This year I only managed to find two paid jobs and they were both temporary jobs: I counted votes for the council elections on the night of the AV referendum and I completed surveys about people's opinions about a pub. I got paid £15 per hour to count votes because you have to stay up into the early hours of the morning counting the votes and they have trouble finding people to do this, so I definitely recommend doing this job if it comes up.
Nevertheless, I don't recommend working for companies, that ask you to complete surveys because I had so much trouble getting the company to pay me. I didn't fill out all of the surveys because I couldn't find enough people to ask in the time slots allocated for the surveys and they didn't say I had to fill out all the questionnaires, so at first they refused to pay me because they said that I hadn't done the job properly. They also said that I'd been rude to people, when I was filling out the surveys because some people had complained that I'd asked them, which age range they came under, even though they'd asked me to ask them those questions and they tried to use this fact as another reason to not pay me. It took me months to get this company to pay me and eventually I had to accept half the amount of money, they originally said they'd pay me, because it costs money and takes months to take it to a small claims court. I later discovered that a lot of companies, who employ people to carry out surveys, try to not pay you, if you didn't do the job properly, so please don't make my mistake.
Apart from having pocket money and the Job Seeker's Allowance, which I used to pay for Latin lessons, my other income came from doing online surveys. I admit that it doesn't bring in a great amount of income but I've earned about £90 in vouchers this year from doing these surveys. The advantages are that it's flexible and anyone can do them but the disadvantage is that there are so many questions, which they will ask you time and time again, so it can be tedious in that regard. In any case I thought I'd recommend some survey sites to any of you, who are interested in making some money in this way but do beware that most survey sites pay you with vouchers.
1. http://uk.toluna.com/ - Toluna offer some very quick polls as well as long and short surveys, which you can get points for, so it's quite easy to earn points with Toluna. In any case it still takes a good 3 months to get enough points to request a voucher.
2. http://uk.mysurvey.com/ - The MySurvey panel offer you the chance to convert your points into many different vouchers and many other rewards. They also give you points for trying to participate in the survey, if they decide you're not a suitable candidate for the survey.
3. http://www.iap-interactive.com/default.aspx?language=en-GB - Ipsos Access Panels offer you the chance to convert your points into a fair range of vouchers or indeed donations to some charities but they don't offer the same range of ways in which to convert your points as the MySurvey panel. They also give you points for attempting to participate in the survey, if you're not a suitable candidate for the survey.
4. www.onepoll.com - OnePoll give you short surveys to complete. You usually get something between £0.05 - £0.20 for each survey you manage to complete but you can also get vouchers, which allow you to be entered into prize draws. They offer you the chance to do surveys on almost every day of the working week. They give you £40, when you have completed enough surveys to earn this amount. Although I started a year ago, I haven't quite got my £40 but I'm less than £5 away from earning it!
5. http://www.opinionpanel.co.uk/future/ - The future panel is a panel, which seeks the opinion of young people, who are in higher education or planning to go on to further education. Because there is a low supply of these sorts of people they offer you a £1 Bonus Bond voucher for each survey you complete, so I recommend joining this panel, if you fit the criteria.
6. http://www.opinionworld.co.uk/ow/index.aspx?filterid=2078&chapterid=1075 - OpinionWorld offer you a fair range of vouchers and charitable donations, when you receive enough points to earn a reward but they don't give you points for trying to complete a survey, if they decide you don't fit the criteria wanted for a particular survey.
I've had rewards from all of the above apart from OnePoll but as I said before, I will soon receive a reward from them. In any case I hope this helps you! Please feel free to ask me any questions about taking a gap year, if you feel I have the relevant experience to answer your question.
Saturday, 27 August 2011
Friday, 26 August 2011
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.
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.
Saturday, 30 July 2011
Managing the other blog
As you can see, I've not posted for a while and that's largely in part due to the fact that the other blog takes up a lot of time. Although I was fully aware of the fact that blog posts can take a lot of time to produce, I didn't think it would be the same if I was just writing 2 short paragraphs about a particular artist. It's true to say that the writing doesn't take up that much time but the research takes a long time because I often have to go through quite a few artists, before I can find a suitable one to do a blog post on and it's not unusual for this to take two hours.
In a way the work is very rewarding because it means that I'm discovering lots of good world music, which I'd never heard of before and it means that I learn about the culture of other countries. The blog is also very popular, I so far have 100 followers on Twitter, I've been put on 5 different lists on Twitter and the blog gets quite a few views per day, it's also been recommended by a world music website, so it's nice to know that it provides people with enjoyment. It also gives me something to do when I'm not working in Oxfam, so that I'm not so bored because of the lack of things to do.
Nevertheless I have my doubts as to whether I can keep it going when I get to university because although I like the task, I've not achieved my objective of making money out of it since they only pay you if someone is referred to the website by your blog. I've tried to advertise in the right way by advertising Amazon's mp3 store and trying to sell Amazon's world music of the particular artist featured in my blog but this hasn't led to anyone buying the music. This surprises me given that the blog is quite popular but I half wonder if this is because people illegally download the artist's music or people just listen to the artist's music through YouTube because they can't afford to buy it. Perhaps I'll have to wait for the blog to become more popular, before I can hope to make money out of it. But I don't think I can wait for a very long time to try and make money out of it because law degrees take up 35 hours of your week and I'm thinking of doing a language course aswell, so I'll almost certainly have a lot of things to do without having a daily blog post to do and I will of course want free time. At the moment I'm thinking of updating the blog on a weekly basis, when I get to university, because I think that would be a suitable compromise. Nevertheless, one of my friends at Oxford manages to do lots of extra curricular activities aswell as a physics degree and she managed to get a first in this year's exams. She says this is because she's incredibly organised, so it makes me think that there could be hope for my blog if I'm organised, although that's often not the case!
In a way the work is very rewarding because it means that I'm discovering lots of good world music, which I'd never heard of before and it means that I learn about the culture of other countries. The blog is also very popular, I so far have 100 followers on Twitter, I've been put on 5 different lists on Twitter and the blog gets quite a few views per day, it's also been recommended by a world music website, so it's nice to know that it provides people with enjoyment. It also gives me something to do when I'm not working in Oxfam, so that I'm not so bored because of the lack of things to do.
Nevertheless I have my doubts as to whether I can keep it going when I get to university because although I like the task, I've not achieved my objective of making money out of it since they only pay you if someone is referred to the website by your blog. I've tried to advertise in the right way by advertising Amazon's mp3 store and trying to sell Amazon's world music of the particular artist featured in my blog but this hasn't led to anyone buying the music. This surprises me given that the blog is quite popular but I half wonder if this is because people illegally download the artist's music or people just listen to the artist's music through YouTube because they can't afford to buy it. Perhaps I'll have to wait for the blog to become more popular, before I can hope to make money out of it. But I don't think I can wait for a very long time to try and make money out of it because law degrees take up 35 hours of your week and I'm thinking of doing a language course aswell, so I'll almost certainly have a lot of things to do without having a daily blog post to do and I will of course want free time. At the moment I'm thinking of updating the blog on a weekly basis, when I get to university, because I think that would be a suitable compromise. Nevertheless, one of my friends at Oxford manages to do lots of extra curricular activities aswell as a physics degree and she managed to get a first in this year's exams. She says this is because she's incredibly organised, so it makes me think that there could be hope for my blog if I'm organised, although that's often not the case!
Tuesday, 5 July 2011
Another blog
Yesterday I decided to start another blog but that doesn't mean that I'm going to stop updating this one, although naturally I will stop updating it in late September/ early October, when I go to university, and make another blog.
My reason for starting a new blog is that I'm still having no success in finding a job and so currently my only way of making money is to do surveys, so I decided that another way of making money would be to advertise on my blog, and you might ask the question: why don't I just advertise on this one? But I'd rather not advertise on this one because it's more personal, and so I don't want to find myself being unable to publish posts because they make the company I advertise look bad and also because it's personal, I don't get many visitors, so advertisers would be highly unlikely to use this blog to advertise their products.
I thought of many different blogs I could set up, a political blog, a blog of daily photos or a daily blog about music. In the end I decided to do a blog about music because although I take a great interest in politics, I probably won't have so much time to blog about it when I go to university and although I love taking photographs, I just wouldn't have the time to find lots of good things to photograph when I'm doing a law degree but music is an easier thing to blog about because you can find everything you need for the blog on the internet.
I've had a passion for many different sorts of music for a long time, and one of my favourite categories of music is world music, so I've decided to do one about world music, in which I upload one song from the category each day, and therefore decided to call it World Music Daily. So if you like world music, please follow my new blog: http://worldmusicdaily1.blogspot.com/
My reason for starting a new blog is that I'm still having no success in finding a job and so currently my only way of making money is to do surveys, so I decided that another way of making money would be to advertise on my blog, and you might ask the question: why don't I just advertise on this one? But I'd rather not advertise on this one because it's more personal, and so I don't want to find myself being unable to publish posts because they make the company I advertise look bad and also because it's personal, I don't get many visitors, so advertisers would be highly unlikely to use this blog to advertise their products.
I thought of many different blogs I could set up, a political blog, a blog of daily photos or a daily blog about music. In the end I decided to do a blog about music because although I take a great interest in politics, I probably won't have so much time to blog about it when I go to university and although I love taking photographs, I just wouldn't have the time to find lots of good things to photograph when I'm doing a law degree but music is an easier thing to blog about because you can find everything you need for the blog on the internet.
I've had a passion for many different sorts of music for a long time, and one of my favourite categories of music is world music, so I've decided to do one about world music, in which I upload one song from the category each day, and therefore decided to call it World Music Daily. So if you like world music, please follow my new blog: http://worldmusicdaily1.blogspot.com/
Monday, 4 July 2011
End of exams
Now that exams are over, I probably won't be posting so much about issues relating specifically to gap years but I'll certainly be telling you about my summer adventures/activities.
So far I'm not having much success with finding a job, even though my exams are over and I have all the time in the world, in fact there seem to be even less jobs than usual. So at the moment I'm just answering surveys, selling books on Amazon and working two days a week in Oxfam but at the moment I'm not too bothered because I'm not actually that bored.
I'm currently reading E. M. Forster's novel, A Passage To India and I'm really enjoying it because it gives me a lot of insight into the way in which many Britons acted while India was subject to British colonial rule (obviously I was aware that there was a lot of prejudice towards Indians during this time but I wasn't entirely sure how bad it was) and it helps me to understand why Britons can be treated so unfairly when they go to developing countries.
I've also been rediscovering my love of Klezmer music (Jewish music originating from Eastern Europe) because I lost many songs by the band, Kroke, when my last computer broke down. I started to realise how much I missed them yesterday, so I spent a few hours listening to my favourite songs by the band and found out about more of their songs, which I'd never heard of and it also led me to discover another Klezmer band called Les Yeux Noirs, admittedly this band isn't as good because they incorporate a range of styles but there are some of their songs which I really like, so I'll share some of their songs with you.
Saturday, 14 May 2011
Self-motivation
This year one of things I've struggled most with is self-motivation, I never appreciated quite how hard it was to teach yourself until I started teaching myself Latin and having to do Maths by myself.
I basically learn Latin at A2 by seeing a tutor for one hour a week and doing the rest of the work by myself but because I've had not had any jobs (except voluntary jobs) and because I've not been at school and therefore had no timetable to keep me in place, I've been losing my sense of time. I've also found that because I don't have any friends who are doing A2 Latin, it's hard to remember everything I learn because I have no one to discuss it with and I don't have teachers there to constantly remind me of the topics, that I'm covering for A2 Latin.
Maths, however is the topic I struggle with even more, when it comes to self-motivation because I've only had 3 Maths lessons since leaving school, and so I have to set myself work, I only started to realise that this was a problem when I got my results for my January resits. My German went up to an A but my Maths only went up by one mark, I realised that the reason for this must be that I was seeing a german assistant every week, to practice oral cards for my oral exam, whereas I did as many maths papers as I could psyche myself up to doing. I think the other problem with Maths was that I was doing papers that I'd done before, and so the whole idea of doing them again seemed tedious. I know you could say that I should see a tutor more often for maths but the problem is that it's only really useful if you have enough problems to go over with them, and I don't have enough problems to go over with them so it would be pointless and a waste of my time and money.
One of the solutions I've found to my problem of self-motivation is going to the library because I don't bring my laptop to the library so I can't be distracted by websites like Facebook and Twitter or paid surveys and there are no home comforts there to distract you either. The only problem with going to the library is that there are no desks in the libraries of my nearest towns (which are small/rural towns) because they've all been taken over by computers so I have to go to the big towns.
Another solution I've found to self-motivation for Latin is podcasts because they make you feel more like you're in a lesson because you're listening to someone tell you things you didn't know before and it really helps me to understand the more of the historical contexts of the topics I'm covering, and I've also found one to help me with regard to the Latin language.
I think if Latin was a more popular course that was offered at a college, I probably would have done it at a college so that I could have had more people to discuss it with and turn to for help and so that I could have had more opportunities to develop my ideas and be reminded of the details of the topic. Nevertheless I think this is good experience for university because most of the time you have to do work by yourself and teach yourself since you only have a few hours or lectures/seminars each week so it might make it easier to adapt to university life but I tend to think it's easier to cope with this change of circumstances at university because you have your friends there and there are people there, who are studying your course, so there are people you can go to to help you with your problems.
I basically learn Latin at A2 by seeing a tutor for one hour a week and doing the rest of the work by myself but because I've had not had any jobs (except voluntary jobs) and because I've not been at school and therefore had no timetable to keep me in place, I've been losing my sense of time. I've also found that because I don't have any friends who are doing A2 Latin, it's hard to remember everything I learn because I have no one to discuss it with and I don't have teachers there to constantly remind me of the topics, that I'm covering for A2 Latin.
Maths, however is the topic I struggle with even more, when it comes to self-motivation because I've only had 3 Maths lessons since leaving school, and so I have to set myself work, I only started to realise that this was a problem when I got my results for my January resits. My German went up to an A but my Maths only went up by one mark, I realised that the reason for this must be that I was seeing a german assistant every week, to practice oral cards for my oral exam, whereas I did as many maths papers as I could psyche myself up to doing. I think the other problem with Maths was that I was doing papers that I'd done before, and so the whole idea of doing them again seemed tedious. I know you could say that I should see a tutor more often for maths but the problem is that it's only really useful if you have enough problems to go over with them, and I don't have enough problems to go over with them so it would be pointless and a waste of my time and money.
One of the solutions I've found to my problem of self-motivation is going to the library because I don't bring my laptop to the library so I can't be distracted by websites like Facebook and Twitter or paid surveys and there are no home comforts there to distract you either. The only problem with going to the library is that there are no desks in the libraries of my nearest towns (which are small/rural towns) because they've all been taken over by computers so I have to go to the big towns.
Another solution I've found to self-motivation for Latin is podcasts because they make you feel more like you're in a lesson because you're listening to someone tell you things you didn't know before and it really helps me to understand the more of the historical contexts of the topics I'm covering, and I've also found one to help me with regard to the Latin language.
I think if Latin was a more popular course that was offered at a college, I probably would have done it at a college so that I could have had more people to discuss it with and turn to for help and so that I could have had more opportunities to develop my ideas and be reminded of the details of the topic. Nevertheless I think this is good experience for university because most of the time you have to do work by yourself and teach yourself since you only have a few hours or lectures/seminars each week so it might make it easier to adapt to university life but I tend to think it's easier to cope with this change of circumstances at university because you have your friends there and there are people there, who are studying your course, so there are people you can go to to help you with your problems.
Wednesday, 27 April 2011
Living in Dorset
As someone, who has lived in Dorset since I was 3 years old, I've always been very attached to Dorset because it is a very pretty place surrounded by lovely countryside and it is a quiet place, so I never understood why so many people were keen to get away from it when they became adults, unless they were tired of the quiet life and wanted more excitement.
However, since taking a gap year I have started to see the distinct disadvantages of living in Dorset, because although Dorset is a pretty place to live in, it is very hard to get a job. I've been looking for a job since late August and the only jobs I've managed to find are very temporary jobs and voluntary positions. Admittedly one of my problems is that I don't have a lot of experience of the world of work but my friends who live in towns/cities have had much more success in finding jobs even if they haven't had jobs before starting their current jobs.
One of the problems you have if you live in a village surrounded by small towns is that the small towns don't have many jobs available, so it means that there are more applicants per job and so they are ultimately more likely to have an applicant with more experience (unlike me).
Another problem though is the public transport in Dorset because in my village, we only have buses that go to our two main small towns every hour between 7.00 and 17.00 and even then they only go in one direction per hour, so this means that if you are a village resident relying on the buses, you can't get a job in the big towns/cities because you couldn't get there on time and you can't get a job in a pub because you need to be able to stay there until midnight.
The other problem I have is that there are some employers who say that you have to go to the store in person to pick up applications for jobs, that have become available and so this also causes problems for me because I can't pay for a bus fare for the sheer purpose of picking up an application form as there is a high likelihood that it could be a waste of my money, given that they could very well select someone else.
Because there aren't enough jobs in Dorset, it is leading to more crime in Dorset because Job Seekers Allowance is often not enough to live on, so Dorset isn't quite as pleasant to live in as it used to be. Admittedly Dorset still has a relatively low crime rate, so it's not as such a dangerous or scary place to live in but I am starting to wonder if that will change given how few jobs there are for everyone in Dorset, especially as the redundancies from the budget cuts are starting to take effect and Dorset was until now a county, in which a third of the workers were government workers.
Although I plan on living in London for a few years because I need to get away from the quiet life, I still love Dorset and I would still love to bring up my children here (if I have any) but taking a gap year has made me see the issue of living in Dorset in a different light.
However, since taking a gap year I have started to see the distinct disadvantages of living in Dorset, because although Dorset is a pretty place to live in, it is very hard to get a job. I've been looking for a job since late August and the only jobs I've managed to find are very temporary jobs and voluntary positions. Admittedly one of my problems is that I don't have a lot of experience of the world of work but my friends who live in towns/cities have had much more success in finding jobs even if they haven't had jobs before starting their current jobs.
One of the problems you have if you live in a village surrounded by small towns is that the small towns don't have many jobs available, so it means that there are more applicants per job and so they are ultimately more likely to have an applicant with more experience (unlike me).
Another problem though is the public transport in Dorset because in my village, we only have buses that go to our two main small towns every hour between 7.00 and 17.00 and even then they only go in one direction per hour, so this means that if you are a village resident relying on the buses, you can't get a job in the big towns/cities because you couldn't get there on time and you can't get a job in a pub because you need to be able to stay there until midnight.
The other problem I have is that there are some employers who say that you have to go to the store in person to pick up applications for jobs, that have become available and so this also causes problems for me because I can't pay for a bus fare for the sheer purpose of picking up an application form as there is a high likelihood that it could be a waste of my money, given that they could very well select someone else.
Because there aren't enough jobs in Dorset, it is leading to more crime in Dorset because Job Seekers Allowance is often not enough to live on, so Dorset isn't quite as pleasant to live in as it used to be. Admittedly Dorset still has a relatively low crime rate, so it's not as such a dangerous or scary place to live in but I am starting to wonder if that will change given how few jobs there are for everyone in Dorset, especially as the redundancies from the budget cuts are starting to take effect and Dorset was until now a county, in which a third of the workers were government workers.
Although I plan on living in London for a few years because I need to get away from the quiet life, I still love Dorset and I would still love to bring up my children here (if I have any) but taking a gap year has made me see the issue of living in Dorset in a different light.
Friday, 11 March 2011
My new job
Not long after I got let go of by the CAB, I got a call from Oxfam who had finally responded to my application that I sent in a few weeks before I left the CAB. So I went in to talk to them about doing voluntary work in the shop and they accepted me, it probably wasn't that much of an achievement given that they're always happy to take more volunteers but it might be something to do with the fact that I'm quite enthusiastic about the work they do and therefore support what they do.
I applied to do voluntary work in their shop because I'm still unemployed and I've done my January exams, so now is the ideal time to get more work experience to make myself more employable. I certainly am getting more useful experience because I've so far learnt to operate the till and use a price labelling gun, and after a certain amount of time, they might give me the opportunity to start deciding what prices the books should sell for (just to make this clear: the Oxfam shop I'm working for only sells books), so that could be another good thing to say about this work on my CV. On my first session there, they also gave me all the leftovers from Christmas which didn't sell very well so that's another advantage of working there.
The other good thing is that by working there I get to see how literature has evolved over time because we get some books that are from the 18th century. When you look inside these books it's odd because you don't just see a change in the form of English they use, you also see a different attitude, you often see quite racist statements, for example: I picked up this book about learning Greek and because it was printed in 1907 it gave you sentences like "The Indians are liars", "The Ethiopians are barbarians", etc. to translate, and it's just so odd because you would never see such things printed in books that are published now.
Nevertheless, although this is good experience, it doesn't make up for the value of the experience I'm missing out on at the CAB. I'm trying not to look back too much on it because you can't dwell on the past but when I think about the reasons that led to me being let go of, one of the factors that played a part was that I had to spend a lot of time revising for the January resits and so I couldn't spend so much time each week at the CAB between October and December and I couldn't spend so much time reading the information they gave out, so that meant that I didn't look like I was at the level I was supposed to be at when they decided to let me go.
Saturday, 26 February 2011
Office politics
So this week was a sad week because I lost my job at the Citizens Advice Bureau. In a lot of cases, I wouldn't have minded quite so much but in this case I did mind because it was interesting and most of the people there were friendly.
It all started when I came back from the Christmas break because I'd been ill and that had broken my body clock, so that led to me making a few errors because I got out of be that day having had no sleep. But then they started saying that I'd made other errors. So they got the person who supervised all the gateway assessors (who'd just come back after being treated for cancer) to assess me and because I did things differently to the way she did things, she criticised me far too much for some of the things I was doing, even though a lot of people were doing things I was doing.
One of the main things she criticised me for was for not being sympathetic enough when someone with a debt problem called. She said that I shouldn't have just said "I'll call you back", and that I should've given her more help before putting the phone down to see what could be done for her but the reason that I didn't do that was because I'd never dealt with or observed a call on debt before, and so I'd rather leave her with without any information before I called her back as opposed to giving information I wasn't sure of, and I think anyone else would've done the same. The worst part about it was that no one else had told me that that was a problem.
Then another person called with a issue regarding divorce/money, and I was going to use the same tactic I proposed using with the previous caller of finding out the relevant information and calling them back when I had the relevant information and she again criticised me for temporarily sending them away with no information. When we were discussing what to do, I made it perfectly clear that I knew what to do but she went around insisting that this was another person she was having to call back for me!
Part of the problem was that she was aggressive in the way that she criticised me and so it made me nervous and meant that I couldn't do the job properly.
So after my manager had talked to this person, he called me the next day and said that it's just not working out and that he's not comfortable having me on the phones. When I tried to say that this woman had caused some of the problems, he said that he felt that way even without her feedback but that can't have been true because he'd said 4 weeks ago, "I think you can do this", and in the last two times I'd been back in the four weeks after he said that the gateway assessor had been supervising me on both occasions, so it must have had something to do with her. And I can't help thinking that it seems rather contradictory to tell me that he had thought about it and then slept on it before deciding that he wasn't comfortable with me answering the phones. The worst thing about that phone call was that he didn't thank me for the time I'd given up to come in and help.
But I guess my father was right when he said that I'd "had [my] first taste of office politics" because really I lost my job because the gateway supervisor just didn't like me. I'm not going to deny that there weren't faults on my part that led to this but she made me sound worse than I was.
When I asked if I could do anything else in the office the manager said that there was nothing at present that he needed me to do but he said that he would call me if there were any other roles became available. If he'd given me something else there and then I probably would have taken the offer but if he rings me up in a few weeks/months and says that they need me to do something, I don't honestly know if I'd feel comfortable doing it after all that's happened even though it's good legal experience.
It all started when I came back from the Christmas break because I'd been ill and that had broken my body clock, so that led to me making a few errors because I got out of be that day having had no sleep. But then they started saying that I'd made other errors. So they got the person who supervised all the gateway assessors (who'd just come back after being treated for cancer) to assess me and because I did things differently to the way she did things, she criticised me far too much for some of the things I was doing, even though a lot of people were doing things I was doing.
One of the main things she criticised me for was for not being sympathetic enough when someone with a debt problem called. She said that I shouldn't have just said "I'll call you back", and that I should've given her more help before putting the phone down to see what could be done for her but the reason that I didn't do that was because I'd never dealt with or observed a call on debt before, and so I'd rather leave her with without any information before I called her back as opposed to giving information I wasn't sure of, and I think anyone else would've done the same. The worst part about it was that no one else had told me that that was a problem.
Then another person called with a issue regarding divorce/money, and I was going to use the same tactic I proposed using with the previous caller of finding out the relevant information and calling them back when I had the relevant information and she again criticised me for temporarily sending them away with no information. When we were discussing what to do, I made it perfectly clear that I knew what to do but she went around insisting that this was another person she was having to call back for me!
Part of the problem was that she was aggressive in the way that she criticised me and so it made me nervous and meant that I couldn't do the job properly.
So after my manager had talked to this person, he called me the next day and said that it's just not working out and that he's not comfortable having me on the phones. When I tried to say that this woman had caused some of the problems, he said that he felt that way even without her feedback but that can't have been true because he'd said 4 weeks ago, "I think you can do this", and in the last two times I'd been back in the four weeks after he said that the gateway assessor had been supervising me on both occasions, so it must have had something to do with her. And I can't help thinking that it seems rather contradictory to tell me that he had thought about it and then slept on it before deciding that he wasn't comfortable with me answering the phones. The worst thing about that phone call was that he didn't thank me for the time I'd given up to come in and help.
But I guess my father was right when he said that I'd "had [my] first taste of office politics" because really I lost my job because the gateway supervisor just didn't like me. I'm not going to deny that there weren't faults on my part that led to this but she made me sound worse than I was.
When I asked if I could do anything else in the office the manager said that there was nothing at present that he needed me to do but he said that he would call me if there were any other roles became available. If he'd given me something else there and then I probably would have taken the offer but if he rings me up in a few weeks/months and says that they need me to do something, I don't honestly know if I'd feel comfortable doing it after all that's happened even though it's good legal experience.
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
Was I meant to take a gap year?
Since I last posted not much has happened but there was one particular event that took place in my village that was unlike any event we'd ever seen before here in the past few decades: 4 thatched houses caught fire and because the fire started in the roofs of the houses, the thatched houses couldn't be saved, so the roofs fell in and the residents of the houses had to move out. The fire was so bad that firefighters had to be called in from the neighbouring counties of Wiltshire and Hampshire and they had to stay there fore at least 36 hours and check on the houses for the next 2 days after that. It also meant that we had a power cut for 12 hours because the smoke from the fire was so bad that it took the electricians a long time before they could cut those houses off from the electricity supply.
Luckily because we're a small village of 200-250 residents, word of this incident could be spread easily and so we could get lots of help quite easily. Since the residents needed boxes in order to gather their things and take them elsewhere, I brought lots of boxes along in order for them to do just that. Admittedly I wasn't doing nearly as much as some people, who were actually helping to pack the resident's belongings into the boxes but it still was quite an important role.
One of the saddest things about these fires was that 3 out of the four houses were council houses and the residents of the other house had spent a lot of the last summer decorating the house. It was also rather sad on a historical note because these houses are houses that have been around since the late 1600s.
If there was anything that this fire taught me, it taught me that you should never buy a thatched house because originally the fire started in the roof of one of the houses but because they were terraced houses it spread to all four of the houses. Although I knew that there was a greater risk of a fire starting in a thatched house, I didn't realise that the insurance was also greater because once the fire starts in the roof, they can't stop the fire.
Because the electricity was still off at supper time, we had to go and have supper at the pub. When we got there, we met some other people from our village and so naturally we talked about the fire. One of the things that the mother/wife (who'd been helping the victims of the fire) said was that she was only able to help because she happened to be off work that day and when she said that I couldn't help thinking that it was just aswell I was having a gap year and I was there to help. So I couldn't help wondering if this was one of the reasons for which I was meant to take a gap year because it reminded me a lot of how there are much less people around than usual on a train/plane/bus, etc. or in a place than usual when accidents/tragedies take place, almost as if it were a premeditated order.
However, it's not just that incident that makes me think that I was meant to take a gap year. The other incident that makes me think I was meant to take a gap year, is something that happened at the Citizens Advice Bureau. Admittedly it was something small to begin with because it just involved me learning that at the moment because of the recession, a lot of employers will put their full time staff on part time hours/pay for 12 weeks and then make them redundant so that they have to pay them less redundancy money. But I happened to relay this fact to my family later on in the day, and it was just aswell I did because my mother is a public sector worker and so she's suffering the consequences of the budget cuts but coincidentally someone (who was ignorant about this fact regarding redundancy pay) had suggested that they all go part-time to save jobs, and the managers in her office very nearly did take the suggested action until my mother pointed this problem out. It's just aswell that she did point this fact out because the budget cuts are getting so bad that my mother has voluntarily made herself redundant and so if they'd made her part-time before hand, she would have been entitled to less redundancy money.
Admittedly taking a gap year has been beneficial to me in other respects but it's just so odd to think that there was a good reason for me doing badly on my maths exams in year 12!
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
Picking a university
I haven't posted for a while since I've been busy doing exams but also because I've had open days and interviews to go to. But since my blog is about taking a gap year and deciding where to go to university, I shall give you my perspective and tell you of my experiences so far.
The first open day and interview (and in fact the only interview) I went to was at Essex University. I wasn't particularly impressed by what I saw of Essex. The first thing that put me off was the train I took there because it looked like something out of the 1980s with the faded seats and the yellow sides and as I left the train station my perceptions of Colchester/Essex University didn't really improve because in general the buildings in Colchester and the university were rather nasty modern buildings (office block type buildings, etc.). I looked at the accommodation and I just couldn't see it suiting me and during the open day I got the distinct impression that people were more focussed on the social side. However, what also put me off was the interview because they asked me really simple questions such as "Why do you support Britain's membership of the EU?" and they didn't really challenge my answers and for the first 5 minutes they were asking me of I wanted to do law combined with another subject. Apparently Essex University started doing the interviews for law this year as a result of the budget cuts but if they're asking those kind of questions then it makes me wonder what the average intelligence of people on the course is and what kind of people they're trying to root out. Nevertheless, I will say that the good things about the university are that the accommodation is very cheap, you can do courses to make yourself more employable and there are a lot of shops and banks on the campus, also the good thing about the law course is that they have a law clinic in which you help citizens around Colchester who need legal advice and they do compulsory work experience in the field of mediation.
The next university I looked at was Sussex. I was much more impressed by Sussex than Essex because they went into a lot of depth about what their law degree entailed, why they incorporated particular aspects into the law degree and they gave you a seminar in law so that you would be prepared for what was expected of you when you start a law degree. I also preferred their accommodation because a lot of it looked much nicer although admittedly the accommodation at the lower end of the scale is worse but the accommodation at the top of the scale was much better. I would say that the other advantage of Sussex is that there is more to do in Brighton (ie. the nearest city to the university) than in Colchester and you can do language courses in almost every language.
Today I looked at Exeter and I didn't find it as impressive as people often describe it as being. In a lot of ways I found Sussex more impressive because Exeter in a lot of ways seemed quite disorganised, for example during "self-catered accommodation tour", we were only shown one of the particular rooms and the person giving the tour said "You're not going to get much done in the first year" (I worry slightly that the latter might be a sign that people at Exeter might be too relaxed for their own good). I was also put off by their talk on law because unlike Sussex they didn't go into great depth about what the degree involved and they seemed a bit too focussed on the social side of the degree at that point aswell because they did a whole slide about what university was good for and how it was good for memories. On the other hand they showed us what a moot was like and they told us that Exeter was one of the top universities for mooting and Exeter also has a law clinic which allows you to apply the knowledge of law which you have learnt. And if you like sport, it's worth noting that Exeter has facilities for 170 different sports!
So at the moment I'm waiting to see if Queen Mary will make me an offer, and if they don't I'll have to decide whether I will put Exeter or Sussex down as my firm offer. If it does end up being a choice between those 2 for me it will be question of which university has the highest rate of 2:1s and 1sts for law, which university campus is cheaper to live on, which law degree is more practical, which university has the better reputation and which main city I prefer because as a girl who's grown up in the countryside, I really want to go to university in a big city where there's lots to do!
I was also rejected by Durham, most likely reason being that my LNAT score was actually worse than the first time when I did it but I'm not too bothered because I wasn't that keen on going up north and being so far away from my family, it's very cold there, it's a long way to take all your belongings and I just wasn't that keen on the university in general.
The first open day and interview (and in fact the only interview) I went to was at Essex University. I wasn't particularly impressed by what I saw of Essex. The first thing that put me off was the train I took there because it looked like something out of the 1980s with the faded seats and the yellow sides and as I left the train station my perceptions of Colchester/Essex University didn't really improve because in general the buildings in Colchester and the university were rather nasty modern buildings (office block type buildings, etc.). I looked at the accommodation and I just couldn't see it suiting me and during the open day I got the distinct impression that people were more focussed on the social side. However, what also put me off was the interview because they asked me really simple questions such as "Why do you support Britain's membership of the EU?" and they didn't really challenge my answers and for the first 5 minutes they were asking me of I wanted to do law combined with another subject. Apparently Essex University started doing the interviews for law this year as a result of the budget cuts but if they're asking those kind of questions then it makes me wonder what the average intelligence of people on the course is and what kind of people they're trying to root out. Nevertheless, I will say that the good things about the university are that the accommodation is very cheap, you can do courses to make yourself more employable and there are a lot of shops and banks on the campus, also the good thing about the law course is that they have a law clinic in which you help citizens around Colchester who need legal advice and they do compulsory work experience in the field of mediation.
The next university I looked at was Sussex. I was much more impressed by Sussex than Essex because they went into a lot of depth about what their law degree entailed, why they incorporated particular aspects into the law degree and they gave you a seminar in law so that you would be prepared for what was expected of you when you start a law degree. I also preferred their accommodation because a lot of it looked much nicer although admittedly the accommodation at the lower end of the scale is worse but the accommodation at the top of the scale was much better. I would say that the other advantage of Sussex is that there is more to do in Brighton (ie. the nearest city to the university) than in Colchester and you can do language courses in almost every language.
Today I looked at Exeter and I didn't find it as impressive as people often describe it as being. In a lot of ways I found Sussex more impressive because Exeter in a lot of ways seemed quite disorganised, for example during "self-catered accommodation tour", we were only shown one of the particular rooms and the person giving the tour said "You're not going to get much done in the first year" (I worry slightly that the latter might be a sign that people at Exeter might be too relaxed for their own good). I was also put off by their talk on law because unlike Sussex they didn't go into great depth about what the degree involved and they seemed a bit too focussed on the social side of the degree at that point aswell because they did a whole slide about what university was good for and how it was good for memories. On the other hand they showed us what a moot was like and they told us that Exeter was one of the top universities for mooting and Exeter also has a law clinic which allows you to apply the knowledge of law which you have learnt. And if you like sport, it's worth noting that Exeter has facilities for 170 different sports!
So at the moment I'm waiting to see if Queen Mary will make me an offer, and if they don't I'll have to decide whether I will put Exeter or Sussex down as my firm offer. If it does end up being a choice between those 2 for me it will be question of which university has the highest rate of 2:1s and 1sts for law, which university campus is cheaper to live on, which law degree is more practical, which university has the better reputation and which main city I prefer because as a girl who's grown up in the countryside, I really want to go to university in a big city where there's lots to do!
I was also rejected by Durham, most likely reason being that my LNAT score was actually worse than the first time when I did it but I'm not too bothered because I wasn't that keen on going up north and being so far away from my family, it's very cold there, it's a long way to take all your belongings and I just wasn't that keen on the university in general.
Saturday, 11 December 2010
My faith in politicians
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.
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.
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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