I think I shined today

I was in my element. But I'd better shine even brighter tomorrow.

It can't be that bad

Today was fun, as expected. I went to Sam's house where we watched loads of puerile/tacky/crappy TV (informercials, World's Worst Husband and Take Me Out, anyone?) before baking, icing and decorating mini chocolate sponge cakes. All in all, highly enjoyable.

It's the half term and I'm making a mental agenda for my work. So far, it is as follows:

• Finish Drama portfolio. There isn't too much of this, it's just important to go into plenty of detail wherever possible.
• Complete the first question/'mini essay' of my History coursework. As long as I do a paragraph each day it should go as planned.
• Summarise work on The Poor for History revision on one to two sides of A4. This will definitely be a useful exercise so that's not a problem.
• Have a good venture into the Statistics coursework. This is a little complicated and I think my maths teacher, great though he is, could have explained it to the class a little better. Nonetheless, he'll be checking it to make sure everything's alright, so as long as I write up my hypothesis and start some of the calculations hopefully everything will be alright.
• Sections One and Two of the Chemistry homework booklet. I really enjoy Chemistry (and everything scientific, really) so this is no problem.
• If possible, fill in as much as possible in my French and Spanish Oral Booklets. Though this can seem a little tedious, I just let it flow and write as I do in English, so it's really not as terrible as it seems and this isn't an urgent matter.
  
• If I have any spare time, maybe do a little revision. This isn't pressing at the moment, but I want to use every bit of my time wisely. A few Maths questions wouldn't go amiss, and I must admit they can be quite enjoyable, too. Perhaps some English Language and Literature practice as well.
  

It seems like a mighty pile of homework, but I think once I make a dent everything will hopefully just follow naturally.

Hershi, you'll be pleased to know...

I certainly do not plan to be an English teacher. I can't handle the ambiguity. Oh, and Welsh Board, please, I beseech you, pardon my heinous mistake of using emotive language to describe an equally emotive and imagery-laden piece. (Hopefully you'll detect the sarcasm in that last sentence)

Well, all I can say is despite my marking failure, at least I'm past the phase when I was so worried about offending anyone that I would give any piece of work near-full marks. Peer marking does not work - it simply shames and deprecates others.

Oh, and one more little thing - I don't usually ask for a consistent approach to education, but I must admit that it would be nice sometimes. Just last week, I was told to throw as much knowledge and explanation that I could muster into all answers in Science, yet in English Language my demise is constantly my excessive justification. I just like to be thorough, and I feel unable to leave anything unattended to.

The only consolation is that now I'm certain of what to do. Despite the question in question being a 'What are your impressions...?' affair, I must only focus on the physical entities for such texts and leave the emotive language in my ranting drawer.

For once, I'm actually going to write about my day...

Because it's gone surprisingly well. English was neutral, I suppose. I annotated the poem 'To A Mouse' (which is where the name of 'Of Mice And Men' came from) and then had a double lesson of Spanish, with a 20 minute break in the middle. In the break I rehearsed my Drama piece with my group which accounts for 30% of my final Drama GCSE grade.

After Spanish I had French, and for some this may seem like an overload of languages. But I love French and Spanish and want to learn many more languages. In fact, considering I have Drama last lesson, Thursday would be my perfect day if I had Biology instead of English.

Anyway, Drama, Drama, Drama, Drama. We were supposed to have had six hours of lesson time to devise the final piece and it had to be 10 minutes or less. There were some problems with attendance but fortunately we had times at lunch time and after school to practise, too. One girl didn't attend many extra sessions and was being really difficult but we just wrote her a small part and got on with it.

Having eaten nothing all day, I performed it at 2.20 pm (I was the main character, playing a woman with Munchausen by proxy who ended up causing her daughter's liver failure) and all in all it went well. I think one of the lines may have been missed out but no one noticed. I'm just happy that it's over now because it was quite stressful. At one point I actually had a nightmare that we were performing and everything went wrong so I ended up crying. I'm so glad that didn't actually happen.

Overall, it's been quite good. But this will by no means be a regular feature of my blog.