were a weird mixed bag...

I got A's in English Lit and Classics (with full marks in the English paper, and the Greek Tragedy Paper), but was one mark off an A in both RE and History (were I did significantly better in the papers that I'd thought I'd done poorly in).

One mark. One mark. ONE MARK

That's....annoying.

Exams is dead.

AS was a lot friendlier than GCSE, I think, or at least in terms of exams. No matter how much harder they might be, five exams is a lot easier to cope with than twenty one. Apart from the 3 hour killers. Hell is a three hour combined Religious Ethics/ Jewish Scriptures (don't ask. We were told it was Black, Liberation and Feminist Theology) paper, involving eight essays.

But it's done now. And onto A2. Yup, apparently this next month where neither pupils nor staff can be arsed is vital to our success. Or something. Especially the huge amount of work to be done in History. You know, the subject I'm dropping in September.

I probably need the time for English Lit, however, given we're starting the comparative coursework. I've picked Hamlet and Gormenghast, which should just about kill me. Haven't decided on a theme yet; maybe insanity, or isolation. Or I might focus on the Gertrudes. Shakespeare's is misrepresented, Peake's is awesome in a bodice and wig.

More sleep now. I really should not be still feeling this drained.

Today has been weirdly lovely, weather wise, which has been very conducive to revision. I've been able to play cello outside, which is slightly surreal, but the sound is so much richer. Of course, my joy is slightly dampened by the knowledge that today is both the beginning and the end of the British Summer. Come June, and half the country will be underwater, just like last year. And the year before.

Finished Mieville's The City & The City. Disappointing, in a word. There was so much potential, the first half was wonderful, full of tantalising glimpses and promises of strange and cool mysteries and academic disputes to be solved.But then the second half swung around, and the plot devolved into a dull detective novel, with a very unsatisfying conclusion. It's not a bad book, per say, just not anywhere near as good as I'd expected from Mieville (though that said, out of the four novels I've read by Mieville, only The Scar has ever been completely wonderful, with a satisfactory ending).

Back to revising now, joy. I think the thing I resent most about exams is the large amount of time either spent revising, or feeling guilty for not revising, and how both detract from all the things you've suddenly thought of that you'd rather be doing instead.

Once again I have failed to update this in...an embarrassingly long time. *sigh*

Exams are not fun. I'm confident I've got A's in English and Classics, given how wonderful the questions were for Classics (Essay on Clytemnestra's role in the Agamemnon? There may well be a God after all), although English was..strange. The AS course requires not only you to write two coursework pieces on two tragedies (in my case, Emilia's role in Othello, and Linda's role, and what she represents, in Death of a Salesman), limited to 1500 words each (WTF?), but also an exam half of which requires you to write about three entirely unrelated texts, devoting only twenty minutes to each one. The questions, obviously, have to be stupidly vague.

But, yeah, I think I'm confident about those. Re and History nor so much. Largely because of the stupid amount I need to know for the horrile, 3 hour RE exam, and my complete lack of knowledge for the British History paper. History is getting dropped so hard in August.

I really can't wait for these things to be over so I can get back to my life. Unfortunately, having seen several previews for The Sims 3, I think I can say goodbye to that idea.

Also, less interested in Warwick than I was after going to the open day. Coventry's not somewhere I really want to spend the next three years of my life, and I'm thinking the campus might be a little too enclosed for my liking. That and the lecturer giving the English talk was something of a prat.