Let's Do A Recap

Soo my lovely bloggers, I know it’s been a while since I last posted and I’m sorry about that but it’s just been a mad few months. I’ve been home for Christmas, had two interviews in order to try and gain a place on a PGCE course so that I can gain my teaching qualification, I have handed in my research proposals and ethics forms in so that I can complete my two research projects, I have gained approval to start collecting my data, I have had training for cheer as well as attending an open adults gymnastics class in order to improve my tumbling and I had a small accident whilst I was at home *hides head away in shame*

I guess I should start with the accident really shouldn’t I? I will first of all say that I am safe, there was no physical damage to myself or the driver of the other car… just to my baby Pablo (the name of my car) and the other car and the persons garden wall. I was going to collect my boyfriend so that we could go on a date and whilst I was driving round the road, I checked in my mirrors to make sure I was safe to go round a parked car, by the time I looked forward the car in front of me had come to a complete stop in order to pull into their driveway. I attempted to break however there just wasn’t enough room for me to break before I went into the back of them and pushed them into their garden wall. Now thankful there was some nice people in the car behind me as they pulled over to make sure I was ok, as well as making sure the other driver was ok. So seeing how that was my first ever car accident, I went in to complete shock and was completely hysterical, I was just sobbing, my mum and dad were called, and once they arrived, my mum called my boyfriend. However due to the fact I was completely hysterical someone called for an ambulance.

Once the ambulance arrived, I was taken inside by one paramedic whilst the other paramedic saw to the other driver. Due to the fact I was in shock, my heart rate and blood pressure where through the roof, but I must say, paramedics don’t receive as much recognition as they deserve, not only did they do their jobs, but they were able to calm me down whilst having a laugh, they made me laugh in order to stop me crying (this worked well until the police officer entered the ambulance at which I started crying again). However, everybody was happy with what happened, the police said that it looked like what it was, a simple accident and there was nothing that needed to be looked at further.

Now before I make this a completely depressing blog post, I will move on to happier times. Whilst I was supposed to return to Liverpool on the 10^th January, I ended up having to spend an extra week at home due to being offered an interview at York St. John University in York for my PGCE on the 15^th January; so rather than travelling back to Liverpool to have one day of lessons to have to come back home to attend my interview it was more cost efficient for me to stay at home.

I had to be at York for 8am, which meant leaving Middlesbrough just after 6am in order to avoid getting stuck in the morning traffic. I arrived in York just after quarter past 7. My interview included being put in a small group where we were given an educational issue we may face as teacher and asked how we would solve the issue, I then had to do a 8 minute presentation on anything I want (this was horrible) so I did it on the history of cheerleading; where I explained where cheerleading started and how it has spread to what it is now... did you know there is over 60’000 cheerleaders in the UK? Any way moving on, once I had finished my presentation, I then had to complete a document on I felt my presentation went and if I could have done anything better. I also had to have a one-to-one interview where I had to discuss a paper which I was asked to read and answer questions. Overall, my interview took about 5 hours. I left York St. John’s campus about half 1 and received an email at about quarter to 4 telling me that they wished to offer me a conditional offer on their PGCE programme. This is based on me getting a 2.1 in my degree, passing an English and Maths test which the government requires me to take, that I pass a DBR which ensures that I am legally save to work with children, that I pass a medical and that my GCSE and A-Level qualifications are legitimate.

Erm, I don’t know if there is anything I need to tell you that happened over Christmas, I worked every day the first week I went home including Christmas day (which wasn’t to bad), spent time with family, friends and most of all had a lovely Christmas!!! So I think that is about everything.

Until Next Time!! X 

It's Getting To That Time Again

So hello my lovely bloggers how are we all this lovely evening, morning, afternoon, night... whatever time it is for you, how are we all?? So as you all know it’s getting closer to Christmas and if you have been following my blog since the start you will know that Christmas is my favourite time of the year. It is when I am happiest, I love the snow, the Christmas spirit and just all things Christmas-y. 

So in the last few weeks it’s been a bit of a busy start. I recently had to apply for my PGCE which stands for "postgraduate Certificate of Education" which is what will basically give me my Qualified Teachers Status (QTS) and will allow me to become a teacher. I applied to 3 universities as that is all I was allowed to apply to. I applied to Liverpool Hope, where I am already studying, York St. Johns University and University of Hull. I was however unsuccessful at getting into Liverpool Hope which to be honest although I am currently studying here I'm not upset by it. when I first started applying to university back into 2013 I applied to the same universities that I have applied to do my PGCE at so Hope, York St. Johns and Hull and I had set my heart on going to York St. Johns however I didn't get in and I sat and cried, so because of that I learnt my lesson and this time I didn't set my heart on going to a single Uni. As long as I get to do my PGCE I'll be happy no matter where I do it. So anyway like I said I didn't get into Hope, I have been given an interview at Hull on the 25th November however I was already going home on the 20^th for the weekend so rather than coming back on the 23^rd like I should have I won’t be coming back until the 26^th. I received and email of York this morning saying my application is being processed however I need to try and arrange a placement as part of the entry requirement for York is that I have a minimum of 10 days placement in a primary school with in the last 12 months which I don’t have.

Anyway, along with my PGCE application I have been doing coursework and research project planning and proposals and ethics forms and trying to get in contact with school as for my education research project I need the participation of school children. So I’m a little inundated with things to say the least. For my English Language research project I am looking at the way female child killers are looked at the in the media and all I can say is I hope the university doesn’t check my internet history otherwise I will have a lot of explaining to do although it is really interesting! For my Education research project I am looking at Piaget’s conversation theory which basically looks at the way children think which is why I need children participants. I think I have mentioned in a previous post I cannot stand Piaget however I have been doing work on him for the last 5 years, I can tell you enough about him to hopefully do a good research project.

So before this become a big rant on the amount of coursework I am having to do we will move onto the topic of Christmas. So I will be going home on the 19^th of December and spending 3 weeks at home as I have done for the last 2 years. I will be working at both the garden centre and the pub as well. When I go back I will be thrown straight into it as we will be having breakfast and dinner with Santa at the garden centre like we did last year (I got to dress like an elf!! It was fun)

I’ll tell you a story about one of the dinners with Santa that I had. I was dressed like an elf and we had all the children lined up to see Santa and to tell him what they wanted for Christmas and one little girl looked at me and went “it’s not the real Santa is it?” and I looked at her, she was only about 6 years old, now in my opinion that is too young for the magic of Christmas to be gone so I bent down to her level and said “it is, that’s the real Santa” so she looked at me and I could tell her mum was looking at me too, the little girl then said “it’s not, it’s not the real Santa” well I didn’t know what to do so I just went with what came out of my mouth which was “it is the real Santa, what he does in the few weeks before Christmas he goes round asking children what they want so that he can go back to the north pole and double check against the letters you have sent him. After here he will go somewhere else and double check with more children to make sure he gets all your present right” well I have never seen such amazement in a child face and as I stood up her mother smiled at me in a way which said thank you.

I love the fact that we do breakfast and dinner with Santa because you get to see how excited the children are at the prospect of seeing Santa however they are only excited as long as they are at a safe distance. One countless occasions I have seen children be so excited to see Santa up until the point where they are stood in line to actually meet him… that is normally when they start crying but then the second they get to see him they stop and start talking to him.

Now, I am going to have to leave it there, I have a 1000 word commentary to write on a questionnaire and what will be depressing on that is I have easily wrote over 1000 words to talk to you lovely lot however it is not going to be that easy for my coursework.

Until next time!!

X

Knit One Purl One

I know, I know, I know, it’s been a few months since my last post and I'm sorry about that but things just went a little crazy for a while, I had to start packing to come back to uni as well as working two jobs and finding time to see my friends and my boyfriend.

Anyway, I am now back at uni and in my 3^rd year which means in less than 8 months’ time I will have graduated from university!! Which let me tell you is a bloody terrifying thought!! But do you what is even more terrifying than the thought of graduating… two words “research project”. 4000 words of pure hell and guess what? I have to produce two. One for English and one for Education added to that my final deadline is Friday 13th… yep you read that right, FRIDAY 13^TH. The one date in the Georgian calendar that if anything goes wrong on this date regarding my research projects no matter how big or how small it will make me go certifiably insane. Anyway, moving away from that subject, I am currently curled up in bed surrounded by a load of pillows and looking for something to watch on Netflix because I am full of cold and feel as though I have been hit by a freight train… in other words I feel rough.

So I know the title of this post is a strange one and a few of you lovely readers might already know what I am going to be talking about but for those of you who don’t know the title refers to knitting. Now I know I did a previous post on my hobbies and if I remember correctly I didn't include knitting on it. I first got taught how to knit by my grandma when I was about 5 or 6 years old and to this day I can still remember how she taught me how to knit “in, over, through and off”. Sometimes I find that this still goes through my head when I’m knitting even though I don’t need it to but any knitter will tell you, you’ll never forget who taught you how to knit or how they taught you. 

Admittedly I am not the fasted knitter in the world, it’s taken me over 3 year to knit a scarf and to tell you the truth, I still haven’t finished it… I kind of gave up on it and decided I was going to make a knitted patchwork blanket at the beginning of summer (4 months ago). Unfortunately I wasn't able to bring all my wool to uni with me, I have a big box under my bed which is nearly completely full of wool.

Now I am actually getting somewhere with my blanket. I read online that for a decent sized blanket id need about 60 squares, I currently have 17 knitted and am currently working on my 18^th square but I have recently just discovered the wonder that is John Lewis’ haberdashery which let me tell you was a big big mistake… all the wool and different types was a field day but the prices of some of the wool… it would have made me cry buying it. 

So of course I bought some wool… but let me tell you as soft and colourful as the wool is, it’s a nightmare to knit with. I have never knitted with such difficult wool in my life because it is so soft it feels like I'm knitting with thin air. But the end result was lovely, all the mixture in colours and the pattern will be different every time I use it to knit with because of the colour layout.

I know this isn't a very long or possibly interesting blog post but I thought it would be better than nothing, I will try and give you something a little more interesting the next time I upload which I will try and do in the next week.

Until next time! X 

Celebrations!!

So hello my wonderful readers, I know this is a little late however things have been all over the place recently, I am now currently working two jobs due to the fact my contract with the garden centre has been limited to 1 day a week and to be honest, 6 hours at £5.13 an hour is not enough to save on. Anyway. Last week was a big week for me; on the Tuesday it was my birthday and then on Wednesday it was results day. This may be a little bit of a pointless post and you don’t have to read it if you wish that is perfectly fine by me.

So like I said last week was my birthday, I was born on June 30^th 1995, so that would now make me 20 years old. So for my birthday I went for a meal with my family and then on the following Sunday I spent time with my friends where we played board games and ordered Chinese. We had a good laugh and it was nice to spend time with my girlies.

Now whilst I was looking forward to my birthday, I was not looking forward to the day that followed. Those of you who have been reading my blog from the start, you will be aware of the fact that my uni screwed up my exam and the fact that I don’t deal well with exam stress which resulted in me have a small breakdown a week before my exams. Anyway because of that I was not looking forward to results day due to being convinced I was failing. On the morning I received an email at 8am which tells me whether I had passed or failed.

I really didn’t want to open this email and I was seriously contemplating just ignoring it, or having my boyfriend open it when I was with him later on or even forwarding it to my best friend for her to open it... As you can tell I really didn't want to open this email. Now there was the part of me which really wanted to get it over with and open the email and find out but then part of me wanted to just ignore it as if it did not exist…. The part that wanted to get it over with won and opening the email was the first thing that I did when I woke up.

The good news is that I PASSED!! I PASSED!! I PASSED!! I passed my second year with a 2.2 in both education studied and English language and I’m allowed to go onto my 3^rd year which means that I am hopefully going to graduate next year! However at the same time whilst I am happy that I passed it is also a very scary thought that next year I will hopefully have graduated uni and that the past 3 years of my life have flown by. But before I get it to all that I will leave it there, I know this is a bit of a pointless post and I apologise for that but it was just a little something to fill in the time. 

Until next time!!

X

Growing Up

Hello, hello, hello my lovely bloggers, so I know I said I was going to be more frequent with my blog posts however this month has been a little hectic for me... Not only did I find out that I could be losing my job or my hours could be cut down... I'm only on 6 hours a week... Its pathetic really isn't it, but added to that I have my mum's birthday, my brother's birthday, my brother's prom, father's day, my granddad's birthday and then finally my birthday... It's a busy month trust me.

Anyway this month started off with me finding out that my hours could be cut or I could be losing my job so I have been looking for another job which I was lucky enough to find, so as well as keeping the one I have so I basically have 2 jobs at the moment. So whilst I am still at the garden centre I am now also working in a pub as a waitress/barmaid... I'm still getting the hang of it as its new to me, I've only ever worked in cafes. 

Anyway before I get too lost in the angry rant which will appear if I carry on talking about the garden centre we will go on to birthdays! Now as I stated within the 4 weeks which build up and make the month of June my family deals with a load of birthdays and I do mean A LOAD. To start off with at the beginning of the month I have my mum's birthday, 11 days later we celebrate my brother's birthday, 9 days after that we celebrate my granddad's birthday and then 6 days later we celebrate my birthday... Now as well as this we also have various family members and family friends and children of family friends... I think I worked it out once there was about 10-13 birthdays in the month of June which my family had to deal with. 

However this year, as well as all the birthdays we also had my brother's prom, now I know this is very well known in America and in recent years has been introduced into the United Kingdom... I'm not quite sure when it was introduced but I know that it has been more than 4 years as I had my own prom back in 2011... Wow that makes me feel old... Anyway for those of you who don't know what prom is, it's basically a bit fancy dance where people wear suits and pretty dresses and hire limos, or whatever transport they wish and it is held in a venue which is booked by the school, and there is music, food, dancing, awards and yeah, its basically a big celebration to the end of secondary school (high school?) 

My brother went in a navy suit with a waist coat, with a white shirt, brown shoes, blue tie and a matching pocket hanky and he didn't look so little anymore. However this got me and Abby talking... Abby and myself have been best friends for nearly 10 years, this in itself seems like a long time, nevertheless it made us have the realisation that when we became friends my brother was about 7/8 years old and Abby's youngest sister was about 4/5 years, considering my brother recently celebrated his 16th puts those 10 years into an even more realistic realisation. There's a saying which says "if you have been friend for 7 years you have found a true friend" or something along those lines... Which is true because if a friendship last for 7 years then surely it must be able to survive whatever is thrown at it. 

Anyway before I get to soppy I will move on, currently Abby and myself are sat with our boyfriend' watching some films and eating munchies... As you may have figured out from my posts, Abby and myself are a few plates short of a picnic basket and our boyfriends are very aware of this, so we are going to show them just how crazy we are by showing them "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and singing along to it... as what is more crazy than a transvestite scientist who creates a perfect looking creature with the help of martians? Maybe? I don't really know what magenta and Riff Raff are... Anyway we'll leave it there for now!

Until Next time! :) 

X

Eurovision Song Contest!

Hello again my wonderful bloggers, I know I have already posted tonight but seeing how last night was the 60^th European Song Contest I couldn’t not put a blog up about it seeing how I make sure I watch it every year despite what I am doing.

So as I said in my last post, I come home on the 23^rd and this date marked the 60^th anniversary of the Eurovision Song Contest, so whilst I was watching the contest I was also unpacking. For all my non-European readers, the Eurovision song contest is a yearly event held at some point in May where 26^th countries from Europe battle it out in the form of songs. It consists of 2 semi-finals where all 40 countries in Europe present their entries and 26^th countries are selected to compete in the grand finale, the country that wins then host the next competition the next year. So because Austria won last year, the contest was held in Vienna and because Sweden won this year, the contest will be held in Sweden next year. Now as a European I am not ashamed to say that I watch the Eurovision rigorously each year and have done since about 2009. Yet last night’s Eurovision was a little strange as there was 27^th countries in the final and the reason for that is because Australia had been invited to compete… now I can promise you Europe has not lost its sense of geography, we are well aware that Australia is not in Europe however to mark the 60^th anniversary an invite was extended to them and if Australia won the Eurovision they were welcomed back to compete next year yet it had to be in a European country of their choosing.

Even though only 26^th countries (27^th this year) compete in the final; all 40 countries still get to vote. They present their favourite countries with 1-7 points and then their top 3 favourite with 8, 10 or 12 points and the country with the highest points wins the contest, the winner this year was the Swedish entry, Måns Zelmerlöw who sang heroes and gained Sweden 365 points. Being from the UK I always secretly hope that the UL entry comes somewhere decent however this is normally not the case, last year we did quite well in gaining 40 points and coming 21st out of 26th. However this year we did not do so well... We gained 5 points and came 24th out of 27th. I know this doesn't look very good however it is seen as a victory because we did not come last with null points (this is not a good thing at all). 

Now I think I should probably leave this post here or I will continue to talk to you all night about the Eurovision. Now that I am off for summer I will try and be more regular in my postings as I will have the time to do so. And thus Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening and Good Night to wherever you are. 

Until Next Time!

X

Schools Out For Summer!!

Hello my wonderful bloggers! Now I know that it has been a while since my last post but I had presentations to do, coursework to complete and exams to sit but nevertheless my second year at university is over!! That is it; I have somehow made it through this year with minimal breakdowns and still remained my slightly crazy self. For those of you who have followed my blog since the beginning you will know that I started this blog not long before I started my second year, and have said about various aspects of the years (mostly to do with packing and unpacking)

Anyway, over the past few weeks, I have been revising in order to sit my English Language and Education Studies exams which I sat on the 21^st (English) and the 22nd (Education) and then on the 23^rd my parents came to collect me and I made the journey back to “good ol’ Yorkshire”. During the past week I had slowly been packing so that it was the simple case of just packing it all into the car to come home, so having finished my last exam on Friday at about quarter to 12 and made my way back home with my housemate where I because to pack everything completely.

Before we get into that we will go back about two weeks and make our way forward. Like I had said I hadn’t really done much but complete coursework, do two small presentations and then revise. For my Education course we got to see the questions in advance and received them just after the Christmas break. My education exam consisted of two sections where we had a choice of 3 questions to choose from, we were only allowed to pick one from each section and yen had to write an essay for the answer. For my English course we got 3 sections, two of which were unseen and then the third section was seen however it was seen a week before the exam. 

Now my education revision was pretty simple, I chose my two questions, planned my essays and revised the information which was relevant to my essay however my English revision was not so simple as it included revising everything which I had done over the course of the year, this included; ideology and power, child language acquisition and media studies.  For my revision I prefer doing que cards as I am unable to use mind maps however because que cards are my sole revision techniques I often end up with a fair few, this year I ended up with about 119 and that was for English alone. When I got to see the seen-section of my exam it consisted of a news article, an advert for a pen with a few comments and a transcript from a TV interview. Upon seeing these I had a small breakdown and convinced myself I was failing the year, thankful I was texting a friend who does the same course and she was straight on the phone to ring me to calm me down.

You would think exams would be straight forward, you go in to the room, sit the exam and then when the time is up you leave the room and then however many weeks later you get the result. This was not the case for my English exam. Due to being dyslexic I am provided with 25% extra time on top of my exam time so for a two hour exam I am given an extra half hour just to make things easier for me and to ensure I have enough time to read through what I have wrote. When doing exams at uni we are told we can answer the questions in any order we like however I prefer doing it in order as I will confuse myself and I will begin to panic. So the first section of the exam went fine, I answered all questions, guessed on two of them but I still answered and then I answered the first two parts of the second section without an issue however getting to the third question on the second part is when the issue arose. For the second section we were provided with a transcript of a child talking to an investigator who was looking at the child language use. Whilst the information at the start stated that the mother was present she did not speak however the question asked “how does the mother language use help Adam develop his own?” the issues with this is that the mother does not speak and the child was not called Adam…

After calling the examiner over to query the question she was just as confused as I was, yet at this time the other students in the room with me all began saying the same thing, the question was not right. So because of this someone was sent to get an English teacher whilst we were told to continue with the rest of the questions. Overall it took at least half an hour for them to come up with a solution as to what we were to do… that solution? Answer the question as if it said “the investigator” and “the child” however because we had lost half an hour waiting for this solution we were given another half hour to complete the paper so this turned my two and a half hour exam into a 3 hour exam. Needless to say none of us were happy about this mistake. 

The most likely reason for this is that, because my university writes our exam papers they are able to use past questions off past papers (we are not allowed to see past papers for this reason) and it is likely that the question had been for a past paper however it was not changed to suit the paper we had been given. After my exam, I went home with my housemate and finished packing everything I owned to come home and then the following day my parents collected me, we loaded the car and then made the two hour journey back to Middlesbrough. 

Now I am going to leave this post here as that is pretty much the end of it. 

Until Next Time! 

X