Articles tagged personal/sixth form

I am pleased to announce completing my A-level courses with A grades (top) in every subject and a distinction in my Advanced Extension Award in mathematics. This was surprising because my expectation was grades ABB in mathematics, further mathematics and physics respectively and a merit in the AEA paper. I really appreciated the highest-achieving girl in the school saying, even though she achieved higher cumulative scores in every subject except the AEA (which she didn’t do), that I have the most potential if I worked the same amount as other people — this was kind but she definitely deserves more credit than she gives herself. The girls outperformed boys again across the board as I expected, however I am very pleased that I am not representative of my sex.

The most exciting result of these new qualifications is the sheer amount of possibilities that are now open to me: I can apply successfully for almost any university, what a confidence boost! The special paper in mathematics will look good on my profile and formal curriculum vitae, showing that I can solve unusual, difficult problems effectively. These qualifications will make my applications for computer-related jobs more noticeable and concrete — I will try and upload a new version of my c.v. and update my qualifications page later.

I must admit that all the attention from other pupils and teachers made me feel a little uneasy: I always have the need to congratulate other people and even went so far as to ask teachers about any developments in their lives to take the attention away from myself. Respect and recognition of my achievements is really appreciated but that was far too much, all at once. I hope all of my friends did really well and achieve their targets.

Surprisingly I managed to ace my January exams: luckily the concerns raised in my journal entry from late-January were completely inconsequential. Apparently everyone who took the further mathematics (FP1) exam found it difficult and my marks were substantially upgraded. Instead of the grade C I expected I managed to achieve a healthy grade A (93 %). In decision mathematics (D1) I also achieved a grade A albeit with a lower 81 % score; I expect the marks in decision mathematics were not scaled at all as it was quite an easy exam (which I didn’t work for). Overall I’m definitely pleased with the results and have decided not to retake any of the exams in the summer.

I am behind in all of my subjects at the moment and really feeling the strain. My work is increasing in difficulty and, while I can cope with this intellectually, I have not been able to commit the required time to study. Falling behind is awful as it increases stress, usually stopping progress with the current work. I am disappointed in myself at the moment — especially after failing (probably not an A) my January exams I took recently. Other people in my class seem to be coping fine; I wish that I had their commitment and confidence. I used to be the best in all my subjects yet I am struggling to keep up at the moment. Finishing my mechanics class/home assignments before anyone else gave me some confidence back and hopefully things will improve — they seriously have to as another mistake this year could ruin the rest of my life.

I have just — literally five-minutes ago — managed completely fail my January examinations. This is because of a lack of motivation, dedication to studies and partly due to luck. I have been having a lot of trouble in my personal life lately and I got to sleep past 1:00 am before both of my examinations.

I felt so stupid when I couldn't figure out how to do a question and before I knew it time had ticked away and the end of the exam was approaching. I can figure out any question in an unlimited amount of time but within the one-hour thirty-minute time limit I couldn't do a lot of the questions. Luckily I decided to skip some and go on to the parts that I could complete successfully. I am very disappointed with my performance and absolutely have to make it up in the summer.

Further mathematics is certainly not an easy examination and getting an A grade is very important for my university hopes. My lowest offer is Bristol, at ABB, and unfortunately after that performance I am not as hopeful as I was. Before the exam getting an A in further maths seemed easy; now I feel insecure about my abilities and worried about my future.

Every question in the text-book is easy for me but that timed exam went appallingly. I was angry and upset throughout the duration totally preventing me from concentrating; this became recursive and I lost it completely about half-way through. I have to do a lot better in the summer otherwise my whole future is completely ruined.

I have been extremely busy lately trying to revise for my further mathematics exam this Friday. I understand all the concepts completely however tackling some of the exam questions prove far more difficult. Before any kind of exam on any topic going through past papers is imperitive as the majority of question-types are reused for future exams; the steps you have to take to solve the question are standard and have to be learned by working through past papers. This is why using the answers for past papers is foolish — only the method matters and people have to figure that out themselves. I wish I could concentrate on my exams instead of wasting time working on side-projects; I know they are important yet I still neglect revision until the last minute.

Engaging distractions instead of revising is intuitive to me. Recently I made a C application designed to approximate roots of a supplied real function with the intention of revising linear interpolation; of course this is not as useful as real revision but at least it is topical. I am going to upload the sources to my creation library whenever I have the time to update the creation database. My graph generator is going to have a number of improvements to its fundamental design to improve the appearance of asymptotes however that is on hold at the moment — as it would take a lot of thought away from my exams.

Recently I have taken quite a shine to writing tutorials and documents about mathematical or scientific topics — including calculus, mechanics and statistics. I would really like to do this later in life as it feels fulfilling when you know your work is used and respected. These will also be uploaded whenever possible to increase the amount of content I have online. Now back to revising; I am planning to post more often and increasingly interesting articles to this journal in future so return soon for some hopefully useful content.