I’m baaaaaaaaack! It’s been a little too long since I last blogged. I apologise everyone! But I do actually have an excuse – my modem was down and these things take a ridiculous amount of time to get fixed.. I was at my wits end without the internet by the time the fix-it guy came out and sorted it! It was an awful experience altogether, however absolutely brilliant for study purposes. I never would’ve considered myself a cyberaddict, but spending a week or two without it made me realise how much of a hindrance it is to my study.  No seriously I spend time on everything – Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Tumblr, Formspring…. it’s embarrassing. *stands up* My name is Sorcha Cusack, and I have a social networking addiction. *everyone nods head in unison* I’ve come here to get help.

That aside…

Study has been going pretty well, I’m still not doing hours upon hours every night, but I’ve worked out a little routine for myself which has definitely helped get me stuck into the study mindframe. Exam papers are invaluable right now to me too… practice makes perfect I spose. I do after school study until 6ish, then come home and take a break for half an hour, then study until 10ish. Of course there’s a good few mini breaks thrown in there too, I like my comforts, and tea works a treat Every weekend I plan to get hours and hours done, but to no success. I always seem to find something to distract me! For instance I sat down to study yesterday and got about two hours done before I decided to take a brief walk. One thing led to another and it ended up being dark by the time I got home, and at least 3 hours of studying was knocked off the to-do list! Fantastic..

In other news, I’ve dropped to Pass Maths! I don’t regret it one bit. I think I subconsciously always knew that I was going to drop, but it was the whole “I’m doing all Honours” aspect that kept me hanging in there. Even in deciding to leave I acted entirely on impulse – I got a transfer form under the illusion that I was going to keep it “just in case” but as soon as I got it, something felt right about moving.. so everything just fell into place from there. FYI – Pass Maths is BEAU-tiful! I love it! I spent the past three months working so hard on maths that I was beginning to hate it, but now that I’m in Pass, it’s enjoyable! Anything that looks remotely difficult is solved by opening the log tables, case closed. Another bonus from the whole thing is that I’ve been able to pay alot more attention to my other subjects and since I’ve dropped, I’ve gained back my A average in everything and study has actually become “relaxing.” That’s something I never envisioned saying…..

Also, I’m a little curious about supervised study – does that really help people get work done? I stay in until six, but it’s not a controlled thing, it’s simply me not leaving the canteen until the cleaners kick me out. I’ve reached the stage now where I’m on first name terms with the cleaners.. could be beneficial I guess. Haven’t yet quite worked out how though :P

A la prochaine fois,

Sorcha x

Hello there,

I haven’t blogged in quite a while but to be honest there weren’t many school-related topics to write about the past few weeks. We spent nearly all of January rehearsing and staging our school musical, which was a total hit! It also meant I didn’t have a lot of classes, which was brilliant at the time, although boy was it like a smack in the face with a raw fish when we got back to work! Then we had the mid-term and now things are getting stressful. However, I know these problems are minor in the eyes of all those dealing with Mocks at the moment. Hope everyone did/does well, even though I remember after the Junior Cert ones last year I thought to myself “these really didn’t matter at all”! They’re great practice though and people really shouldn’t be trying to find out what’s going to be asked because in the actual exams, it’s all about the element of surprise! We all complained about Thierry Henry for cheating in the Ireland-France match, so if you cheat for the mocks then you’re not much better than him!

So as my blog title suggests, I moved to pass maths yesterday. I really couldn’t stick higher level any more and since I don’t need it for any courses I want, I decided to cut the stress (or at least some of it) by moving down to ordinary level. Now I don’t dread trudging up to maths because ordinary level is very manageable for me. The thing is, they’ve actually gone past the sections we did in higher level so I’m behind at pass maths- oh the irony! You can’t blame me for thinking it was going to be easier, seeing as in Texts and Tests 3 for the differentiation equation they tell you how to pronounce it- ‘dee y, dee x’. Thank you maths book for giving me that pointless bit of information that’d only be handy if there was a Maths Oral! Imagine…

The only thing that really has me burdened at the moment is History. We’re starting work on our research topics already and after changing the topic a few times, I finally settled on my project title. By Friday we have to have roughly 20 pages of handwritten notes about our project from our sources, along with an essay. It’s Wednesday evening and I haven’t even started to read my sources.

I’m screwed.