Corrie's blog

The last anyone knew, I was trying to revise after my incredibly exciting ‘experience’ and trying to recover some of my dignity, and the feeling in my foot. Well, at least the foot is OK. It’s when you hear your gran on the phone telling ALL her friends about her stupid granddaughters idiocy that you feel really dumb. I’m never going to live this down.

So, Sunday. Woke up relatively early and was immediately so confused. It was 5 am old time, and my brain couldn’t quite cope with this. I put the radio on to try sort myself, and woke up again at 9.30 am (new time) even more confused. I did a bit of revision. I realise I always skip over this when I’m talking about it, but for the purposes of university student blog, my revision methods are:

Revising on the train. Written TONNES.

I go over all the lecture notes I’ve taken over the year and write-up any of the lectures I didn’t manage to do at the time neatly. This takes a long time, but if you do it right it all goes in at the same time and it’s revision in its own right. To give you an idea, I’ve done biomaterials in the four days I’ve been solidly revising – it takes about three hours to do each lecture (although the bio ones are really long and lots of writing. The others aren’t so bad, but more understanding required). I have nano to do urgently as that exam is the 26th of April (also the day Avatar comes out on DVD, and Tom’s and my third anniversary…it’s the little things that keep you going lol).

Digger sitting in a field being very special and cute. I'm trying to get mum to agree to let him audition for Toto!

I then go over all the lecture notes again and read over the bits that I thought ‘I have no idea what this means, I’m going to copy it word for word and go over it later’. If you don’t read over it, you never go over these bits and the exam questions kill you. Particularly if they’re basic and you’re being daft.

I read over all the notes again and make A4 sheets of materials, processes and techniques common to the five courses I’m doing. This reduces the panic and makes sure you know the stuff that is really important.

If I have time I read through again and write my own questions and answers (Ashton’s idea, thank you!). Otherwise I get on with doing past papers.

I’m still in the writing up stage and will hopefully be done by next week when I head back to the Lond. It looks really boring (who thinks revision is fun?) but I do well, so it obviously works! 

Poor wet chickens hiding from the rain.

Before lunch I went down to the allotment with mum and gran (we call her Casey) to check the strawberries they planted the day before, and make sure the rabbits hadn’t got to them. Well, they had, so the friend who owns the crazy horse got an electric fence for us, offering me another ride in the process. I was slightly more nervous about this, but agreed to go (and miss roasted lunch!). It was extremely pleasant. She spent most of the time telling me I was too tense (gee, I wonder why. I was again riding an ex-racing horse) and that I almost fly out of the saddle when we are doing rising trot. Fun.

Part of mums allotment.

I got back from my ride and immediately got whisked off to Casey’s house (well, I whisked her off to drop her home) where I stayed the night (doing more revision!) I headed to Plymouth this morning, spent the day with Tom (revising) and also taking part in my second childhood, which is mainly buying LEMMINGS! I don’t know if anybody remembers this game. It was/is legendary! I’m going to wait to install it because I might not get anymore revision done. Good.

Some really cute sheep I helped shepherd. I should have a CROOK.

I came home, did yet more revision, fed the dogs and watched something called “Blood and Oil” which looked horrific, but totally drew us in (though mum and I are addicted to “Over the Rainbow” so I guess our taste is looking pretty bad right now). I then spent ages researching bug hotels and bee-hives for mums allotment. Toby and I are making THIS sometime in the next week and I’m really excited. I’m not sad, honest.