Year 12: In Retrospect

September

• First weeks of school. I learnt the ins and outs of the 6^th form block and started lessons earnestly in my original 5 choices – Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics & Music Technology. Compared to sitting a dozen GCSE subjects, we are able to go much more in depth at this level on each subject (though that does mean the exams are harder!)
• The school held a Fresher’s fair for new external students to find clubs that they wanted to join. As an internal, I already knew about most of them but helped man the stall for Audio-Visual (AV) to hopefully attract new members.

October

• The Senior Mathematics Challenge on October 4^th . I found this one easier compared to the Intermediate which I sat the year before relative to my skills at the time, and even managed to beat some of the Y13s in my year with a silver certificate. Unfortunately, I missed Kangaroo by only a few marks.

• Just before the October half term break, I decided to drop Physics, so I had more time to focus on my other subjects (and the free periods were helpful!). I did this because although Physics was a passion I didn’t need it for my university course, and I felt Music Tech was a more appropriate subject to complement the other three.

November

• Remembrance assembly. I must say, I am thankful that I currently live in peacetime, but am still forever thankful for the sacrifice made a century ago.

December

• Maths Inspiration Trip. We went to Saffron Walden and watched some lectures that discussed the mathematics of risks, lotteries, and juggling balls in sequences.
• The school’s Christmas Concert! As a member of the AV Team, this had me busy for days setting up the many microphones for the choir, including a special X-Y mic that washed over all the instruments. After they had been plugged into the sound desk and microphones had been checked, many of my friends from the Music department stunned the crowd that night with ensembles and songs.

January

• Planning for Charity Week began. I was put in charge of the Lip Sync Battle event and got to work designing a poster.
• My gaming prebuilt arrived in the mail and I spent the day installing driver after driver off Lenovo’s website. My overall rating of setup: 9/10, everything worked out of the box apart from the audio port which I was able to troubleshoot easily.

• AS Mocks, the preparation for the real thing to come in May. In my school mock examinations are in the exam hall like the real thing, which I will admit didn’t help the nerves, but I ended up doing better than I expected, especially in Music Tech. (Unfortunately train strikes ended up happening during this week, meaning I was nearly late to one of the exams!)

February

• Charity Week! A variety of events planned and run by students to raise as much money as possible. We smashed last year’s record in only two days, and apart from my own event, Lip Sync battle, my favourite event had to be the Food Contest where teachers had to chow down on baby food and chillies! The Showcase on Friday tied up the week and we had raised £12,000 in total as a team for two separate charities, Young Minds and a screening clinic.

March

• The school’s drama department had its biggest event of the year – Oliver! – meaning it was time for another week full of AV. This time, the school rented out roaming microphones for the dozen or so main actors, but for the musical songs like That’s Your Funeral or Oom-Pah-Pah we had to turn the microphones off to avoid lots of crackle. In the end, All the evening shows were wildly successful, and the actors did not disappoint.
• I began recording for my Music Technology coursework. There are two coursework pieces for the AS – a recording with common instruments (not including drum kit), and a technology composition using a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software, for which I used Logic 9 as provided by my school.

• An Oxbridge speaker came in to give us some information about applying and what to do before open days.

April

• I applied for the Co-chair position of the School Council and was successful, which means I’ll be leading the council next year.
• I finished off my coursework for Music Tech, where I recorded a bass, guitar, piano, and vocals. (When results come out I’ll review the exact process of how I did it, and some tips for other Music Tech takers!)

May

• AS Exam Season! It started with a bang – that bang being Further Mathematics, Core Paper 1, which was probably my hardest exam. Between the 13^th and the 24^th, I had an exam pretty much every single day, which could be stressful at times revising straight after an exam. Stay tuned for the results day post after the 15^th of August.
• During half-term, I visited Chicago. There’ll be a separate blog post for this one too.

June

• A school trip to a UCAS Fair, where universities from all around the country had stalls to learn more about them and collect souvenirs – I left with 4 satchel bags, but a friend of mine had over 11! In addition, discovered information about the majority of my five university choices and attended a sample CS lecture.
• I attended the first day of the ASMP’s Problem Solving Matters course, where we tackled Graph Sketching and Co-ordinate Geometry.
• Warwick and ICL Open Days. I liked the accommodation and WMG’s Cyber Security course which has strong industry links, one of my priorities.

July

• Cambridge’s Open Day. The sample lecture on Information Theory was very challenging and introduced a new concept in an easy-to-understand format while extending my previous knowledge on processes like binary searches.

• I attended the second day of the ASMP’s Problem Solving Matters course, where we explored Areas and Differentiation. After the third day in September, expect a blog post review on that!
• A school maths trip to another PSM event, where the tricky logarithm questions tripped me up for a while. 100% a topic to revisit and revise over the summer.
• My school’s Sports Day! I will forever have PTSD of carrying speakers onto the field and back. The track and field events were extremely competitive, from the lightning-quick 100m to the long distance 1500m, and the teachers enjoyed using the speakers to play Sweet Caroline – slightly bittersweet after we lost the Euros…

My Final Thoughts

My first year of sixth form had its ups and downs, highs and lows, busy and quiet moments. But overall, I had a blast and I’m super excited for next year and it’s challenges! But before then, there’s six weeks of summer to enjoy and “relax” in.

Thanks for reading this catchup and see you in the next post!