The English Student: ...and the train kept a-rollin'

It's a funny thing, when I was at school (the first time, that is) English was actually my favourite subject. It was easy, poetry, writing, analysis, speaking, it all came so naturally. Fast forward 5 years and the tables could not be anymore turned without tunneling into higher-dimensional space. A fresh start coupled with a new found respect has seen mathematics rapidly and without contest ascend into the position of my favourite subject, while my love of English (only the subject, not the language) has withered over the course of the last 4 months. But, I am still an English student, so I feel compelled to find something to talk about on the subject.

So, on Monday night, the maths student, lucky bugger that he is, was enjoying calculations and demonstrations while deliberatin' and a-conjugatin' the emancipation proclamation (South Park reference, don't ask me why, I don't even watch the show) in preparation as our train keeps a-thunderin' inevitably on towards examination station on Monday. In that same spirit, last night our class was doing some last minute preparation for our English exam, also on Monday. The general format of the exam is essentially the following. Question 1 asks one to elucidate the meaning of certain phrases that are proliferated throughout the passage that we have been given to analyze. Nothing too difficult, although it did lead to something of a comedic moment when my friend Katrina and I translated "generally considered to die" to "widely believed to expire". Replacing words with their direct synonyms is probably not an unsound strategy, although I have no difficulty imagining an examiner having a particularly bad day would dock a few marks for it as their is an undercurrent of tongue-in-cheek to the answer. Safest practice if one is truly lost is to try and grasp the context the words are spoken in, target the words that you do know the meaning of and make an educated assessment on the balance of probability regarding the meaning of the rest of the words. Also this has already been stressed by our tutor Rodney, but I would hope it is fairly obvious not to use words already found in the phrase, other perhaps than conjunctives ("and, but, of, because, so, is" for example). So far so obvious.

Question 2 allows a little more freedom, in the case of the practice paper we were given, we were told to outline the three principle findings of the passage. Not too much time spent on any of them, just an outline and a little exposition, not too much, no need to go overboard, but it is a chance to demonstrate some flair, I would take it, partly to show off and partly for the sake of my own sanity that has been locked in mortal combat with the rigid structure of the subject as a whole.

Question 3 seems to be the one that trips a lot of people up. Essentially we are given a part of the passage and asked to boil the information down to it's most important, concise points and present it as a condensed summery, in the case of last night it was a 45 word summery for a passage lasting a few hundred words. This is where having an expansive vocabulary can be very useful, being able to condense a phrase down to a word or two is an invaluable asset for this, but it's not essentially that you be a walking thesaurus. Patience is key, take the time to plan the summery out, make a few rough drafts, be careful with how you use your language. One thing that was working really well for me was to strip the passage down to it's absolute bare essentials, to as few words as possible and then add bits of information in, rather than trying to take bits out after finding it was too long. If you can't, you can't, but if you can, then as I say, I found it helpful. One thing I can say for definite is that summaries are not as difficult as you think they are, just be careful with your language and don't be afraid to make rough drafts and tweak it until you're happy.

Question 4 is where the fun really begins, because this is the essay question. Usually, as was the case last night, the question posed is pretty vague and gives you a wide scope of material and arguments to work with. Last night it was "Does a longer life lead to happiness?". A question like that is money, there is so much you can do with it, there are so many arguments for and against, points to follow up on, analysis to be given, observations to be made, that you could very easily go on for a good 5-6 pages and only scratch the surface. As it is, 2 pages is probably as far as you should go, maybe 2 and a half, so it's important to be concise, but at the same time, for the sake of the quality of your work, and for the sake of your own sanity, try as far as possible to enjoy it, really try and get inside the mindset of the question, and of the sides arguing for and against it, and if you can't enjoy the question it's self, try, as with question 2, to at least enjoy the freedom that an essay format can give you to put your own stamp on your work, to imbue it with your own character and flair in a way you really couldn't when faced with the rigidity of questions 1 and 3.

So, we have passed our last stop, the exams are on the horizon and inching closer all the time. 0930 at examination station. Until then, I've been the English student, and wherefore (as in "wherefore art thou Romeo") does not mean where, it means why.

The Maths Student: 09:30 Train to Examination Station

Note to self: devote more time to coming up with wittier blog titles.

Anyway, for the indubitably vast, global audience that no doubt hangs on my every written syllable, I started an access course in September, and I thought it might be fun to pepper my blog with a more personal flavour, in addition to it's usual programming. Incidentally, Google chrome is informing me that I have spelled flavour wrong. Well you listen to me Google chrome, this is Britain! You hear me? Britain! You're not allowed to tell me something is spelled wrong just because it doesn't match up to your warped defilement of the majesty that is the English language. We only invented the bloody thing! Damn Americans.

Um... yeah, studying and stuff

For those who don't know, an access course is aimed primarily though by no means exclusively at people who, for whatever reason, don't have the necessary academic qualifications to get into university, or perhaps do, but not for the subject of their preference. In my case, I dropped out of school at the age of 17, four years ago next month as a matter of fact. After a few years in the wilderness, I decided I wanted to study theoretical physics, which has led me to this course, which will lead me to doing A-levels upon it's completion in 18 months, which will, all being well, lead to university in 2017. Now, background information, or to needlessly use some film terminology, establishing shot out of the way, let's actually look at the course it's self

Essentially, I and my classmates will be studying English and Maths at essentially GCSE level, in addition to the three major sciences at GCSE level in year one and AS level in year two, AS level for those who don't know being essentially the first year of a two year A-level course. In our first four months, we've looked at osmosis and basic anatomy in biology, the period table, salts, and fractional distillation in chemistry, and random and systematic errors, Hooke's law, and electrical resistance in physics. (Incidentally, as a heads up, I am very much in favour of Oxford commas) However, English and Maths are currently the more pertinent to discuss, as it is these two that we face exams for this coming Monday. Last night, Monday night that is, we had what was largely a review session of essentially everything we had covered in maths up to this point. Nothing too drastic in the grand scheme of things, the maths on the course being GCSE equivalent meaning that we faced nothing that had not been previously encountered. The few months we've spent doing maths has more or less been a refresher course, everything from shapes, angles, perimeter, area and volume to probability, averages, graphs, long multiplication and division, and multiplying and dividing by decimals and fractions. It's nothing new, but it has been 4 years since I was doing GCSE maths, and even longer for others. The information not being fresh coupled with the workload it's self being quite densely packed has resulted in the course, even doing it part time, being more intense than one might think for GCSE level, quite a few people in the class already having dropped out, our numbers having dwindled from 19 in September to 12 at present.

Tomorrow night brings English, the last stop on our journey before pulling into examination station on Monday. Ideally, I'll be doing a fairly broad review of English tomorrow night, and looking in more depth at each individual lesson in future, but with last night's and tomorrow night's classes largely being review sessions, it's not really feasible to cover everything we've done in four months in one blog. Still, promising beginnings, or so I feel. Until then, I've been the maths student, and I can confirm that two plus two does, in fact, equal four.