Bring it on!!

Can’t believe it’s almost the end of the school year!

Only three and a half days left and I can’t wait for the summer!!

I also can’t believe how quickly year 12 has flown by, it seems like only a week ago we were choosing what we wanted to do for the next two years and getting our GCSE’s results. It seems so unreal! The arrival of the summer also means that we’re getting closer to our bit holiday to Sweden XD and after that is the AS level exam results XD absolutely terrified. I hope I’ve done well.

Sooooooo…

Bring on the summer!

‘Old chemists never die, they just stop reacting’ XD

It was well cool on Wednesday because our chemistry class got the opportunity to take the day off school and go to Newcastle University for a day of chemistry! Woo!

It was really good actually, even though I’m not a chemistry fanatic, I still found it quite interesting.
In the lectures, we we’re reminded of the ways chemists identify substances (IR and spectroscopy for example) and well as taught vaguely about NMR, which we will need to know about for next year. So that was quite helpful, as normally, the lectures that you attend at university either don’t really apply to what you need to know now or in the near future, or don’t apply at all. So it was incredibly useful to get a bit of a head start. After this we got the opportunity to put it into practice in a tutorial session.

Another lecture that was presented, identified the ways in which a degree in chemistry could lead you to bigger and better things in the future. This was also quite interesting as, even though chemistry is not my preferred choice of degree, I never knew what could actually be done with a chemistry degree. Even though, if you think about it, of course there’s going to be a lot of job opportunities for them, just no one ever thinks about the people behind the scenes of safe paint making and other such things.

What was also good about this was that we also got the opportunity to test out the fancy fancy lab equipment when we performed an undergraduate practical . So we got to use concentrated acid (woop!), working fume cupboards (woop!), and lot’s of other equipment that we wouldn’t have had the chance to use in school, as well as the techniques to actually use them properly.

So we made an ester by adding a carboxylic acid to an alcohol, in the presence of a concentrated acid (I think it was sulphuric) and purified it via adding an ether and shaking it a bit (can’t remember the technical word for it) and distilling it off. At the end we got to print of an actual IR of the ester we made ourselves! So that was quite fun.

During the whole process of making it, a pear-y solvent-y smell started to creep up on everyone, and it made it just a little harder to think. So a word of advice to finish: don’t try and sniff it.

Countdown!

In about a week and five days, I am going on a very exciting adventure.

It may seem like a little holiday, but 40 of us from Northumberland have been saving our little pennies since January of 2010 because we’re going to SWEDEN!!! YEY!!

It’s been so long, and took so much hard work that I can’t actually believe it’s nearly here! After countless bag pack’s (thank you to all who donated) and race nights and card selling and band gig’s, it’s all paid off!
As well as going to Sweden for the main event, we’re also stopping off at Copenhagen on the way for a MAHOOSIVE party in a MAHOOSIVE warehouse somewhere on the edge on the city and Home Hospitality for a week in the Czech Republic where we’ll be either staying with a family (in pairs) or in a scout hut.

Either way, everything going on while we’re away will be a once in a lifetime experience and I intend to savour it to the best of my ability. I think I’m very lucky to have this opportunity as well as to be able to spend it with two of the most important people in my life.

I can’t actually wait!

Just to leave you with an extract from my diary; written on the 19th Jan 2010:

Poo-ta da pasta into-da pan-a!

What is it that makes an accent appealing?

I thinking about this the other day right, when my dad was trying to teach me how to speak with an Italian accent (it didn’t work by the way). And it got me thinking about which accents people prefer to listen to, and for what reasons.

Thinking of accents also reminded me of a question I found floating around on Bookface a few weeks ago and it asked “What is the most attractive accent on the opposite sex?” I can’t remember the results from that particular question, but it got me wondering: do men and women prefer different accents?

Does it even matter to some people?

Is it the actual accent itself that’s seen as attractive? Or the society in which the accent originates from or even the preconceptions people have about that society?

I might have to research this

Just a little bit of book cruelty going on here, no worries!

Anyone else noticed how cruelly psychology is treated at the local library?

Probably not, but I have.

Yes, I am that sad. Just accept it.

Because the thing is, is that I can’t take it as a lesson so I have to read about it on the net (which is quite unreliable if you don’t know what to look for) or in a book. So, I went down there yesterday to have a little look-see and found that it had to share it’s shelves with IT help books. Reason number one for why I was not impressed.

Reason number two was that there were quite a few philosophical and religious books that had smuggled their way in too. When their own shelf was right next to it! They aren’t really ‘psychology’ are they? Some could class these two as similar, but philosophy is not the same as psychology! They are not the same subject!! So why are they on the same bloody shelf!!!

And of the few left, most were self help books so I was left to sift through these to find the decent ones. I think I managed to nab one that looked useful and wasn’t a whacking great big textbook.

Yey!

Just can’t wait to get on the road again!

So what do people normally do to occupy themselves during long journeys in the car?

Many different people have different methods, I suppose..

There’s my mam for one, who doesn’t do anything. At all. It’s really quite strange to me because she’s not even talking to keep herself occupied for the however many hours it takes to travel to our destination. How does she cope?? I just don’t get it.

I also don’t get how my dad can drive for so long either. Say we’re going on a four hour trip down south, we only have one or two stops along the way. What I want to know is, how does he maintain his concentration for so long? I don’t think I could do that, especially without music on in the background.

And then I’ve got a friend who likes to sleep journeys away. As soon as the bus (it’s always normally a bus, or a mini bus) gets going, she just pops her earphones in, rests her head on the window (and occasionally my shoulder) and falls asleep. Like, properly dead asleep. Every. Single. Time. It’s a rarity if she stays awake.

Myself, I don’t normally go to sleep on journey’s there, however I do sometimes have a little nap on the way back, depending on how tired the trip has made me. My normal method of occupation is music. I stick them earphones in and you won’t hear from me for a good two hours down the road. After that’s become uninteresting, dad is normally asked to turn the music in the car up so that I can try to arrange a sing-a-long of sorts that ends when my brother starts to complain about the noise.

I just think it’s quite interesting how different people cope with boredom. What factors of a persons personality effects what activities they do to keep them occupied? Would having an extrovert personality mean that they needed more stimulation, or less?

Just a thought

Teacher training my arse!!

So, yeah. School decided that they were going to give us the day off to complete some incredibly important 'teacher training' stuff at school.

Excuse me, but if you'd seen and heard the amount of bloody racket coming from them right now, you'd be well shocked too!

How do I know this? Because my sun room looks onto this patch of grass located directly next to my schools staff room and I can see with my own two working eyes, school staff having a game of balls (or whatever its called - old men like to play it.)

But I'm not complaining about the day off ;)

Ja x

All in fair in health and social care

The subject of Health and Social Care is a much more interesting subject than most people give it credit for. Especially when taken as a double lesson. So that means not one lot of H&S lesson, but twice as much :) which is fine by me.

After never taking it at GCSE, I didn't really know what to expect as it doesn't really focus on a specific area of work, like Maths or French does. It incorporates quite a few areas of health in general. For example, some of the units we took this year included nutrition and dietetics, which was hugely insightful in terms of what is actually IN our food because, speaking from my point of view, I never really think about what is in the food I eat, as long as it's tasty. :D

Another thing I quite like about health and social care is that it blends into other subjects, like biology and psychology. Biology through the biological molecules mentioned in the unit above, as well as with a unit involving Common Diseases and Disorders and Psychology through a unit called Child Development. This is appealing to me as Psychology wasn't offered at A level, and I will grab at any information I can about it.

I am also looking forward to one of next years topics, which I think we'll be starting in January and it's called the factors and Theories of Human Development. So this should hopefully continue from where Child Development ended. I know it sounds sad, but I genuinely can't wait :D

Ja x

Darn those cute little Beavers

For the past year, maybe year and a half I've been helping out at the Beaver's, with Scouts.
So this includes, mainly boys and a few girls aged between their late 5's up to 8. At first I thought they were so adorable! And I still do really. It's just that, once you get over the cuteness, and after never worked with children before, you start to notice the differences between you and them. For example, the fact that no matter how many times you ask them, they will never sit still, or how if you are lax in their attention only for a moment, their attention will be occupied elsewhere. These differences are not so huge that you can't have a conversation with them, as the things they pop out with are sometimes surprising and occasionally quite brilliant.

Working with children and having the huge responsibility to keep them occupied is more of a difficult task than first imagined, becuase you can't make the activities too difficult or complicated. What may not seem so difficult to you may be hard to understand to them. So every thing needs to be explianed simply and clearly in a way that they understand. This doesn't mean dumbing down words as if they were toddlers, it means simplifying concepts and completing an activity step by step so that those who find learning difficult, are able to still keep up and not feel discouraged.

The insights gathered through working with children of all ages are quite amazing, the transitions of the way children behave and develop as they grow through each section of scouts are incredibly fascinating.
As well as providing me with first hand experience in the development of children, this work has allowed me a, what I feel is a, greater boost at school. In both coursework and exam units in Health and Social Care.

Which I'll talk about later

Ja x

And this is only the beginning!

Well for a first time attempt, this seems to be going well.. Layout is somewhat sorted and I shall be having a twiddled with the buttons later tonight.

Anyway, this blog was created in the hope that I could document most of the experiences that will be appearing throughout my life in the coming years and how they've shaped me into the person I am or will be in the future. 'Twill mostly be a combination of my own opinions and stories that I feel like telling to the strangers that happen across this.. whatever it is.

The content of which will be whatever I want it to be, which is a freedom I've never really experienced before. So this should be enjoyable :D

More shall be coming soon, but I hope this was a good enough introduction.