Knickers and Numbers
Quote of the moment: "I stepped out of my door and this drunk guy asked if he could get in my knickers" - Lol
After my thrilling lessons yesterday, I had some chips in the basement canteen (70p - top stuff) then headed back up for another "study skills" session... It was rather more useful than the first, which was about "planning" (my favourite :p), but more importantly was vastly more entertaining... Apparently, you remember stuff better the more senses you use to learn it with. So reading something aloud to yourself is better than better than just using your eyes, and if you can use other senses it's even better. Taste is a bit tricky, but you can use touch by writing things on the carpet - apparently very good for learning vocab for languages, or dates in history - because the memory of the feel of the carpet stays with you as well, linked to the words/numbers... So of course we all had to try writing something on the carpet - super...
There was obviously the normal stuff about revision cards etc... But also, for example, writing things on post-it notes and leaving one in a specific place in your room: when you need to remember, visualise your room and you'll associate what you look at as you look round it with whatever you had stuck on that object. Then there was recording tapes of stuff and playing them back in the car etc - Speaking them to begin with and then listening to them - basically the more varied the better. There was one clear winner though: when you need to learn something repetitive, for example declining verbs in Latin or a list of Kings and Queens, you should jump up and down on the spot, saying each one in turn as you land... Tis like forcing it in through your feet :D Obviously you could do it jogging or just walking (or if you could bear it, listening to drum and bass :p) but that wouldn't be so ridiculous! :D
After the joy of jumping up and down, I headed back to the basement and played pool... 50p a go which is unhandy, but then the table isn't so... "featured" as the elwyns one - no intimate knowledge of the deflection from rips in the baize and lumps in the slate is needed... BORING :p
Twas me and a girldoing resits whose name I didn't get, but who lives somewhere in Essex and got up at 5.30 ( 8-0 ) to commute, against a couple of blokes doing first time A2s in her class... Since I am the grand high master of jamminess, one guy potted the white with the black, so we won by default... :D Said girl, who has a Malteser addiction (she talks to them as she eats them - scary...) was also the one who said the quote oop thur... ("I stepped out of my door and this drunk guy asked if he could get in my knickers")... LOL. She said we should come down and see have the tour of the dump that is Essex... I chortled (in my joy :p).
To continue my frabjous day I rode the bike back to Shire Hall, home of Cambridgeshire County Council, (surprise surprise) and had a wander around... It's built on the Mott of the original Mott and Bailey Cambridge Castle... W00t w00t! It was later fortified in stone, but it was abandoned in the 1500s and Elizabeth I sold the stone off... It was used to built parts of Emmanuel and Magdalen colleges, along with Great St Mary's church, if I remember correctly... During the Civil War it was refortified, with cannon mounted on earthen bastions and ravelins, and was the headquarters for the Parlimentary "Eastern Association"... Of course, I'm sure Will m8, Mr 295%, knew that bit already... :p
I then walked back through Cambridge, past the college, and out to the Park and Ride. This is because I am a n00b, and thought that my return bus ticket from the previous day would be out of date... However, it did mean that I walked past the front of the college at exactly the same time as Sophie Clark emerged from St Faiths Prep School next door. LOL. It was one of those classic - that woman looks familiar - oh yeah, a bit like - hang on, she's giving me a funny look back - moments... I was amused, partly because it was probably more words than we'd ever exchanged at Felsted! Further down the road I went past a house that was obviously newly built, because it still had a skip outside it... It was inserted in between numbers 9 and 10 on the road, but it wasn't 9a... There was a big wrought-iron number by the gate:
9¾
W00t w00t! Harry Potter fans on the loose! (For those who are ignorant, the train to Hogwarts leaves from )It kept me smiling pretty much all the way to the Park and Ride - even though it had only taken me about 20 minutes to reach MPW from Shire Hall, and 45 from there... Oops. And I could have got a bus in the centre... NM, it was good for me... and bad for my belly :D Plus I got home without missing a single turning - HOW RARE!
Today I had a lie-in and savoured not having to get up... for about 5 hours. Tee-hee... :D I then wandered around in my dressing gown, being lazy and definitely not starting my maths homework. I eventually got dressed just before going into school to see the Army Careers Adviser (Officers), East Anglian Schools (W00t!)... It might have been a bit embarrassing otherwise! I saw the new year 10 cadets having their first drill lesson on my way in to the Careers Room - extreme amusement to be had by all - they'd attracted a small crowd :D Talked about Uni, resits, etc - his office is about 100m from my college - found out that the experimental admission of guys with ACL repairs is finished, and they now go on an individual assessment to see how well it's repaired - and I'm going to receive some stuff through the post soon for the visits etc I'm going to go on this year:
1. A familiarisation visit to the Royal Engineers at Chatham, to see what's what and also meet their recruitment guy, be interviewed and hopefully be provisionally accepted by them and sponsored for a Sanhurst place by them (according to the slightly archaic system, you need a backer - it can be the ACA(O) but if you get your chosen regiment/corps to back you, they put you in their books (or hard drive) and will almost certainly take you when you leave Sandhurst). There will also be some command tasks, stuff like that for assessment, just to check for totally incompetent people...
2. A similar familiarisation visit to the Infantry training place, at Pirbright I think... Which is along the same lines but without the interview and assesment bit - just seeing what infantry officers do, some command tasks just to stop the boredom maybe!
3. Pre-RCB - The Preliminary Regular Commisions Board visit - The first stage of potential officer testing, involving some command tasks, some theoretical situations where you have to write what you would do, a medical, etc etc... only basic fitness required... You then get rejected/passed to the next stage:
4. RCB - Full Medical, aptitude testing, fitness testing which involves a middle-distance run in a certain time, certain numbers of press-ups/situps etc etc... Obviously I need to improve a bit before that! There's also a written assignment, just to prove you're literate and capable of expressing yourself properly in a report, etc etc... I'm hopefully going to take RCB in the summer, having received my thuper maths grade and having had a few months to prepare... If I pass the RCB, I get a place at Sandhurst to start my officer training upon leaving university. If not, I can try again while at uni. If I pass well enough, I can get a Bursary, which means £7000 spread over 3 years... how handy! Normally it's the final three years, so if I upgrade to an MEng course from a BEng, I guess there'll be one year without Bursary funding after upgrading... But I may well decide not to, given that apparently the Royal Engineers' accelerated course gets you qualified for a Charter in the same time regardless (You do have to have an accredited Civil Engineering degree to start with though.) Anyway, enough of the accronyms etc... Basically I'm happy because I'll hopefully be sorted by the end of the year, possibly with extra dosh :D
Speaking of accelerated courses: Here are the parachuting ones I'm currently considering... The advantage of doing it in southern U.S.A. is the rather more consistent weather(USUALLY)! The Florida airfield might get a bit buggered by Hurricane Ivan though!
1 comment:
callooh callay!
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