08.24.10

GCSE Results

Physics A*
Chemistry A*
Biology A*
History A*
Art A
Latin A
RS B
Maths: A* (took last year)
Science: A* (took last year)
Additional Science: A* (took last year)
English: A (took last year)

YEAAAAHHHHHHH

*performs the victory dance*

My whole education has lead up to these letters, now it’s over. Golly this feels weird. Anyway.

Things I am very happy about: Science, Maths and History. Especially History. Trying my best not to sound snobbish but science and maths are my best subjects, so I’m used to getting good grades in them. History, however, comes a little less natural to me. I worked really hard to get an A* and I did! I feel like squeeing. I think I might.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Things I’m happy about: Art. I put so much work into this subject. Easily half my time I spent doing homework and coursework was on Art alone. And I got an A! To get an A* I’d need 59/60 or something ridiculous like that, so I’m very happy with my A.

Things I’m a bit “meh” about: RS and Latin. Latin I’m happy with really, but I would have liked to have gotten an A*; I’m not going to complain about “only” getting an A though RS I’m a bit annoyed about, because I got an A* in my coursework and I thought I did well in my exams, but I got two grades lower than expected. They were my first exams though and I’m not too fussed because a B is still good. It just ruins my results slip a bit

Further comments: OCR sucks as an exam board. They printed half my grades wrong!

Now I’m going on into Sixth Form to do A Levels in Physics, Maths, Further Maths and History. Then it’s university! Oh my science then I’ll have to get an actual job. Eeep!

08.14.10

Something I never do

The big post about my holiday that I said about might take a while. Turns out we took about 2000 photos… oops. So it might take a while to look through and pick out my favourites.

In the mean time, I’m going to blog about the book I’m reading, which you can see in my sidebar. I’m going to be blunt, and I don’t often just say this about a book. But it has to be said. It’s really boring. It started out okay. Then it got good when he committed the crime referenced in the title. That happened about 70 pages in. I’m up to page 256 now, and I swear, all that’s happened is him angst about it. And it’s a classic book, which means the language is pretty heavy going. Also the font is horrible. I don’t know if I want to carry on with it.

Which leaves me with a dilemma. Should I just give up on this book? I never give up on books. Okay, I did for Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, but I hate classic romance books so they don’t count (strangely I like TV shows of them though). I’ll have that horrible feeling of incompleteness, and it’ll haunt me. I’ll feel a pang of guilt whenever I see my bookshelf. Because the other thing I never ever do is throw away books even if I don’t like them. I’d also like to read at least one book from the 1800s in my life, and this is the closest I’ve ever come to finishing one (except for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and I don’t think that counts).

But then, on the other hand, it’ll probably take months to finish it. And I go back to school soon, I’ll have no time for reading then. I’ll be stuck with it for ages. And I have loads of other books to read, because I keep buying them and take forever to get round to reading them all. Also it’s really boring. Really, really boring. I’d be much happier moving onto another book, like Animal Farm. I’ve wanted to read that for ages.

Oh decisions!

08.11.10

Guess where I’ve been!

Florida to be precise. I went to Disney World! I arrived back this morning and am going to be doing a longish post about it once I get over the jet lag. I haven’t slept since Monday night! Yay! It’s Wednesday, isn’t it?

07.22.10

Summer Reading List

I’ve been planning this list since my exams started in May. I remember sitting at my desk with my textbooks strewn across the floor, wistfully wishing I could read some books I actually enjoy *sighs* Now I’ve finished all my exams (:D) and am eagerly waiting for results, I’ve started The List, which will probably take a lot longer than one summer if I’m honest.

I’ve recently gone through a sort of “Reading Renaissance” where I stopped reading teen books and Harry Potter and started reading entirely different book genres. Mainly they’ve been sci-fi and physics books. So far this summer I have read 1984 by George Orwell, Why Does E=mc^2 by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and a couple of Agatha Christie books. I’d recommend all of them

Anyway, this is my Summer Reading list. I’ve got loads more books I want to read other than these which I’m making a new page for in my About section, it’ll be up soon (maybe after I’m back from holiday).

• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (currently reading)
• Lots of Poirot books by Agatha Christie
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
• Carrie by Stephen King
• Elizabeth by David Starkey (this ones for school- I’m starting A Level History in September)
• I am Legend by Richard Matheson

Has anybody read these? Were they good?

07.20.10

Things I wish I had more of #1: Political Power

As I’m 16 and cannot vote, I have to find other ways of making my views heard. At the moment this amounts to sending emails and generally annoying my local MP. I recently sent an email about a law which states that all schools must provide collective worship, which I am very much against. This is for a few reasons. Firstly, the worship is usually Christian so exclude children of other cultures. Also, I think that a separation between religion and government is very important. Once you start to mix the two together you favour one group of people simply because of their beliefs. I think in schools children should be taught about all religions but not forced to worship. Also, this worship includes children from 4 years old and up. I think that it is wrong to force religion onto a child of 4 who can’t possibly be old enough to decide which religion (if any) they want to follow.

Anyway, I wasn’t expecting anything to come of this email, when I saw this on my doormat.

I took a photo because I thought the envelope was cool.

The contents, however, was not very cool. It read

Dear Ms Grosso,
Thank you for your letter dated 6 July regarding EDM 395 and collective worship.

Going well so far

All Maintained schools should provide for collective worship and religious education (RE) for their pupils. The precise nature of the collective worship and RE at a foundation or voluntary school will depend on the religious character of the school

I don’t think that schools should have any religious character. They should be secular, as I said earlier. But then I suppose that’s an argument for another time, I’m going to focus on the collective worship in schools.

I understand from the Department of Educations that, under current guidelines, collective worship is an oppurtunity for pupils to “worship God

So we are to assume that every child has a religion? What if the child was brought up without one? Shall we just exclude them?

reflect on values that are of a broadly Christian nature and on their own beliefs,

Now let’s exclude all the non-Christians as well

develop a community spirit,

I fail to see how this is done by prayer. I can think of so many other ways this can be done as well.

a common ethos and shared values, consider spiritual and moral issues and respond to the worship offered”. These are all areas that I believe are very important to the moral areas of our children

Again, you don’t need to force kids to pray to consider moral issues. How about a discussion as a class about a topic, where you can get differing opinions from different cultures? (Correct me if I’m wrong, but) Prayer is silent, you don’t get any other viewpoints to challenge your ideas like that, which is an important part of considering moral issues.

I’m also kinda worried that she’s also suggesting that you can’t consider moral issues without religion, which as an atheist I find a bit insulting. I have no idea what “a common ethos and shared values” involves because there is no verb, but I’m sure that you don’t need to pray to have shared values.

It is the responsibility of the Head Teacher to ensure that children undertake daily collective worship, mainly of a Christian nature, unless this is inappropriate for the school, in which case they must apply to local Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE) for a determination to have this requirement lifted.”

This fact that the requirement lifted is good, but you shouldn’t have the requirement in the first place!

Assemblies are an oppurtunity for the whole school to come together as one community and they are vital in allowing heads to demonstrate leadership and a sense of direction for their schools.

I agree with this, even though my head teacher’s assemblies are bloody boring.

I believe that Britain’s multi-faith society is a real cause for celebration. To me, the different faith-groups that exists in Britain today play an important role in enriching our nation.

So let’s celebrate them by not excluding them during the collective worship which is mostly Christian.

I also think the best way to celebrate is through education of all religions, and atheism too. Children should be allowed to practice their beliefs in school if they want to (for instance, I know Muslims may want to pray during the day), but it shouldn’t be forced on them.

Religions help cement local communities together and can encourage the neighbourly society that too often seems to have been eroded.

And in one sentance she has managed to isolate me (a non-believer) from the rest of the community. Is she saying that it’s atheism’s fault that society has eroded? Or is it that you need to be religious to play a role in community? A survey said that 19% of people in the UK are either Atheist or Agnostic [1], which is quite a large chunk of the population, and you can’t just exclude them like that. Maybe I’m overreacting, but I’m sure there are many other ways to bring a community together than forcing religion onto children.

We can only benefit from our religious diversity if we sustain the freedom for these religions to reflect their differences,

I would say that forcing kids to worship restricts their religious freedom, particularly as most worship is Christian, excluding non-Christians, but also because many pupils will be non-believers (especially once you get to the later years in secondary school). Religious freedom is important, but I really don’t see how collective worship maintains that rather than restricting it.

and it is for this reason that I won’t be signing the EDM.

Yay, I have an MP that supports restricting religious freedoms!

(This might be a bit of a controversial second entry. I hope I haven’t said anything overly offensive.)

1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/programmes/wtwtgod/pdf/wtwtogod.pdf

07.19.10

Hello World!

I’ve packed up and left Pinstripes and Converse and moved into a new blog, Perpetual! I felt like a fresh start and a shorter domain name. To be honest it was hard getting six syllables to fit into layouts.

This blog is going to be mainly a personal blog, I might put up some artwork later and at the moment I’m working on fanlistings. Also I’m going to try my hand at some PHP scripts, so maybe you can have some of those to look forward too!

Anyway, this site isn’t completely finished. I’m going to be adding a lot more in the summer because I have a lot of spare time! But I will be away for two weeks from the 27th.

Yay for the grand opening! *pops open champagne*