Thursday, May 17, 2012

17/5/12

Somewhat ran out of revision steam now so thought it would be a good time to write my blog post!

Progress has been slow, but at leas there has been progress.  Going over exam questions and stuff and I seem to be remembering a bit more, although there is still a very long way to go!  Such progress meant I've been a bit less grumpy today, which is always good, although as the day goes on it's creeping back in!  I suspect because most of the things that are I'm spending too much time worrying about aren't things which are going to stop bothering me any time soon so I should probably get used to!

At least exams will be over soon (less than 2 weeks until the end now!), so that'll be one less thing!

Other than a general feeling of not knowing enough (which I hope will slowly be resolved in the next few days!) I'm a bit worried about these exams for 2 reasons:

1) I've mentioned it before, I'll be using a scribe for the 2 exams I have.  Assuming I get over my general thoughts of not wanting to say something stupid (need to remember that although they know chemistry stuff and there is a good chance they'll know the answer, they're there to write for me, so I really shouldn't worry what they think about my knowledge or lack thereof!); it's look increasingly likely that the first time I meet the scribe (the new one, 'cos the one I met before was a mistake...) will be in my exam on Monday afternoon so I won't have had any practice with that way of working.  In an attempt to get ready I've been trying to answer exam questions out loud, or at least consciously thinking about it rather than just writing it straight down.  It turns out it's remarkably difficult - coherent sentences are apparently a lot more difficult to construct out loud rather than when putting pen to paper.  Hopefully the ability to speak my answers in a vaguely logical manner will come to me before Monday afternoon!

2) In a greatly appreciated attempt to not disadvantage me I am apparently having my own special exam papers, I'm told that where possible the need to draw chemical structures will have been removed on the basis of it being difficult to describe them to someone else to write for me (apart from in the biosynthesis option where it'd be impossible to take it out!).  This leaves me wondering what they'll be replaced with, as with previous years most of my learning will most likely come from going over past papers, but if my questions are going to be a bit different this will be of limited use 'cos I think I'm going to need to know more than perhaps I would otherwise (even if technically when sitting the "normal" paper I probably should have learned that much...) or at least it might be slightly different things that I need to know.  Hopefully, if I can get the basics (i.e. the stuff that's been asked in previous years) sorted with enough time to spare, I'll be able to spend some time going through things a bit more thoroughly and hopefully learning some extra details!

OK, I've waffled on about that a bit more than I intended so I'll wrap it up now!

Other than a quick trip to the shops this morning (no cereal, bread or milk made breakfast a bit interesting!) I haven't been out so I've been lacking in photographic inspiration, so here's Darth Vader "helping" me learn some stuff for catalysis...

That's all folks! (you'll have to imagine the Looney Tunes theme in your head here...)

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