"The word is on the Street that the English paper was brutal."

Well. I meant to post this yesterday but there was a certain football game going on so I got sidetracked. The part I wrote yesterday is in blue, the rest is from today.

Okay. So here I am. Sat in front of my computer screen talking to a very dear friend who in fact managed to calm my nerves a little just by talking to me, waiting on the game to start with my English revision glaring at me from my bed. Okay, so what idiot put the final on the same eve of the Higher English exam?! Sigh. Could be worse; I could be in Manchester.

Anyway, here's the game plan: I'm going in tomorrow with The Darkness Out There, Infelice and A Streetcar Named Desire as a back up. I'd love it if TDOT came up, questions have been I've been assured its a fairish safe bet. Infelice is alright, I know it well enough to twist it to fit any question. ASCND will do as a back up, even though it wont be great. As for the Close Reading, I cant wait to get that out of the way and see how much I'm relying on the essays. I quite like Close Reading, just hoping its not a daft couple of passages...

I'd best be off., I'm 90 minutes away from making sure I'm all set. Sigh, not feeling good about this exam at all.

Hmmm. You know how when you've worked hard in an exam and then when you come out of it, you immediately forget everything that you wrote? Well I've got that going on. I cant tell whether I've done good or not.. The Close Reading went fine -despite there being a 5 marker stuck in right at the end- and the passages were actually quite good. As for the essay questions... Nightmare!

There were NO questions at all on The Darkness Out There! Thankfully, flicking frantically to the Poetry section, I found a vague question I could mould to Infelice. So without looking at the other questions I barreled into it and 7 pages later I looked at the Drama section. Only one question sounded remotely like something that would fit so I quickly started on that one.

A further Blanche DuBois style mental crisis and 7 pages later, time was up and we left the Dance studio. Funnily enough that was when I started panicking most but I soon calmed down when other said they found it as equally hard and that a few had done the same questions as me.

What I hate most about English exams? I often find that when I'm writing timed essays in class, I usually gauge on how much I have to write by a certain point of a page, ie bottom of the second page for the second factor to start. I can't do this in the exam because they give us booklets that have huge margins and equally huge lines. Its unnerving, if you get me and halfway through I've no idea where I'm supposed to be or how much I've written. Do the booklets need to be like the jotters you got in Primary One? No. It's no help.

And as for the game last night... Well done to St Petersburg.

This Week in Pictures.

Acrylics and Other Unhinged Things.

Its currently 22:47. I've just finished my Still Life final piece. I've still got an English essay to write, an art summary to write (or else I die), a physics past paper to do and I'm pretty sure there's something else but I cant think what, so please excuse the incoherency of this post but I felt like blogging. Mainly because of the lovely picture, partly because I want to rant and mostly because I'm pretty sure I'm going insane.

The past few days have been frenzied - well, frenzied for me anyway. In a fever of composition, I've spent my time staying til 5pm after school then working at home until 2am in the morning in a desperate bid to finish my art coursework. Oh yeah, Higher Art ain't all that fun folks. To top that off we got our reports out -two weeks late might I add- which I did promise I'd blog about and I will when I actually find the time to read the thing properly. I seriously want some bottled time off E-Bay. Methinks the general message of the report was that I should be okay with lots of revision and that I'm pleasant to teach. Pfft. Just don't get me started on PE...

On this feeling insane business. I've suddenly developed this thing where when I'm sitting in a class and I'm off in a wee world of my own, I suddenly stop what I'm thinking and panic because I sense that someone is reading my thoughts. It's a horrible feeling of fear. I then force myself to think of something else to throw the imaginary person off whatever I was thinking about in the first place, so I don't look suspicious. Can people read my thoughts? Is this what sleep deprivation results in? Or is this what Higher Art does to you? Who knows. If you do, forward your thoughts to the Inbox in my mind and I'll get back to you.

Possibly the Cutest Photo On This Blog.

Filler post here guys, just so you don't think I've gone and run off. Just a photograph today, I'm too tired/busy/snowed-under-with-revision to finish a cartoon I'm doing. Will post it when I can. Toodle pip for naoo.

One day, these kids will rule the world.

Scary thought, right?

Today saw the beginning of a thing we call Easter school. Every Easter from Fourth Year onwards we can give up our holidays to go in to school and catch up on work or pester teachers for exam prep. Personally, I use it to put the finishing touches on my art stuff as I'm always lagging behind this time or year. Luckily I have a great bunch of like minded friends who toddle in too, which makes it all the more fun. There really is something special about a school with barely any pupils in it. Its free and quiet and calm with no little first years running around your feet that you just want to trip up...

Its strange though, this week marks the first year I've been conscious of time. Like, the first year I've noticed go by from beginning to end, sorta like my own personal New Year. Its been a year since I hated English with a passion, a year since we were lazy fourth years, a year since I spilt permanent yellow paint on my arrow keys, a year since i last watched Night At The Museum, and year since I badly burnt my arm on a light bulb. Twice. The scars just starting to fade. Its also been a year since this photograpgh was taken. Its amazing how things change. I wonder if I'll look back on this post this time next year? Its odd to see how much I've changed over the course of this blog and it's not even been a year yet.

Looking at the photo taken today, its funny to think we're all going to grow up one day. There's potential for the worlds best Lawyer, Computer Genius, Astrophysicist, Cosplayer and teacher surrounding that tree. Perhaps come Easter School 2009, we will have taken over the world - one blog post at a time.

Sports Relief!

It was our schools Sport Relief Mile on Friday afternoon, and the best thing was we were allowed to dress up! Now, I'll let you into a not-so-secret secret, my group of friends belong in the lower, geekier side of popular. This is actually great because it gives us the drive and ability to excel in Fancy Dress competitions, so we were well prepared for Friday. Well, when I say well prepared I actually mean we had two days to find costumes and get everyone organised. I hate disorganisation.

Luckily, I had had my hair cut the weekend before hand so I had a ready made bob for my character. On the other hand, a pair of knee high orange socks were actually impossible to come by. I even went to a Mall just outside Bristol which has 131 shops in it and couldn't find a pair! I didn't go to Bristol specifically for the socks by the way, we were down in Taunton for two days to go to a family funeral. I did eventually a find a pair though- in my sock drawer, at home. Sods law, eh?

But we did it! Come Friday we paid our £1 and we half skipped, half ran our mile in our costumes. They were a success- even better as we actually made them ourselves (A big thank you to everyone who did! Guys, we were awesome!) It was a great afternoon despite all the running, mud and wind. Sports Relief was officially fun this year. What more of an incentive do you need than to be able to dress up?! I know for a fact us lot were willing to run even more, we should have got sponsorship. I hope the rest of the country have our mentalities and more schools get involved. It's a good cause.

See if you can guess who Stephen, Esme and I were from the photograph above. You should be able to, we won an Easter Egg for Best Dressed. (We look sad because James didn't turn up, I'll let you guess who he was.)

March: Bad Month.

If my memory serves me correctly, which it probably doesn't but lets just pretend it does for this blog post, I have a Careers Meeting with the school this month. Generally I fear any meetings with my teachers and parents - see this post - I'm not actually sure why, I just don't cope very well in those types of situations. Could be because my "With Family" persona has to collide with my "With Teacher" persona, which is a really bad thing as I become virtually silent. They usually go something like:

Teacher: "So, Emma.. how are you finding classes?"
Moi- "Uh...Fine.." *nervous shrug, total abandon of eye contact, nod*

Which commences the teacher/parent talk that I just listen intently to, nodding when I need to. I fear this career-themed meeting may be even worse as I don't actually know what I want to do for the rest of my life. I have a fair idea of what I don't want to do, but so far no inkling as to what I will do. I'm actually tempted to say I want to be a Private Detective Lollipop Woman...

This month also sees the delivery of our Reports with our prelim grades. Everyone hates reports, right? I imagine that teachers probably dislike writing them as much as we like reading them. I certainly don't want to this year. If they are particularly funny or in the case of a few subjects, bitchy, I will post snippets on here. So you can all laugh.

Whilst I remember, E-Reports came up in conversation the other day. Does anyone feel this would be a good idea? I think this is alright in theory but I don't know how well it would work. For pupils who knew their reports were terrible, I'd imagine the temptation of the Delete Button would be overwhelming, and also some parents don't have email addresses. However, just because I don't know how well something will work doesn't mean we shouldn't try said thing. Who knows, by the time my kids are in school I could be reading Report Blogs and Skyping Parents Nights...