Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Today, I'm going to be talking about how results day went this year for year elevens. This is going to be my 21st and last post in my 1 Year To Get To College series. Sorry there was a bit of a mix up in the number of posts I was up to because I wasn't really counting after a while but I'm glad this series is ending on a high! I can't believe it's basically been a year since I started this series. You can check out all of my 1 Year To Get To College posts here to see how I've been getting on with my whole GCSE year, with school and Covid-19. There have been a lot of memories made! It was a bit of a stressful time this year because of the outbreak of the Coronavirus. I couldn't do my exams because it was a risk to do that at the time and I had to do homeschooling for most of the exam period so the events that followed from March were certainly unprecedented. It was difficult to get used to the idea of fi...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Recently, I've been doing the big clear out of year 11 and I got rid of many of my old school books. Since I'm doing IB  (a 6 subject course) instead of A-level next year, I thought it would be wise to keep my year 11 and some of my year 10 school and revision books like science and maths, just in case I forget any useful information and I need to return back to my notes that I made previously, even if I am just doing the basic versions of some of these subjects. If I decide later on in the year that I don't need them anymore, then I'll definitely get rid of them but I just thought that for the time being they should stay, especially since we don't know what the future may hold and the notes I made in year 11 might actually be useful in online learning and stuff.  However, things were piling up and piling up and I just had to get rid of a few things to free up some space in my room. That space will of course be...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I feel like I'm saying this a lot at the moment but recently (for the first time in a long while) I went on a walk with one of my friends. I found it really nice because for once there was someone different that I could talk to in person. It was thundering and tipping it down and I was wearing some shorts and a hoodie (probably the worst outfit choice ever but oh well😂). However, if I was going on a walk, I would have rather it be then instead of another month later. We kept ourselves distanced from each other but we talked about the lost time. It's coming to be around 4 months since the schools shut down and what a strange old time it's been since then. I was, like many people, completely unprepared for the sudden Covid-19 situation. On the same evening that it was announced that the exams were cancelled, I was trying to be a naively diligent year 11 student and I went to an English  revision session after school. I ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Around Wednesday last week, my teachers sent me some work online to do at home. They needed a bit of time to get everything prepared so that was why it came midweek but nevertheless, I got down to doing some English first thing in the morning. Although the work is going to be useful for the next stage of our education (sixth form and apprenticeships), since we require our knowledge from GCSE in order to move through school, it did take a while for me to get in the mode of independently working from home. As much as I know how important it is to do this work, there's still part of me that does feel like its all a bit pointless to be honest, even though it isn't. I guess it's because we've been conditioned to work for mainly the exams. However, as my history teacher said, it's good to work for the sake of learning sometimes because as much as it's drilled into our heads otherwise, the exams are not the be ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I began this week, thinking that we were still going to have school for a couple weeks. It ended with me finding out that because of the Coronavirus, our exams would have to be cancelled and we wouldn't have proper school for a good six months. I'll be honest, I knew that maybe the schools would be shut down but I didn't realise that the government would go to the extent of cancelling the exams but it makes sense, since it means that everyone is social distancing. However, this means that I've finished dance completely at school. We were supposed to come up with our final group piece for the dance show, to complete our external component but that can no longer happen because of the situation. There have been a lot of issues in my group for getting everything done so when I heard the news, I guess I was kind of relieved that we wouldn't have to do it. That does put a massive question mark on how we'll be g...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I'm certain you've heard about the Coronavirus pandemic all over the media and the news so I'm sure you all already know what it is. When I first heard about it, however, I didn't really know much about the virus or how quickly it would spread. I now know that it originated in China because people there live in close proximity with their animals and their low levels of hygiene caused the virus to mutate and evolve to become a potential danger to humans. I thought that the virus spread because people travelled and whilst that may have been how it started, many people seem to be just randomly getting the virus. This includes a couple people in my area, Cambridgeshire. It's not the worst a pandemic could get because despite how contagious it seems to be, the death rate on the grand scheme of things is pretty low and it only seems to affect the elderly or people with underlying health issues like where their immun...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  If you've read my post from Wednesday, you'll know that for some reason, last week did not go entirely to plan. I've been having a lot of issues with coming up with a final piece for dance and my group has struggled to come as one and co-operate. I really want to do well in this, since it is my GCSE and I'm hoping to do dance as an A-level but I'm not going to lie, I was a bit worried this week. However, I soon found out that most groups in my class were in the same position and we were not alone. On Friday after school, I got with my group and we actually got a minute and a bit of our routine done. The future is still uncertain but this is progress. I'm hoping to maybe get at least two minutes done this week. This year in general has been challenging because this is my final year of secondary school and really, it's all been about getting me and everyone else prepared for the exams. It's not only ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  This week has been challenging so far. From Monday, I feel like a lot of things went wrong. This is a natural process, things can go wrong for everyone and we just have to learn to deal with the problems and adapt to them.  For the past probably month and a bit, I've been struggling my way through my own dance that I came up with in my group and unfortunately, sufficient progress hasn't been made. This was mostly due to our complicated ideas. The theme of our piece was We Live and We Learn and we had to come up with a routine that represented the diversity of people within our local community, under that title. Our original idea was to talk about basically everyone (LGBTQ, different cultures, and the poor) through the mediums of different dance styles. From the beginning, I wasn't really 100% on the overall theme of our ideas; I thought that maybe it could work but everything just seemed a bit cluttered and I thoug...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  When people say that interviews can go both ways, believe them. I've been talking a lot about this competitive sixth form college that I've been really trying hard to get to. I went to their open evening and the students seemed really nice and the subjects actually seemed quite interesting. Consequently, I was really quite interested in going there. I went to this other sixth form that I was initially quite interested in, which does the International Baccalaureate, as they offered small taster sessions for year 10 students and I really wanted to go. I was quite disappointed as some of the subjects initially seemed quite wishy washy and not clear and their punctuality was not great, so this other competitive college seemed like the best place to go. Some people I knew really well, also expressed an interest in going there so I thought I could go there too. However, I was really unimpressed by the interview they gave. Firs...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  There's still a bit to go but I have been looking online for a prom dress that I might like, even though I'm pretty sure that my mum and my sister have got it all planned out for me. I think they might be more excited than I am, just a little bit. My sister's going to do my hair and my make-up and my mum's going to decide on my dress. I don't really think there's anything left for me to really decide upon, is there? Oh yeah, transport. I saw some people at my sister's prom arrive in a cardboard car that they made themselves. I think something like that would be sufficient, don't you think?😂😂 I don't really care what I arrive in to be honest. As long as it's not my dad's old car, I'm sure it will be fine. I only live down the road so I could just walk to the school but I think that will be pretty awkward. But no, my dress is going to be my dress! I've got quite dark hair and a...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I think you've heard me talk a lot about endurance in the past on this blog and there's never been a better time that this applies to me, then now. There's an art to getting up and feeling motivated for the day ahead. Especially on Mondays where that first day really depicts how the rest of the week is going to go. For me, everyday of the week counts for me as I enter the final stage, dare I say, of the GCSE period. I'm attending probably as many revision sessions as possible, during lunch and after school. When you're reading this, I'll have a biology revision session at lunch and an English revision session after school. I'm more determined then ever to get into this fairly competitive sixth form college in my area and I really want to do my best, as I know it is possible for me, so I'm really giving it everything I've got. However, there's no doubt that I definitely feel a little more t...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  It's a couple weeks into the term and there's already quite a lot to think about. Today, I found out that one of my two sixth form applications was acknowledged and the other was still being sent to the provider. This most likely means that interviews are coming up, where sixth forms will ask questions about you and you have to tell them all the things you like doing and what you're good and bad traits are, etc. I'm not nervous at all for these. If anything I'm quite excited because it will be an excellent chance to talk about myself and to promote my talents. I'm hopefully going to mention my blog to them, since I'm hoping to take English as one of my courses in sixth form. However, I'm still very much on the fence about where I want to go, to be honest. I had it in my head for so long that I wanted to go to this quite competitive college but after a conference day that we had about post 16, I re...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I think that the so called 2010s have been an evolutionary set of years. Personally for me, since I'm only 15 years old and going into the year 2020, there's a lot to say about this past decade because I learnt how to read, write, and generally deal with life. Going from a 6 year old in 2010 to a 15 year old in 2019, obviously I have gone from a child to a teenager and have grown drastically, I hope, in in intelligence, personality, and wisdom. However, there's a lot more to be acknowledged about myself because at the age of 7 years old in 2011, I first started doing dance properly. I did commercial street and I have really, I believe, excelled in it as of thus far and it has actually become one of my favourite styles of dance that I still continue to do and enjoy. However, I've also grown in confidence ever since I published my first article on this blog at the age of 12 years old. It was only a What I Eat In A D...