Examitis

I haven't written anything for a few weeks because i had one exam which i went nuts revising for! One week before the exam i decided to start properly revising for it, which is my usual system and hadn't failed me up until now, but this time it was not enough. I was in the library, in the silent zone (a heavenly place where crisps are not eaten, phones are not vibrating and even the slightest noise gets scowled at!) for at least six hours every day. Hundreds of flashcards and the biggest blister i've ever had on my finger later and it was time for the exam.

A few subjects had come up while i was revising that i simply thought would not come up on the exam, one of which was what happened to treasure. I read the single page written about it and thought that it was unlikely to come up in a court reporting exam. Sadly, it did. Luckily it was only one part of the question so tried to remember what i had read, but to little avail.

That one slip up aside i feel that i did enough to pass the exam, thankfully. £44 for an exam means that i am loathe to pay for it again and spend another week of my life learning quotes from Lord Justice Diplock, McCollum, Watkins or whoever else! So hopefully when the results come in the next few weeks it will be good news!

Until then, there are more exams to revise for. The other half of the journalism law exam is on Valentine's Day and then the NCTJ Reporting exam is the following day. I have allowed myself this week off from revision, instead choosing to remind myself how to write in shorthand and making preparations for our house party.

House party of course took priority in the last few days. Friday saw the night of the party and at 10pm we were worried that were still only a handful of guests. I had been telling myself that this was normal for a house party because it is but even i was nervous at this point. Then, as usual, everyone arrived at once and by 11pm the house was bulging with people. Unfortunately 6 and half hours later the house was still bulging and i was desperately tired! By 6am everyone had eventually left, thirty minutes later i was fast asleep and by 10am i was up again taking care of my guests!

A long winded drive around Manchester and Salford, a mountain of bacon and egg sandwiches and a vat of tea later everyone was happy and leaving. Then came the clean-up operation! Having only had four hours sleep i was not in the mood for mopping up the vodka jelly that had somehow gotten everywhere!

Yesterday went in a blur of reading, napping and watching TV in bed. Eleven hours sleep later and i was fully recovered from the weeks antics. Today's plan is to practice some shorthand (now that i am in the MA's class i feel a little more dedicated to the extra hours of work a week!) and do the last of the cleaning which thankfully isn't much.

Then tomorrow, two weeks until the exam, revision must start again just as semester two classes begin, just to make it that little bit harder eh?

Post-holiday blues

Well Christmas holidays are technically over and of course that means the onset of exams and more people on Facebook during the day writing statuses asking why they didn't pay attention in lectures, if it were possible to invent the pen in Harry Potter that gives the right answer or the latest in procrastination theory.

And this time i join them. I had been looking forward to being one of the lucky few that did so much work during the term that i did not have exams but then i realised that taking NCTJ classes means at some point i would have to take NCTJ exams. I have been doing NCTJ classes for two years now and have left it to the last term to take the exams. So here i am, writing another blog entry rather than revising because it would seem that even paying for an exam and having to do so again if i fail is STILL not enough motivation for me to revise.

In the past week i have written approximately ten flashcards about Contempt of Court and i see no more flashcards in my immediate future. Why is revision so difficult to do? Once i get started i am happy to sit down and write out dozens of flashcards telling me that section 4 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 gives me a defence for writing extraneous articles as long as they are contemporaneous and in good faith. Well look at that, i learnt something! And yet, the motivation to stop watching re-runs of Friends and Come Dine With Me, get out of bed, switch Facebook off and open McNae's 'Essential Law for Journalists' is severely lacking.

I am destined to fail this exam and pay another £44 for the privilege of trying again in 3 months or feel the burn when i sit in an interview and explain that no, i did not take my NCTJ's because i was learning how to cook a rack of lamb on Masterchef!

And shorthand. That pesky little language that i am supposed to practise every day for thirty minutes else i won't be able to take my 60 words per minute in March, let alone 70 or 80. So by my estimation i have neglected to do approximately 15 hours of practise and have a class tomorrow morning in which i will be competing with the MA's who work 9-5 every day and in their lunch breaks discuss the best way to shorten sentences in order to pass the 100 exam in March!!

Okay well, i have definitely panicked myself into some sort of action now so i am definitely going to do something pro-active with my afternoon. Oh wait- Man United vs Spurs in 45 minutes? Ok, after that i'll do something. Promise. ;)

Holidays = Lulls

Well Christmas and New Year have been and gone and i have not written a single thing in longer than i care to remember. The worst part about this is that there is always so much to write about at this time of year and i've just watched it pass me by!

I could have written about the serious decline in soap Christmas stories, taken a look back at 2010 and what's to come in 2011, or just generally talked about world events- England retaining the Ashes, Darts over the New Year, the flooding in Queensland, the lack of water in Ireland, the poor girl found murdered on Christmas Day.

But alas, i have not. And now it is January the 6th and far too late to make any comments about any of these. One thing i will do though is tell you all of my new years resolutions. Yes, unfortunately, it is that time of year again where everyone lies to themselves about this year being the difference. For me, these are not resolutions, because that would suggest at some point i had resolved to do the opposite of these decisions. These are simply statements of things i intend to do with my time rather than sitting wasting my final months at university away watching re-runs of Friends and Scrubs!

So my plan is three-fold (yes that was a very subtle Friends reference):

1. I WILL get a job whether Manchester likes it or not- otherwise everything else will fall out of place.

2. Despite having a job taking up all spare time i will also put more energy into my extra curricular activities- the student newspaper deserves much more attention, especially if i do decide to run for Editor in April! I will also put more effort into Twitter, reading more blogs, newspapers and features and of course this blog!

3. I will work very very hard at all of my essays this year, no matter how much i dislike the subject, the reading load or the lecturers. Sociology will NOT drag down my entire degree mark thank you very much!

With this plan set in place i am unlikely to fail. That's what i will continue to tell myself anyway, along with 6 billion other people who have vowed to work harder, lose weight or dump that loser boyfriend!!

Over and out!

Gemma