Happy

This week I am finding myself extremely happy with where I happen to be at this point in this course. Having had a few "issues" last year I am now beyond the point where last year I had to leave the course due to the "issues". I foresee absolutely no reason whatsoever for history to repeat itself.

Since my last blog entry I have changed jobs and now am with an employer who is far far more accommodating to my studies and gives me shifts which are perfect to fit in with the course and give me plenty of time in which to concentrate on my studies.

I was very pleased to complete my history essay without any problems. I discovered though I only handed half the essay in as I put the second half underneath a folder on my table, I must have been reading over it and been distracted but I am pleased to have completed it without real difficulty.

Again I have been reviewing my Spanish notes and am concentrating on building my vocabulary at the moment. I am finding our recent topic on reflexive verbs fairly easy to comprehend, although I need to concentrate a little more on endings to regular verbs to make sure one is not confused with the other.

I believe I have gathered now all the neccessary material for my Investigating Europe topic - Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. I spent the October week in Turkey and tried to find out some extra details being in the country he managed to liberate, however I could not find any museum or historical place to help further my knowledge where I was staying, however I could come to the conclusion of just how much he was and still is adored by the Turkish poeple through his appearance on money, people placing posters of him on there window outward for others to see, plus one very large statue in the town centre of Marmaris where I was staying. I have the foundations to start writing out my project, though I will spend this week breaking down the material I have into the appropriate subtopics with a view to starting to put pen to paper writing the first draft by the end of this week. I will still try to get a personal opinion of someone based in Turkey, either through some of my Turkish friends, or perhaps try to contact a Turkish parliamentarian figure, similar to our MPs.

The week past has been beneficial in organising my study time more efficiently. I found it much easier dedicating at least two hours to review my lessons from the day just passed. Typically during the week, I spent about fifteen minutes reviewing vocabulary and grammar learned during Spanish classes, repeating vocabulary five to ten times, followed by an hour of the subject which needed consideration most at the time. I would then return to reviewing Spanish to see how much of the detail had been retained, and continued to practise on weaker areas, eg ensuring accents were in appropriate places, spelling was correct etc. My initial intention for this week will be to know the parts of the body in Spanish thoroughly using the techniques I applied last week as this proved to be consistently successful in learning to retain the information.

I spent some more time seeking out information on Ataturk, though I had been horrified to discover my pen drive has at some point along the way entirely wiped out all information I had saved. This makes things much more difficult for me as I do not have a PC at home to enable me to find the info previously found. Fortunately I had written my plan for Investigating Europe on paper as opposed to digital format therefore I still have my basis to follow and recover some detail again. Next Monday I shall be travelling to Turkey for a week's holiday during the October break so I hope that I will be able to find some in depth material and source from the country I am basing my topic around. A turkish bath wont be out of the question though...

On Friday we were given our first real essay to produce for History, to question the successfulness about Chartism. As yet I have not started to look into this in detail as yet. I will over the course of this week spend in the region of half an hour to one hour daily to almost daily reviewing the most important parts to the topic and hopefully come the weekend I will be able to consider producing a plan to start the essay, with the aim to have this started by the time I leave for Turkey.

I shall be entirely honest and state I have absolutely no intention to study this coming Sunday as it will be my 25th birthday and I suspect a decent quantity of alcoholic beveridges shall be reaching my pallette.

Until next time, older and wiser.....

Maybe.............

Early October

Things have progressed well in the past week. I am happy with my finalised topic for Investigating Europe. I have chosen to focus on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his effect towards the liberation of Turkey, and up to his influence on modern Turkey. I have managed to collate a lot of material to work with in reaching the start to my essay. I have planned a number of topics, and have managed to break these into subtopics and feel quite comfortable to progress working on smaller chunks, which I feel will make this essay a lot easier to control. I would still like to find a few more sources of material on Ataturk, newspaper articles, Turkish history reference books etc to have a number of reliable sources besides the internet.

I feel I am happy with my progress with Maths too. I have reached the finalised writing to the project for learning outcome 5, which I will only need to spend a further half hour to an hour completing. Following this, all I have left to do will be the test for LO4. I will spend a half hour tonight reviewing my material for this, and on Thursday night too in order to be happy for sitting the final test.

I had less time to study Spanish this weekend as I was down in Newcastle. I am focussing on building my vocabulary up in relation to things about me, my life and my family. Tonight I shall read through my materials to do this, and I think I will sit down and try to write a page or two in Spanish to see how much vocabulary I have managed to build up, and where I can stretch myself.........

The Journal Begins

Tuesday 22nd

Literature

Analysing of the poem Valentine by Carol-Anne Duffy, including language and styles used. Set an essay, 500 words long analysing a poem i enjoyed based on love, hate, birth, death or jealousy. Finding a poem which I found interesting to me has proven to be difficult. I have come across a few rather nice poems, yet few of which have managed to fit the criteria of the original question. I finally settled on a poem called Anthem for Damned Youth by Wilfred Owen. I have spent a few hours in due course over the week since studying and analysing this and have laid the foundations to my essay. The main meat of the poem will come together this evening. More on this later...

Hello

Hello everyone. This is the beginning of my blog for the course. Plenty more to come so hello and ttfn...