» School Projects

A-level psychology
Part of the A-level psychology course was to design, conduct and evaluate your own psychological study. So, I decided to do something a bit different than the 'suggestions' given by our lecturers (for the numpties), and mine was simple, but effective:

H1 - women looking at pictures of men after eating chocolate will find the men more attractive because of the release of...serotonin or something.

H0 - eating chocolate will have no effect on how attractive women perceive men to be

So, we have to fill in proposal forms and send them to the BPS, covering if any ethical issues will be raised, how we will deal with these, if they are justified and so on.

So, off I sends mine, with the working title: "Does chocolate make men more attractive?"

I got it back, and written in red pen in big letters at the top, was the legend: "Have you tried dipping them in it?"

I got an A


EDIT: I cocked up my results (ie couldn't be arsed to do them all so made some up realising I'd have more to write about if my experiment seemed a bit shit), so I have no idea if my hypothesis is valid or not. All female b3tans who want to volunteer to repeat the experiment click 'I like this'!
(Sat 15th Aug 2009, 11:22, More)

» Good Advice

My Nana
My Nana is an amazing person, who's had a very shit life. She was born in Latvia, and when she was a teenager she had to move to a refugee camp in Germany to escape the Russian invasion. She never saw any of her family again. When in the camp, she was raped, more than once. She married my Grandad when she was 20, and moved to England, despite not being able to speak the language. He was a violent alcoholic who didn't want kids, and pushed her down the stairs when she was 8 months pregnant, so she lost the child. He stole from anyone around them, and finally died when my mother was 16. His family, to this day, still blame her for his alcoholism and general cock-headedness, and refuse to speak to her, despite her seeing them as her only family for 25 years. She met another guy, who became very ill after they had only been together a short time, and became his carer for the rest of his life. On her 79th birthday last year, I spoke to her about her life, and how she had coped with the hardships she had suffered, and this is what she said to me:

"Well, you just have to get on with it, don't you?"

Legend.

Oh, and may I mention, that at 79, she still climbs the trees in her back garden to get the fruit, and visits her less able friends every day to help them out, and still finds the time to do catering at the Latvian club every week (about 100 people). She also loves a good piss-up with me and my mum, and she's hard as nails (Mr. Anodyne calls her Rambo).

My Nana is awesome.
(Mon 24th May 2010, 17:01, More)

» Sticking it to The Man

Pleh....
It's results day tomorrow, and I'm cacking myself over whether I'll get a 2.1 or a 2.2. I have averaged a 2.1 for the past two years, but am now breaking out the Tena Lady because I fear I've fucked it up at the last hurdle. However, everything about tomorrow represents me sticking it to the man, so whatever happens, I'll be proud as fuck.

Here's why:

1. I've done a degree in Law
2. I'm a girl (whatever your opinions, the fact is that 100 years ago, I couldn't have even graduated because of the fact that one of my chromosomes has an extra leg)
3. I'm from a very working class background
4. I've had a 28hr a week job my entire time through college and university just to pay my way
5. My partner (now fiancee) lost his father (and thus became an orphan at the age of 22) when I did my exams last year. I had to help his two brothers find a house. He is still grieving horrendously, as am I
6. I don't want to go into any of the major areas of law, so have had no mentor support


Apologies for the message, but at this point (13.5 hours before finding out), I need everything I can get to make me feel better. And I will let you all know as soon as I find out what my results are...



EDIT: 2.1 mofos! Thanks for all the support guys, you made me feel all fuzzy inside...
(Wed 23rd Jun 2010, 0:24, More)

» School Projects

Art GCSE
At GCSE I took Art, as I knew that if I wanted a 'proper job' one day I would have to take 'proper subjects' at A-level, so I saw it as my last chance to dick about a bit.

Now, I'm not the best at drawing, I can do it but I'm so impatient I can't be bothered with shading and whatnot, so I used to be quite inventive to avoid having to do much drawing. One of our coursework pieces was entitled 'My Town', so I made a sculpture of a church window out of plaster of paris bandage type stuff (may not be the real name of the substance) and stuck it to some paper on which I'd drawn a silhouette of some famous buildings in our city, then done 'sunsetty' sky at the top. Other girls in my class were all chavs, and even worse at drawing than me. They, in the same project, had pretty much all drawn a (lopsided) building with a cartoon of themselves at the front with 'my town' done in bubble writing at the top. My art teachers were lovely hippyish women who were obviously very frustrated and took the time to nurture me, let me come in at lunch to improve my skills and so on. I am still friends with one of them to this day.

Anyway, I digress.

The time came for the FINAL EXAM. So, what happens is, you get 2 weeks to prepare for a piece, research and so on. You're supposed to chart your progress through this, sticking pictures that have inspired you in a book and so forth. You then get 10 hours time (split up, obviously) to actually do it.

Now, as I have said, all the other girls in my class were chavtastic. There is invariably a 'fashion' theme you can choose (design a festival headdress, for example), and they all did this. Not ONE of them actually MADE the headdress, just spent 10 hours (ha ha) drawing it.

So, I went not one, but a MILLION times better. I filled 3 project books with my research into INSTALLATION ART. Oh yes. Now, I was a bit of a loner at high school, so nobody knew what I was planning to do.


Which is why they all looked a bit shocked when I came into the exam, where they were all sitting silently drawing, took off my school blouse (to reveal a vest top, pervs), tights and shoes, and started to make casts of my foot, leg, arm and hand (with the aforementioned bandagey stuff).

I made a cast of the top of a head too (vase) and wrote all over them and painted the nails, until, when placed on the floor, it looked like someone had sunk into it, with just the top of their head, outstretched arm, top of the leg and foot showing.

It was ace. I got the only A in the year.

I still have it and take it out from time to time to have a look. As I said before, I'm not a creative person, and seem to spend my life surrounded by musicians and artists, so it is nice to know that, before uni and research squished it out of me, I was good at creative stuffs.

On another note, I have a 2500 word essay due in on Tuesday, of which I have only written the introduction, and have spent all morning on B3TA before I go to work.... damn.


Length? Well I'm only 5 foot 1
(Fri 14th Aug 2009, 13:42, More)

» PE Lessons

Ah, PE...
Going to an all girl's Catholic school made it mandatory that we were 'taught' PE by an ancient sadist who may or may not have once been a woman. We called her Adolfa, and she retaliated by hating each and every one of us with a venomous passion which was somewhat akin with how Nick Griffin views non-indigenous Anglo Saxons. Or how non-indigenous Anglo Saxons feel about Nick Griffin. Or how everyone feels about Nick Griffin.

As was Adolfa's wont, all PE was done outside, unless there was ACTUAL SNOW on the ground. Our PE kit consisted of an Aertex polo shirt and a gym skirt. That was it. Trackie bottoms or even shorts were verboten. So all we did was play tennis, hockey, netball or rounders. In arse-biting cold and rain.

The school had, for some unfathomable reason, installed a full-size swimming pool about a year after I arrived. This was never used, as the only time they tried it, 29 out of 30 girls in every class had their period every week for two months. Smart.

PE sick notes had the same kind of street value as a medium sized shipment of heroin. The girls who had more 'grown-up' handwriting would rake it in every week, often charging the extortionate price of TWO cigarettes or a whole bag of Maltesers for one (you may now be able to see why we hated doing PE, given that all we did was smoke and eat chocolate).

The best times I had doing PE were when we played rounders (although I am quite adept at whacking an enemy in the ankles with a hockey stick. If provoked. And holding a hockey stick). Upon the announcement that we would be playing rounders, before the teams had even been picked, at least ten of those too unfortunate to have a sick-note, and even those who did, would immediately shout "DEEP FIELD!", and leg it up to the top of the hill next to the rounders field, which was covered with long grass, and listen to music and smoke until it was time to come in (I do now see the irony of us RUNNING up the hill, but we didn't want to stick around long enough for Adolfa to thwart our plans. I suspect that Adolfa reasoned - as much as a PE teacher can do so - that at least we had done some exercise). In addition to the smoking opportunities afforded us by the camouflage of the long grass at the top of the hill, it was also the perfect vantage point from which to perv at the lads from the posh all boy's school doing PE.

In all my years at that school, not one person ever hit the rounders ball even half-way towards where all the deep fielders sat. It was at least 150 yards away.

It does say something to their tenacity that they didn't just scrap the whole ridiculous exercise and give us an extra lesson of SOMETHING USEFUL (for most of the girls, this would have been lessons in how to keep their legs shut - 60% of girls from my year had at least one child by the time they turned 20).
(Thu 19th Nov 2009, 18:16, More)