The best thing I can do is to briefly analyse my results, subject by subject and unit by unit. However, before I do that, I think it would be best to return to my post-exam predictions:

* Accuracy is based on the difference between the UMS I predicted I’d get (which I didn’t publish) and the UMS I actually got.

So let’s start with Government and Politics. The exams I took in June of this year are in italics for all subjects and the accuracy of my predictions worked out as above for each subject module is also included. However, as I did not have unit totals for all modules at the time, these are likely to be less accurate than the overall subject.

Is there any point me going into this one? I couldn’t have done much better than an A. However, someone in my class managed it – so well done to Callan Davies, who came in the top five in the Country. One point I will make, though, is that my best score was in the synoptic module – mainly because I used examples from local government and a whole page on Pakistan (two of my pet topics outside the UK national and USA areas).

It seems that, for the first time in four years of doing Spanish, my reading exam proved to be my biggest downfall. SP04 was the two-and-a-half hour reading/listening exam, and my only D in Spanish. However, I managed to increase my written exam from a U to an E to a C, which I a quite happy about – and, as most people who know me will understand, I am shocked and ecstatic that the two orals were my second-best modules.

My Computing results are both surprising and confusing. I had already seen the mark sheet for my CPT6 coursework, so I knew I’d be getting a D for that. I hadn’t expected getting an A on my CPT2 resit. However, a lot of the questions focused on legal aspects of computer use, and so I should probably be happy with my result there. Few people left the CPT4 exam happy, although I am still at a loss as to why I got a U for it. In fact, it is my lowest scoring exam across the board (yes, I did worse at that than my first attempt at Physics!). Overall, though 375 is only just over the 360-mark threshold for a C grade, and thus Computing also stands as second-closest to the lower grade boundary.

Ah, General Studies. Everyone’s favourite non-subject. Because of the fact that I was doing Critical Thinking, I wasn’t supposed to to General Studies and was timetabled no lessons. However, at the last minute, I decided to enter into the full A-level and chance it in each exam. The fact that, overall, I got a C (including B in two Y13 modules) without going to a single lesson in my entire second year – or, for that matter, even looking through a textbook – shows just how much of a joke this subject really is! My biggest hope is that Rainham Mark will soon wake up to this farcical “subject”, which is not accepted by many Universities, and teach students information actually necessary in their day-to-day lives.

In many ways, I am reasonably pleased with my Physics results – I actually managed to get a (safe) grade. However, part of me is thinking that, had my Physics 2 unit not been on the same day as the driving test I passed (the excitement of which led me to do almost no revision that day!), or had I studied slightly harder for Physics 6, I would have got a D. That would have turned my results day joy into ecstasy!

A lot of people took Critical Thinking to escape General Studies (like me), believing it would be just as easy but slightly less boring (unlike me – I took it because the skills learned will be useful in a career in law and in politics). Many dropped out after F491 in January, when they discovered it’s not as easy as it looks. I only just got a C, but it is a C nonetheless, and I am more than happy with this result.

However, I now have my A-level results, which are surprisingly better than I expected:

Government and Politics – A
Computing – C
General Studies – C
Spanish – C
Physics – E

My AS-level Critical Thinking was also C, which means I have enough to get in to University.

Following on from that, I am now playing another waiting game. I mentioned earlier about chasing my dream. Well, I have applied for summer work at my dream job, and, well, let’s just say it’s going to be a long wait but I will fill you in on more later on tonight.

Rather than having to wait at school for my results, however, I chose to look online for my Edexcel results (General Studies and Physics) – as they are the only exam board to be offering an online results service at the moment – and found, to my utter delight and relief, that I actually got a grade for Physics.

I have said all along that if I could get a grade, even if it is just an E, I would be the happiest person in the world today. Well, suffice to say I only got an E for Physics, but it has genuinely made my day to have gotten something other than a U in a subject I was almost certain I was going to fail from the word go. And it’s not like I even scraped an E – it is a very safe E!

In General Studies I picked up a C, but if I pick up anything less in any of my other subjects, then, well, let’s just say today will be the day the dream died.

Here’s hoping – and praying! – it hasn’t come to that!

Going by results already cashed in, and how I have felt as I walked out of the exam room after each exam, I tried to estimate the number of UMS marks I would get per exam (slightly more difficult for essay exams, as they are open to interpretation) to give me an estimated total which I could translate into a final grade per subject.

My personal predictions are as follows:

• Critical Thinking (OCR/AS) – C (low)
• Computing (AQA/A2) – C (mid)
• General Studies (Edexcel/A2)  – D (high)
• Government and Politics (AQA/A2) – B (mid)
• Physics (Edexcel/A2) – E (high)
• Spanish (AQA/A2) – C (high)

Of course I shall have to wait until August 14 for the official results, however I do feel that these are quite accurate. If so, then I will have made it into my chosen University.

Or at least that is a change which Republican Presidential Candidate Sen. John McCain would like to bring about. In a speech in Ohio in May 2008, Sen. McCain said that he would introduce a President’s Question Time, in which the President comes “before both Houses to take questions and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons.”

However, this greater emphasis on being accountable to the legislature has two great flaws. Firstly, in the House of Commons, Prime Minister’s Questions has been hijacked by “friendly” questions from the Prime Minister’s own party, political questions from the opposition and six questions from the leader of the opposition which inevitably turns the start of PMQs into a “slanging match”.

Secondly, Sen. McCain has promised to hold weekly press conferences, allowing journalists to continue to be chief scrutineers of the President’s performance. This would mean a continuation of the President following the will of the media, which is not always the same as that of the millions of voters who elected him, and all members of Congress, in the first place.

This is a sample of what I would write for the essay title: ‘In modern democracies the role of elected representatives is being hijacked by others’. Discuss. (Government and Politics Unit 8). It is provided so as to keep this site up-to-date whilst I continue to revise for my A-levels.

I am currently sat in front of 48 pages of CPT2 (Computing) past exams, slowly working my way through, answering questions I can answer, making notes in the margin on those I cannot. I am on page four!

My full exam timetable is on my Google Calendar (see Alan’s Diary), in case you are interested, but, with the exception of half term and planning applications (one this week, I will publish it tonight), I will almost cease posting on this website and concentrate on my exams.

However, I am not entirely content with allowing my blog to go too quiet, and thus stale. So, over the next six weeks, as I write practice essays for Government and Politics (my last exams), I shall post them on here for continual fresh content.

So keep checking back and I promise I’ll post as much as I can!

Today was it. The ultimate deadline. From this moment onwards, no more coursework!

And I couldn’t be happier!!!

Normal service to be resumed after my job interview this afternoon.

However, more importantly, I have been (and indeed continue to be) working on a piece of Spanish coursework, due in for tomorrow, on the subject of racism in Spain. More explicitly, is there a racist problem in Spain?

My argument will be simple – yes, there is a racist problem in Spain. Whereas in this Country people may associate violence with immigrants taking on “natives”, in Spain there are more reports of “natives” taking on immigrants.

I also have to look at the 70,000 gypsies in Spain, tolerance towards them and how equal their integration into society is. Added to this a look at the actions towards Lewis Hamilton a few months ago, it was certainly an interesting and varied topic to look at.

Which is why I can’t understand why I am struggling to write 850 words on it!

Instead, it has been hectic as I used the time to polish off many small cuttings of unfinished work (whilst listening to songs by artists such as Delirious?, Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman on my stylish new pink iPod Mini – but that’s another story altogether!).

For exampl, I cycled through my folder to find a Spanish translation text due in yesterday (I wasn’t in the lesson due to exam revision, and so was given an extension until Tuesday) and that I still needed to write the final sentence. I even finished off a past exam question on PROgramming in LOGic (or Prolog) for Computing.

But the majority of the time was spent scratching my head over the Physics homework. We were given a question to find out the distance a geostationary satellite is from Earth when we know the period (T) and the universal gravitational constant (G). Well in order to do this, the given equation (derived from Kepler’s third law) had to be re-arranged – so I worked through various parts of the equation at a time (forgetting to square the period etc.).

Period (T) is proportional to the radius of the orbit (r)

Anyway, each time I brought the results of the various parts together, the answer was wrong (the expected answer could be found elsewhere in the book). So, after half an hour, I just gave up and put the whole equation into my calculator. The cube root. And, lo and behold, the correct answer of 4.2×10⁷m (or 42Mm) was staring back at me.

So what’s the moral of the story? I should give up more often! That, or command logic in solving problems, rather than look for the most complex solution.

In all seriousness, I had my General Studies Unit 4 exam this afternoon, and, although I don’t inted to break the habit of a lifetime and evaluate in detail the exam, I thought I would share a couple of things with you.

First, I had never been to a General Studies lesson (as they weren’t timetabled for me), however, apart from not knowing the difference between agnostic and atheist (I’ve never mastered that one), I think I managed to blag my way through it quite well.

Yet again, Part C was a choice of four statements to discuss – glory be to God in the highest, who blessed me with a choice of two statements I knew in-depth:

• Religious symbols are harmful to society because they emphasise differences and create barriers between believers and non-believers.
• All media should be free of government control to allow society a fully informed picture of difficulties and problems.

Obviously, I chose the latter. But don’t worry, I shall opine over both of these over the next few days on this site. Just let me get my last exam out of the way first.