anotherusedpage

Know what they're making us do? Read and write in transcription! You know, where the 'ai' in 'hair' is suddenly written by characters you've never seen, not even in Ancient Greek.

Structuralism isn't that bad though, is it? Oh well, at least Feminism is as easy and silly as what, and so is Marxism, really...

And eeee! Matrix Revolutions! I can't believe they made us wait months after the largest cliffhanger in movie history!

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Yeah, well. I was actually working til three am last night, but there was a party happening on my corridor at the time, so it's just me, MOST people would be in the club at one am ...
What's REALLY quite revealing is the fact that I'd RATHER be writing the essay.... clubs not my thang. Essays not exactly my thang either, but they win over clubs.
What college is your friend at? Just out of interest.....

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I thought that structuarlism was ok, but.... I didn't understand the reactions against it, so I probably missed the point. Especially considering I hadn't done the prep reading for that class...

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I remember studying constructuralism at one point. Well, I remember that I studied it, but that's the only thing I remember about constructuralism really :D

I can't wait to see Revolutions either. At least with Lord of the Rings you can read the book and find out what happens. Unless you're one of the people who say, "There's a book?" *rolls eyes* I knew a girl who said she wasn't watching any of the movies until they all came out because she didn't want to have to wait two years to find out what happened. I couldn't keep the scathing tone out of my voice when I replied, "Read the book and you won't have to."

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It's a pet hate of mine too. One of my best friends is refusing to see the films of LOTR cos she hasn't read the book yet, which I think is hugely sensible, but people keep telling her not to bother, just to watch the movie.
By the time RotK comes out, my college term will've been finished for more than a week. Which is quite scary, cos I keep thinking soon, oh so soooon.
It's been something that's a very long way in the future for soooo long. I remember when they were first talking about casting for it, it was something like five or even six years ago - I hadn't even done my GCSEs yet, and only the first Harry Potter book had been written. I didn't even know where I'd be studying for sixth form, let alone what uni I'd be at... and yet it doesn't seem very long ago at all.
My mother made a (mostly joking) prediction while we were watching the first film that she would be dead before the third one came out (she's not ill or anything, but her mother died quite young of a rare-ish type of cancer that the family has genetic predisposition to). So she's only got another two months to do it in now :S
She was joking. And I'm NOT that superstitious. Honest.

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I actually got into the Harry Potter series through the first movie *ducks*. People were surprised I hadn't read the books either, but I remember my grandmother telling me about them and being completely put off. It was interesting watching the second movie after reading all the books and then thinking how terrible and watered down it was. I have higher expectations for the third film with the new director.

I hope your mother prediction doesn't come to pass :) And what are GCSEs? And while I'm onto the subject, I really don't know anything else about the British education system except that public schools are actually private schools and vice versa. Yet another illogical inconsistancy to put up with if you're a POME (Prisoner of Mother England: widely-used term in Australia and New Zealand) ;p

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People were surprised I hadn't read the books either

Earlier. I meant to say earlier. It's seven-something in the morning here and I haven't had my cup of tea yet :)

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Public schools aren't just any old private schools, they're the poncy-est poshest most expensive form of private schools - the one's you've heard of like Eton and Harrow and Rugby. The seriously shit expensive ones. It comes from the days when the upper classes could either educate their children at home or at a 'public' school - we're talking hundreds of years before state funded education come into place.

As well as this, some places, especially in inner cities also have some form of grammar school, which is state funded but you have to do an exam to get in. It used to be that the exam was compulsory and called the eleven plus. Then they decided that system was unfair (long looong before my time), and they changed all the names around so crappy Secondary Moderns became all inclusive Comprehensives. Grammar schools became 'Grant Maintained' ie the government was still paying for them but trying not to admit it. I think they've changed the name of it again since then, actually, as well.... Not all grant maintained are grammar schools, some of them are faith schools (ie C of E, Catholic, Jewish etc etc etc), but the majority are.

I am ... ahem ... lucky enough to have sampled the delights of all three types of british school - I did three years at a state comp, which was a real shit hole, then two years at a private school which was wonderful until the money ran out, and then two years at a grammar, which was great but a little stressful cos it was HUGELY grade orientated. (I've never been to public school, though. You have to be quite seriously shit rich for that).

GCSEs are the exams you take at sixteen, just before you finish compulsory education. Most people do eight or nine GCSEs, you have to take some science, some English, maths, a modern forreign language, and a technology, and then you make up the other subjects by doubling English and Science (or even tripling science) and with humanities and creative subjects. The compulsory subjects are only compulsory at state schools, at public and private schools you don't have to follow government guidelines so much.

After GCSE all the people who really, REALLY don't want to continue in education drop out and get McJobs and the rest of us go on to do AS levels at the age of 17 and full A levels at the age of 18. Most people would do four AS and drop down to three A levels. Nothing is compulsory at this level. They've only just changed to this system, it used to be just three A levels on a two year course, but people complained that the curriculum wasn't broad enough, so they fucked around with it to give people the opportunity to study more broadly. The idea was you'd take an AS in a contrasting subject to your full A levels. But of course it don't work like that - I did Music, Theatre Studies, English and History, which is no broader than it would've been anyway. So they're thinking of changing it AGAIN to something closer to the IB.

So. That's Jessie's Brief Intro to the British Education system. Just don't get me started on LEAs, PRUs, SATS and the national curriculum....

And I thought the second HP film was better than the first. I dunno if I'd've bothered to read the books if I'd just had the first film to go on. I read the first book when it first came our, before it was famous. Somone had bought a copy for my brother, but he wasn't interested, so I nicked it off him.... now the whole family's hooked.

It's seven-something in the morning here and I haven't had my cup of tea yet

You're remarkably coherent for seven in the morning. More than I would be.
It's quarter to eleven at night here, and I still have three hundred or so pages of reading to get through before I can turn in..... (turn into what, I'm not quite sure. A quivering wreck perhaps)
We love Dickens really.

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funnynamehere.livejournal.com

Er...if I knew. I'll tell you when 1) I'm sober and 2) I know.

x

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Thank you for your explanation. It confused me more than anything else, but that's because of my sleep-deprived brain and the school system itself, no fault of yours. But I don't think there can ever be such a thing as a brief introduction to any education, as you're about to see with mine :D

In New Zealand there are School Cs (certificates), which sound similar to GCSEs. You take them when you're in Year 11 (NZ schools have 13 years, one more than Australia and the US) and continue on for two more years to take University Bursaries if you plan on continuing your education. The marks on your bursaries determine what courses you get into at university and different universities have different mininum acceptance marks. My poor best friend in my first year had to leave her boyfriend behind because she had marks that were high enough to get into her course at our university, but not his.

But the closest I've got to School Cs was working as a reader-writer at an all-boys private school near where I used to live in Hamilton ;p. I actually attended an American private school in Singapore. In the American system you complete a certain amount of courses in each subject (it varies from school to school) plus a bunch of electives, and this will give you a core high school diploma. If you plan on going to university though, you need to do more than that. There are two standardised tests you take in your two last years of high school, SATs I and II. SAT Is are verbal and maths tests, while in SAT IIs you pick three subjects to be tested on. Most students do one maths, one english, and then one other subject.

Then there are APs (Advanced Placement courses). APs are basically university level subjects you take while you are still in high school. In May (one month before the high school academic year is finished), there is a standardised exam on each AP subject. If you get a 3 or above (on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the highest), you can get university credit for those courses. I knew a guy who had enough AP credits to go to his junior year in college. The New Zealand universities didn't give me any credit for my APs because they don't recognise them. Bastards :)

In most American schools only the best students get to take them, but my school was really competitive so we were pushed to do them. In my year in particular (which was an exceptionally gifted year), if you didn't take any people thought you were dumb. AP Psychology was the bludger course everyone who didn't want to take APs but needed something for their academic record took. I took that plus AP English and Modern European History.

Well, I haven't talked about the Australian education system yet but my head is spinning enough, as yours probably is by now. I'd better sign off before I drive us both insane :)

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Hehe, and that's probably for the best as well...

I'm gonna have to wait until tomorrow to see Revolutions. But I'm reaslly looking forward to it, cos where Reloaded was more of an action movie, this one promises also to have more story as well...

Personally, I think you can enjoy a movie better when you've read the book beforehand. There's always the risk of disappointment of course, but if you read the book later, you won't be inside your own created eg Middle Earth, but Peter Jackson's Middle Earth, which will be a loss.

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I find that doing prep reading after classes is a lot easier, cos then I've already got the basic ideas. Saves me time :)

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One thing I didn't like in Reloaded was that it didn't as much plot and layers as the first movie did. So hopefully Revolutions will be an improvement on that particular aspect of the movie :) One of my friends just called and her mother has tickets to the preview in Japan, which Keanu Reeves is supposed to be attending. Much to my friend's ire, she had heard of neither Keanu nor the Matrix series.

I think it's sensible to read the book before the movie. One think I don't like about reading the HP books after I saw the first film was that I'll never be able to picture my own versions of Harry, Ron and Hermione. And now it's really strange when I read the fifth book because I still picture the characters looking like kids.

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I do that too. I find it so annoying reading the notes/textbook before the lecture addressing that section and realising I underlined the wrong parts and focused on the wrong things.

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So it's not just me? I always focus on the wrong things, I've got a weird sense of what should be important and what shouldn't be...

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.... I just don't write notes. Partly because I can't actually read my own handwriting. And if I underline something I can never remember why.

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I usually take the occasional note in classes, but most of it is put online anyway, in powerpoint presentations and such, so that's rather easy...

I only underline stuff if I find it really important. Or if I really don't get anything.

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I underline way too much when I'm tired. And then I look back at the readings when I'm trying to study for exams and think, "Okay, where do I start?"

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