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

Time For A Catch Up!!

So hello my lovely readers and possibly fellow blogger, now I know that this post is looooong overdue and to be honest with you the reason for that is because I don't know what to write about. I must have wrote this post at least 3 times because either what I wrote didn't seem interesting enough or it was far too long! In the last few months I have been inundated with coursework, revision, training, cheer competitions, packing to going home, unpacking when at home, spending time with family, friend, my boyfriend, and then packing again to coming back to uni and then unpacking when I got back and then followed by more revision, more coursework and my last few training sessions for the end of the year before sitting my exams and then going home for summer which yet again will included packing and unpacking but this time it means packing up my ENTIRE room. I'm pretty sure I spend most of the year just packing and unpacking. 

Before going home for Easter I competed in my second Cheerleading competition with my squad at the UKCA National Championships in Manchester on March 21st at the Veladrome; to which the my cheer team brought home not only one trophy but two trophies!!; 2nd place for stunt group and 1st place for group cheer!!. Not only did we have the cheer team competing on the Saturday we also have the pom dance team competed on the 22nd in the pom division and they brought home 2nd place. UKCA presents all competitors with a certificate and a meddle whether their team placed or not however I am extremely proud of mine. 

The following weekend I returned home to Middlesbrough and straight away I was back to dealing with my crazy family; only this time it included them meeting my boyfriend... Which I will admit went a lot better than I was panicking over. My Aunty gave her approval, my mum seems to get on with him well, my gran also so seems to like him and it appears that he had won over the approval of my two younger cousins and as anyone with little 'ens in their family can tell you children are very hard to please. However it just appears that the males in my family may need a little time to come round to the idea that I am not longer a little girl and that I am growing up. The next 3 weeks concluded with me working, spending time with my family and friend and my boyfriend as well as doing revision and coursework.

After my 3 week break, I returned to uni to be face with honours conferences to attend, posters to present, training, revision, coursework (which I should really be doing now as its due Friday) and the Sports Ball which my University holds every year in honour of the sports teams. The theme this year was 1920's so everyone was dressed up in Great Gatsby's style clothes and we had a 3 course meal and awards were presented during the night. Some of the awards that got presented were: Most Improved Player; Player of The Year; Most Improved Team; Best New Comer; Half and Full Colours - this is to do with how long a member has been on the team for. During the night I won most improved player, which I got a medal for as well as my half colours which I got a certificate (the picture to the side will change shortly once I receive my certificate) and my team won most improved as so far since the team was created 3 years ago we have normally only been ready to compete in 1 competition at the end of the year where as this year we have competed at 2 competitions and brought home 4 trophies in doing so.

Now I think we shall leave this post here for the time being and I will try to post again in the next few weeks however due to revision, exams and packing the entirety of my room I can make no promises to you all. Now before I go I would like to think my friend for getting me addicted to the TV show "Gossip Girl" and so, in the words of Gossip Girl herself, I bid you all Adieu...

XOXO