Results Day/ My grades

If you read my other blog/follow the Twitter count for my other blog, then you almost certainly saw the news that I got into Sussex. I'm happy that I got into Sussex because it was my first choice but I only met my offer because I only got the necessary sum of AABB. I know that I haven't got a bad set of grades but I would have liked to have 3As and a B or indeed 4 As.

I admit that I wasn't expecting an A for Maths because although I knew I was capable of getting that grade, I had to do the same papers as I did last year for S1 (ie. statistics) and I find S1 very boring. My best mark was in C3 (one of the pure and core Maths modules) and although this is partly because I prefer pure maths, it's also because I did OCR papers instead of doing Edexcel papers (which was my exam board for Maths) so that I didn't lose concentration by doing papers that I'd done time and time again. I'm starting to think that I should have done my maths modules in a different format though, I think I would have been better off doing C3 & C4 in January and then doing S1 & S2 (S2 is also a stats module) in the summer, then I would have had a more realistic chance of getting an A overall. I say this because I think it would have been a better idea to just concentrate on 2 modules instead of 3 at a time but also because although it's a good idea to do other board's papers for Maths, they structure each modules content in a different way, so that all the content on the paper is only relevant if you're doing either C3 & C4, S1 & S2 and so on at the same time.

Nevertheless, the marks for my Maths modules were on the whole better than the marks for my Latin modules. Admittedly I got 94% for the AS retake of my language paper but when it came to the 2 A2 papers, I got a high C for Prose Literature and a D for Verse Literature (although it was one mark off a C). So overall I got an average of C on my two A2 modules but I know I could have got As in both of them. I'd always known that I'd been at a disadvantage this year with Latin because I'd had a year out of it, and although you don't have to be able to actively speak the language, I found this particularly disadvantageous with Latin because since it's a dead language, I've only ever learnt it in passive form and it's very hard to learn any Latin outside of the translations you do and the texts you study because most of it is too hard for A2 students to read on their own. Admittedly you can get famous books such as Harry Potter, Winnie the Pooh etc., which have been translated into Latin but that's not so useful at A2 because the texts you're translating tend to be about love and wars and of course they don't tend to write in the typical style of Romans.

When I finished my summer exams, I began to realise that one of my main faults was that I undertook too much in the first term because I was revising for German and 3 Maths modules, learning Latin, doing driving lessons and working at the CAB. So if I could go back in time and change anything, I would have left driving for another time because I still haven't managed to pass my test and my parents admitted that although I might have been able to cope with driving and A-levels, if I'd been at school, they admitted it was too much for me, as someone who was having to teach herself. So my parents have paid for more than 60 hours of driving lessons, only to find that I've still not become a qualified driver, even if I have picked up some driving skills. I think my other main mistake was not discovering the library at the beginning of the school year and instead discovering it in the middle of the second term, when the chances of me getting an A for Latin had decreased because I hadn't been spending enough time going over my work and the course content (ie. the literature). The problem with regard
to going to library was that I usually have good memory and so I was relying too much on this asset, even though this asset became less reliable this year, when I had no one around me and I wasn't having 4 hours worth of lessons for Latin. I also hadn't realised just how hard it is to motivate yourself, when you're on your own. I think I would also have been able to get an A if I'd discovered the podcasts, that I mentioned in an earlier post, in the first term.
If you're doing anything like what I've done or plan to do so, I also recommend starting a blog because when you're on your own, it really helps you to put your problems into perspective and feel less plagued by your problems.