her life savings (£10,000). But when she started asking her for the money back the friend would not reply to her in any way or form, and she appeared to have used this "emergency" money to buy a house. She tried to get her lawyer and the police involved because it was essentially a case of theft at this point but because she had no proof that she had even given this friend the money, apart from the friend confessing that she had borrowed this money from her, there was nothing they could do and she couldn't take it to a small claims court because they don't deal with claims that exceed £5,000. I don't know whether she gave the friend the money in cash or as a cheque, but it's crazy to think that she wouldn't have even had this problem, if she'd just made out a cheque and spent 5/10p photocopying it, and perhaps made the friend sign a written agreement that she would pay back the money.
The other case that has contributed to this point of view was the case of this woman, whose husband had lost his job. She called us because they were trying to just pay for everything by living off their savings and the money was beginning to run out, and they had quite a lot to pay for because they had a mortgage and some loans/credit card debts. But they could have solved this problem by taking simple steps because what her husband should have done was signed up for Job Seeker's Allowance and what they should have done was call the bank, and credit card/loan companies they had debts with to explain that they had less income coming in and would have to pay less money back to them each month.
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Fullfilment
So, I'm currently in the middle of watching Letters to Juliet but I'm watching it on Megavideo, and as I've just watched 62 minutes of it, I have to wait 54 minutes to see the rest of it, so I just thought I'd write a blog update while I was at it.
This blog has been partly inspired by this film because Letters to Juliet is about a girl who goes on holiday with her boyfriend to Italy. However, because her boyfriend is using this holiday as a business trip to help set up his restaurant, he doesn't have very much time for her, and so her options as to where she can go in Italy are somewhat limited. But she can still explore Verona (the place where she's staying), so inevitably she does and she discovers a wall in which people having all sorts of problems with their love life write to the Juliet of Romeo & Juliet and post them on to a wall, and at the end of each day Juliet's secretaries come to get the letters they have received and write back to them in order to help them with their problems. As a prospective journalist, Sophie decides to spend a few days with them to discover more about their work, and one day when they go to collect the letters Juliet finds a very old letter stuck in the wall, dated from 1956, from a woman who left a boy behind, despite the fact that she really loved him, and doesn't know what to do. In spite of the fact that this is a very old letter, Sophie decides to reply and rather unexpectedly the woman is very grateful and follows her advice, I won't tell you what happens next but it's a very good film.
Although one of the reasons that I'm talking about this film is because I enjoyed it, the other reason I'm talking about it is because I feel like Juliet. Because I like Juliet want to travel, I don't necessarily want to go to Italy, don't get me wrong it's a beautiful country and I would at some point like to go there but there are many places that I'd like to go to in Europe. But to want isn't enough because I just don't have the money to go to these places.
I'm glad I didn't go to Hull and I don't think I'll ever regret my decision to decline the offer but being stuck in the Dorset countryside (as much as a love the breath-taking views) whilst my friends and my sister are at university just isn't very exciting. In the past few weeks I've been looking at photos of travel photographers and travel blogs and thinking of how nice it would be to explore.
At the moment I'd really like to go to Brussels, one of the things that attracts me to it is Le Musée Hergé (the museum about Tintin), another thing that I like about it is its architecture but also because I went on a holiday to Bruges when I was 12 and I really enjoyed it, and so I'd like to see some more of Belgium, and since I'm a supporter of the EU, I might even end up working there.
But since I'll have to compromise on this dream of exploring more of Europe, I'll have to just settle for interesting places to visit in the UK, and since I'm planning on doing some work experience in the courts in London this should be possible. So I'm thinking of going back to the V&A (I went there this summer but because there's so much of it to see, I didn't get to see all of it), going to Dr Johnson's Museum, Covent Garden and other interesting museums in London, I'm also interested in going to the Jane Austen Museum in Bath, since I really like Jane Austen's literature.
I'm also really interested in going to Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Scandinavia, Italy and Poland. This is one of the downsides to doing an A-level in your gap year though, you can't go and live abroad and get a job in order to facilitate this desire but make no mistake, I'm still enjoying learning Latin but if you're thinking of taking a gap year then take note!
But since I haven't got the money to travel, I have instead taken up the considerably cheaper habit of watching a lot of films. So far in the past week I've watched the Time Traveller's Wife, Wild Child and as you know I'm currently watching Letter's to Juliet. I've also been watching a lot of trailers for french films, I'd forgotten how unique they were, so I've bought Après Vous but I'm also interested in buying Lemon Tree, Paris and My Best Friend.
This is another problem with gap years, the boredom induced can empty your pockets. I've been so bored I've already done the majority of my Christmas shopping, I've spent £40 on a pair of pyjamas and I've been buying loads of books and music.
This blog has been partly inspired by this film because Letters to Juliet is about a girl who goes on holiday with her boyfriend to Italy. However, because her boyfriend is using this holiday as a business trip to help set up his restaurant, he doesn't have very much time for her, and so her options as to where she can go in Italy are somewhat limited. But she can still explore Verona (the place where she's staying), so inevitably she does and she discovers a wall in which people having all sorts of problems with their love life write to the Juliet of Romeo & Juliet and post them on to a wall, and at the end of each day Juliet's secretaries come to get the letters they have received and write back to them in order to help them with their problems. As a prospective journalist, Sophie decides to spend a few days with them to discover more about their work, and one day when they go to collect the letters Juliet finds a very old letter stuck in the wall, dated from 1956, from a woman who left a boy behind, despite the fact that she really loved him, and doesn't know what to do. In spite of the fact that this is a very old letter, Sophie decides to reply and rather unexpectedly the woman is very grateful and follows her advice, I won't tell you what happens next but it's a very good film.
Although one of the reasons that I'm talking about this film is because I enjoyed it, the other reason I'm talking about it is because I feel like Juliet. Because I like Juliet want to travel, I don't necessarily want to go to Italy, don't get me wrong it's a beautiful country and I would at some point like to go there but there are many places that I'd like to go to in Europe. But to want isn't enough because I just don't have the money to go to these places.
I'm glad I didn't go to Hull and I don't think I'll ever regret my decision to decline the offer but being stuck in the Dorset countryside (as much as a love the breath-taking views) whilst my friends and my sister are at university just isn't very exciting. In the past few weeks I've been looking at photos of travel photographers and travel blogs and thinking of how nice it would be to explore.
At the moment I'd really like to go to Brussels, one of the things that attracts me to it is Le Musée Hergé (the museum about Tintin), another thing that I like about it is its architecture but also because I went on a holiday to Bruges when I was 12 and I really enjoyed it, and so I'd like to see some more of Belgium, and since I'm a supporter of the EU, I might even end up working there.
But since I'll have to compromise on this dream of exploring more of Europe, I'll have to just settle for interesting places to visit in the UK, and since I'm planning on doing some work experience in the courts in London this should be possible. So I'm thinking of going back to the V&A (I went there this summer but because there's so much of it to see, I didn't get to see all of it), going to Dr Johnson's Museum, Covent Garden and other interesting museums in London, I'm also interested in going to the Jane Austen Museum in Bath, since I really like Jane Austen's literature.
I'm also really interested in going to Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Scandinavia, Italy and Poland. This is one of the downsides to doing an A-level in your gap year though, you can't go and live abroad and get a job in order to facilitate this desire but make no mistake, I'm still enjoying learning Latin but if you're thinking of taking a gap year then take note!
But since I haven't got the money to travel, I have instead taken up the considerably cheaper habit of watching a lot of films. So far in the past week I've watched the Time Traveller's Wife, Wild Child and as you know I'm currently watching Letter's to Juliet. I've also been watching a lot of trailers for french films, I'd forgotten how unique they were, so I've bought Après Vous but I'm also interested in buying Lemon Tree, Paris and My Best Friend.
This is another problem with gap years, the boredom induced can empty your pockets. I've been so bored I've already done the majority of my Christmas shopping, I've spent £40 on a pair of pyjamas and I've been buying loads of books and music.
Saturday, 30 October 2010
Dependancies
As I said in my first post, one of the things I was hoping to do on my gap year was decide whether I thought there was a God.
I've been an agnostic for a year. For a long time I was a Christian, this was partly because I spent the majority of my secondary education in a catholic school where most people were christians, and so I therefore didn't give a second thought to my religious beliefs. However, when I left at sixth form to go to a grammar school, I started hanging around with Christians and atheists and the atheists led me to question whether indeed there really was a God. This in turn led me to realise that I didn't know why I really believed in God.
But when I thought about there being no God and having no God around me, I felt weird. It's a hard feeling to explain but I felt essentially like I wasn't myself and I didn't know who I was, so I had to take the lawyers point of view and say that the case of the existence of God was innocent until proven guilty. This essentially meant that I wouldn't start to make a decision about the existence of God until I started to read literature for and against there being a god. So I didn't start to make my mind up on this issue until I'd done my A-level exams and I was free of school work.
The first book I read and am still reading is "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong. In this book Armstrong puts forward some very good arguments against the existence of God forward and this has led me to think that there probably isn't a god, although I'm trying not to say that I'm an atheist at the moment since it would be wrong to become an atheist on the basis of one piece of literature.
But even when I could start to make an evidence based decision on the existence of God, it still felt very weird for me to feel that there was no god around me, it felt as if not believing in God took a source of my confidence away from me. I felt like I just didn't know what to do, it was as if I'd built my whole life around a God, and taking God away from it felt like taking the bricks out of a house's walls. Furthermore, I feel that despite all the evidence I've so far considered I could still go back to believing in God to return to my normal self even if it meant that I'd be deluding myself. And it would seem that I'm not the only person who feels this way, the other day when I was talking to a friend about the existence of God he said "I don't know how anyone can get by without believing in a god" and my mother doesn't like the idea of there not being a god because she thinks that there would be nothing to look forward to if she didn't believe in God. Research has also shown that most people have a gene which makes them more likely to believe that there is a god.
But why is it that we feel this way? Why is it that some of us feel the need to have a god around us? Why is the idea of there not being a possible heaven at the end of our lives so unappealing?? Surely if anything it would be better because then we'd have no chance of going to hell and suffering??
Do I have this problem because it contradicts the idea of what I've believed for so long, and it's hard to come to terms with that change? Or is it because it's hard for me to contemplate the idea of there not being anyone to share my thoughts with if I don't feel I can say them to the outside world? Or is it because it's hard for me to think of there being no one to help me when I'm in trouble?
I do half wonder if it's my ancestors though, am I genetically adapted to be this way because our ancestors created gods to explain concepts that we can now use science to explain? Was it our ancestors actions that made many of us more likely to want to cling to a god?
I've been an agnostic for a year. For a long time I was a Christian, this was partly because I spent the majority of my secondary education in a catholic school where most people were christians, and so I therefore didn't give a second thought to my religious beliefs. However, when I left at sixth form to go to a grammar school, I started hanging around with Christians and atheists and the atheists led me to question whether indeed there really was a God. This in turn led me to realise that I didn't know why I really believed in God.
But when I thought about there being no God and having no God around me, I felt weird. It's a hard feeling to explain but I felt essentially like I wasn't myself and I didn't know who I was, so I had to take the lawyers point of view and say that the case of the existence of God was innocent until proven guilty. This essentially meant that I wouldn't start to make a decision about the existence of God until I started to read literature for and against there being a god. So I didn't start to make my mind up on this issue until I'd done my A-level exams and I was free of school work.
The first book I read and am still reading is "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong. In this book Armstrong puts forward some very good arguments against the existence of God forward and this has led me to think that there probably isn't a god, although I'm trying not to say that I'm an atheist at the moment since it would be wrong to become an atheist on the basis of one piece of literature.
But even when I could start to make an evidence based decision on the existence of God, it still felt very weird for me to feel that there was no god around me, it felt as if not believing in God took a source of my confidence away from me. I felt like I just didn't know what to do, it was as if I'd built my whole life around a God, and taking God away from it felt like taking the bricks out of a house's walls. Furthermore, I feel that despite all the evidence I've so far considered I could still go back to believing in God to return to my normal self even if it meant that I'd be deluding myself. And it would seem that I'm not the only person who feels this way, the other day when I was talking to a friend about the existence of God he said "I don't know how anyone can get by without believing in a god" and my mother doesn't like the idea of there not being a god because she thinks that there would be nothing to look forward to if she didn't believe in God. Research has also shown that most people have a gene which makes them more likely to believe that there is a god.
But why is it that we feel this way? Why is it that some of us feel the need to have a god around us? Why is the idea of there not being a possible heaven at the end of our lives so unappealing?? Surely if anything it would be better because then we'd have no chance of going to hell and suffering??
Do I have this problem because it contradicts the idea of what I've believed for so long, and it's hard to come to terms with that change? Or is it because it's hard for me to contemplate the idea of there not being anyone to share my thoughts with if I don't feel I can say them to the outside world? Or is it because it's hard for me to think of there being no one to help me when I'm in trouble?
I do half wonder if it's my ancestors though, am I genetically adapted to be this way because our ancestors created gods to explain concepts that we can now use science to explain? Was it our ancestors actions that made many of us more likely to want to cling to a god?
Friday, 29 October 2010
Why I'm blogging
I started this blog because I'm on a gap year and I thought other people, who are considering taking a gap year might want to read it.
So why did I take a gap year?? Before I started thinking about university, I was very anti gap years. I always thought, they were a waste of time and money and I just couldn't see the point in taking one when you could be doing more useful things. What made me change my mind was when I'd done my AS-level exams and I knew my maths exams had gone badly, because I want to be a lawyer and I wanted to be at one of the universities that are in the top 20, and when I began to look at the prospectuses for universities in that category I learnt that they all wanted 3 As for prospective law students, unless they were scottish universities but since I don't want to be a lawyer in Scotland, that just wasn't an option for me. But I knew I'd have to take a gap year, when the maths department wouldn't predict me anything higher than a D.
Although I knew I wasn't going to get anything much in terms of offers from good universities, I applied anyway just to see what I would get. I got an offer from UWE, and that was the only university out of my original options that gave me an offer but I didn't want to go there so I declined eventually it and applied to the University of Hull through UCAS extra. I did this purely as a measure of how good I was but I didn't really want to go there either, I said I'd go there if I failed to get the required grades for the top universities but even when I got A, B, C on results day, I couldn't stand the idea of going there because I knew I could do better. So eventually I sent them an e-mail declining the place. So at the moment I'm finishing off my A-level in Latin and I'm doing some January retakes.
All the same when I realised I might have to take a gap year, I realised that there could be advantages to it and that really how worthwhile it is depends on how worthwhile you make it. One of the first things I thought of doing was of course A-Level Latin, this is useful to me as a prospective lawyer because a lot of legal terms are in Latin, so it'll come in use for my law degree. But I also realised I could gain some useful work experience because before this year the only work experience I had ever done was for one week in a solicitor's office. So currently I'm doing voluntary work for one day a week at the Citizen's Advice Bureau and it's really useful, I'm gaining insight into Employment Law, Criminal Law and other sorts of law. I am however also considering doing some work experience in the courts, because when I visited the courts for a day before going back to school for the last year it was actually quite interesting to see how the judges worked within the boundaries of common law and how they passed decided what sentences to pass for each case.
Nevertheless that doesn't mean there aren't disadvantages to taking gap years in the way I'm taking mine. Because now I'm not on a school timetable it's really hard to motivate myself, I seem to do everything at snail's pace. This is no joke I've sometimes taken two days over homeworks (and these weren't essays) that should have taken a day. This is partly because I wake up at 12:00/13:00 and so I seem to spend half the afternoon having breakfast/lunch. The other disadvatantage is that most of my friends have gone off to university and so as a countryside dweller I don't have many people my age around me.
On this blog I'm going to record what I'm doing on my gap year, how I get on with university offers and how I get on with other aims of my gap year. Because since I'm currently an agnostic, I'd really like to come to a conclusion on whether there is or isn't a God even if in reality we are all agnostics. The other target I've set for myself is to read all the books I've accumulated in my bookshelves but haven't read, so you might find a few book reviews here. You might also find me blogging about the news since I love
current affairs.
So why did I take a gap year?? Before I started thinking about university, I was very anti gap years. I always thought, they were a waste of time and money and I just couldn't see the point in taking one when you could be doing more useful things. What made me change my mind was when I'd done my AS-level exams and I knew my maths exams had gone badly, because I want to be a lawyer and I wanted to be at one of the universities that are in the top 20, and when I began to look at the prospectuses for universities in that category I learnt that they all wanted 3 As for prospective law students, unless they were scottish universities but since I don't want to be a lawyer in Scotland, that just wasn't an option for me. But I knew I'd have to take a gap year, when the maths department wouldn't predict me anything higher than a D.
Although I knew I wasn't going to get anything much in terms of offers from good universities, I applied anyway just to see what I would get. I got an offer from UWE, and that was the only university out of my original options that gave me an offer but I didn't want to go there so I declined eventually it and applied to the University of Hull through UCAS extra. I did this purely as a measure of how good I was but I didn't really want to go there either, I said I'd go there if I failed to get the required grades for the top universities but even when I got A, B, C on results day, I couldn't stand the idea of going there because I knew I could do better. So eventually I sent them an e-mail declining the place. So at the moment I'm finishing off my A-level in Latin and I'm doing some January retakes.
All the same when I realised I might have to take a gap year, I realised that there could be advantages to it and that really how worthwhile it is depends on how worthwhile you make it. One of the first things I thought of doing was of course A-Level Latin, this is useful to me as a prospective lawyer because a lot of legal terms are in Latin, so it'll come in use for my law degree. But I also realised I could gain some useful work experience because before this year the only work experience I had ever done was for one week in a solicitor's office. So currently I'm doing voluntary work for one day a week at the Citizen's Advice Bureau and it's really useful, I'm gaining insight into Employment Law, Criminal Law and other sorts of law. I am however also considering doing some work experience in the courts, because when I visited the courts for a day before going back to school for the last year it was actually quite interesting to see how the judges worked within the boundaries of common law and how they passed decided what sentences to pass for each case.
Nevertheless that doesn't mean there aren't disadvantages to taking gap years in the way I'm taking mine. Because now I'm not on a school timetable it's really hard to motivate myself, I seem to do everything at snail's pace. This is no joke I've sometimes taken two days over homeworks (and these weren't essays) that should have taken a day. This is partly because I wake up at 12:00/13:00 and so I seem to spend half the afternoon having breakfast/lunch. The other disadvatantage is that most of my friends have gone off to university and so as a countryside dweller I don't have many people my age around me.
On this blog I'm going to record what I'm doing on my gap year, how I get on with university offers and how I get on with other aims of my gap year. Because since I'm currently an agnostic, I'd really like to come to a conclusion on whether there is or isn't a God even if in reality we are all agnostics. The other target I've set for myself is to read all the books I've accumulated in my bookshelves but haven't read, so you might find a few book reviews here. You might also find me blogging about the news since I love
current affairs.
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