It's about bloody time!

Well, exams are over - for now, at least. For most people this means chillaxing a bit after school, now that there's not quite so much pressure on them to cram in as much information as is humanly possible. But for me, there's something I want to make a start on, as I agreed upon at the beginning of the year. When it was time for New Year's resolutions, I told myself that when exams were over, I would get in shape. That time is now.

I find this a little bit of a difficult subject to talk about, as anyone who is overweight (though in my case the situation far transcends the 'overweight' mark - officially I'm in the 'morbidly obese' category) would sympathise with. It's not easy to talk about it - well, I suppose it's more the fact that I'm reluctant to talk about it, rather than it not being easy. It's still not quite the easiest thing to blab about, though.

See the thing is, most people have been in shape, then got out of shape, and then resolved to get back in shape. With me, this is not the case. I have never actually been in shape; strange as it may seem, I have never known what it is like to be of a healthy weight and size. Even in primary school I was overweight and struggled with cross-country, often I was left breathing so heavily that people thought I had asthma.

The thing with being overweight is that it's not a sudden thing - it's not a mess that suddenly appears on the floor that you can just pick up. It's a gradual thing, that happens slowly without you noticing, and then before you know it - BAM! You're 21-stone and classed as being morbidly obese.

I feel that I should make my feelings on this somewhat more clear. I'm not looking for sympathy here; I'm just trying to make it clear how I feel about being overweight. You know, I'm not overly bothered by it, but I am bothered enough by it that I want to make a change. I'm not sure if that makes much sense, but I hope it does.

I don't really know why I felt the need to post this. I shouldn't be boring you with my troubles, but I thought it was about time that I actually spoke about it. By speaking about it and telling people about it, it gives me more reason to put effort into trying to lose weight - or else face embarrassment at the face of my readers. Now that wouldn't be nice, would it? (Probably not, I should imagine.)

For now, I bid you good day:

Good day!

Facebook fools!

I must confess: although I intended to stay away from the Internet altogether, I only managed to stay off Twitter, DailyBooth and MSN. I do still go on Facebook. But hey, it's still an improvement, eh?

Anyway, something that's come to my attention lately is the amount of groups on Facebook that claim that there's a new 'Facebook Chat'. Most of these groups are called something like, "How to activate the new Facebook Chat! Join now!" What people fail to realise, however, is that these groups are only there because they want bucket loads of members. You'll notice that a lot of these groups don't have any posts on their wall - I wonder why.

What's even funnier is that people don't realise that, to begin with, Facebook would have said if they updated their chat. Another thing is that they would make it available to everyone, not just people who add their friends. Also, the so-called 'new Facebook chat' things that the groups use as their display pictures are actually screenshots of Mac applications superimposed over the top of the normal Facebook. On one of them they're actually cheeky enough to use iChat! On another they use the third party application Adium.

It strikes me as odd that so many people don't seem to notice that Facebook would make the new Chat feature available to everyone.

One other thing: people are even going so far as to follow the instructions the groups provide: which involves copy and pasting a piece of Java Script into the URL bar. BAD IDEA. I'm not saying that it's going to damage your computer, but putting any unknown link or code where you can't make out what it is from its URL is a bad idea. People might be redirecting you to a website which automatically starts a download of a virus or something. That may be the worst case scenario, but that's not to say that it couldn't happen.

Either way, it's still pretty funny.

Good day!

More on exams, and a bit about the Internet

I briefly touched on the subject of exams in yesterday's post, but I want to tell you about the horror I'm going through with the exams I'm sitting this week.

Well, there's nothing really that horrific about it. I'm just getting incredibly stressed about the exams, and for no good reason: there is always the opportunity of a re-sit. Which, as you probably know, I intend to do.

Today I had a Biology exam. I can't tell you how it went, since I'm actually writing this post in advance, but I can tell you how revision went: horribly. Gone are the days when my mind used to absorb knowledge like a sponge; I was sat at my desk for about an hour reading and re-reading the same question over and over again. It simply would not sink in. As you can imagine, this got me rather angry, and in my anger I tweeted this:

"I give up. Biology can go fuck itself. I don't care anymore."

Which, to an extent, is true. I've given up revising for the exams we sit this week. I already know that I'm not going to do well in them; there's still a part of Maths that I haven't learned, Biology isn't compatible with my brain, and Physics was just doomed from the start. However, I have decided that, contrary to what yesterday's post might suggest, I will put effort into learning what I need to know for the exams — but the re-sits, not the current exams. There's no point in me cramming now and doing badly in the exam and giving up. I might as well sit these exams now, if only to get a sense of what they're like, and then I will arrange with my teachers that I go in during free lessons to go over work. To keep what I learn fresh, I'm going to ask the teachers for huge amounts of past papers and exercise sheets which I will do when I get home from school every day, though I'll probably do the sheets weekly.

I know this makes me sound like a massive geek, but I really want to do well at school: if only to get into Uni to study English.

People who know me well enough will know that I am practically an internet addict. I am. The internet takes up far too much of my time lately, so I've cut all my connections on social networking sites. I will no longer be using DailyBooth, Twitter, Facebook or MSN Messenger. As a consequence, I should have far more free time on my hands; time which I can use for school work, reading (God knows I need to catch up on my reading) and to finally get a handle on some of the things I've let slide over the past few years. If you know what I'm talking about, well done you for figuring it out.

For now, however, I'm going. I'll still post here (hopefully) twice a week. I've no idea what I'll talk about, but I'm sure I'll find something.

Good day!

You know what I'm talkin' about

That's right, those dreaded exams are once again upon us; though this year, they do seem to be posing a far greater threat to our wellbeing. Aside from being possibly the most difficult exams we've sat thus far, I seem to have lost all motivation to do well in my chosen subjects.

I've always been a fan of English Literature: both the subject, and literature in and of itself. As such, I would ideally like to go into something involving English Literature when I leave school; after thinking about it - and believe me, I gave it an almighty amount of thought - I came to the decision that I want to be an English teacher. Preferably, as you may have guessed, of English literature.

Now! The point I wish to make is this: the way to get into teaching English is by studying it at University. So why, on God's green Earth, must I have three A-levels to get onto the course? It strikes me as odd that in order to get onto a literature course you need at least two other subjects at A-level; and you have to do well in them, mind you. What about people who have no other interest but in English literature? Are they denied their chance to study it at University because they can't tell their chloroplasts from their mitochondrion?

If it was up to me, people would be allowed to study whatever they liked, regardless of how many other subjects you're good at. I'm struggling to see what significance Mathematics or Biology would play in securing someone a place at University to study English. I dunno, it all just strikes me as a bit odd.

Your thoughts? If there are any readers, drop me a comment below. I'm interested to hear what you think of this situation.

Physics = poo

Despite it being a snow day, I've been in revising for hours. I've been focussing on Physics, since that's the one I need to revise most. What have I learned? Well, one thing. That I literally cannot answer a single question in the exam paper. I've been stressing about it all day, and it's really getting me down. So I thought to myself, "You know what? Fuck Physics. There's no point struggling and wasting time with a subject you don't understand. Leave it alone, drop it after the exam, and stick to revising the subjects you know you can actually do well in." So that's what I'm doing.

I'm leaving Physics alone. I can't cope with it much longer. Even Mr Webb won't believe me that I just can't do Physics, despite my having to call him over every time I tried to answer a question in the past paper. So fuck it.

I'm going to revise Maths and Biology. Biology is easy enough as it only involves learning things. There's no working stuff out involved in Biology, so it's probably the easiest subject I have an exam in. And there's no point revising English because a) it's not a real subject; you can get with making it up in the exam and b) you can't really revise for it.

So that's that.