Do You Remember..

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Do you remember the primary school days where the homework would be coloring in a picture to put on the front of your jotter? I wish that still happened. Everyone says that senior year (6th year) is the best year of your life. I have found this to be one of the hardest years school wise, if I’m honest. I mean.. I don’t really understand it because I’m only doing three subjects. That’s the least subjects I have ever done, but it just feels much harder than the rest of my school years. It’s probably because of the pressure of finishing school forever as well I guess. So much happens in 6th year and its SO expensive. Seriously. Take a look at this!

6th year jumper – £15
School dance – £10 (although to be fair I didn’t go so I shouldn’t really be adding it)
After party – £7
Common room – £10
6th year photo – £25
Year book – £15
Social – £30

I mean.. come on. That’s over £100 just for being in your last year of school. its great.

Among all of that, we had prelims in January and yesterday we got our report cards. I’m really weird. I get so excited for report cards. Honestly, I was so excited to go to school yesterday. I just love them because its your school year on a few sheets of paper and its all organised and neat. Plus your prelim grades are in them. I managed to achieve the grades I was aiming for in the prelims!! woooooo! Although, they don’t really matter because we can’t appeal anymore 😦 But its still encouraging to know that I’m not failing. I got:

Higher Art – B
Higher Music – B
Higher English – C

My English teacher thought I was going to fail and so did I to be honest, because I really do find English hard so I’m glad that I passed.

My Art teacher said: (43 out of 60 – this is with out the practical. Art prelims are only theory)
Lisa has worked hard which has resulted in huge progress in the standard of her painting and drawing. She has produced a vibrant unit which shows skill in media handing and strong use of colour. She did reasonably well in the written exam but I feel she could easily improve this mark bu further study of her designers in particular. Her design unit is off to a bold start but she will have to make sure at this level to show some refinement in the work she produces. In the next few weeks she should take advantage of help after school to push her through this final stage of the course.

My English teacher said: (17/30, 11/20 and 12/20)
Lisa has put a lot of effort into improving the standard of her work this term. Despite initially struggling with the demands of the course, she had made a concerted effort to familiarise herself with a challenging novel and add detail to her responses to textual analysis questions. She now needs to work on planning for critical essays, focusing how topic sentences can be used to refer to the task and add coherence to an argument or line of thought. She should take time to proof-read her work ensuring that sentencing and general expression is clear. I would also like to hear a little more from Lisa in class discussion. If she can make an effort to offer her opinions, this will help prepare her for the final internal assessment of talk at the end of February. The deadline for the writing folio is March and it is important that her essays are examples of her best work by this time.

And my Music teacher said:
Instrument 1 Guitar 19/30 – Lisa has been putting a lot of effort into her playing – she lacks confidence and panics when she makes a mistake. try hard to put errors behind you and just keep going!
Instrument 2 Voice 20/30 – Lisa has a nice voice and this is a good grade, but she should aim to improve on this by working on projecting her voice and trying to add more style.
Inventing – You have produced some reasonable ideas. With a little bit more work, making sure you use and identify a range of concepts, your inventions will reach the criteria to pass. 
Listening – 21/40 This is a reasonable mark for this element at this stage of the course. With continued effort both in class and at home, Lisa should be able to improve Before May.

Lisa has consistently worked hard. She should have more confidence in her performing and continued revision of listening and literacy concepts will help secure her grade.

So overall, I am really happy with it! Now… time for exams. THE LAST EVER HIGH SCHOOL EXAMS.

When A Good Day Is Great.

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accommodation, Acoustic Guitar, application, art, Art study, beautiful, church, college, Competition, creative, English, Essay, faith, God, guitar, hard work, Higher, life, love, music, Music Department, Music Practical, Music Program, Music theory, painting, Perfoming, personal, Personal Statement, Perth College, practice, Reflective, school, Scotland, singing, Stage, student, Student Union, Studying, train, travel, UHI, UK, university, Voice, youth group

Today was going to be a good day. I am excited for the Perth College Open Day tomorrow (like how I slipped that in there? More later.) and my Orthodontist appointment was over so I no longer had to worry about it. But a few things made my day even better… Firstly, in music I finally understood how to play a song that I had been struggling with. For me, this is ace because I want to do well in this subject and it stresses me out a lot when I just can’t grasp something. Then, in English I got my Personal/Reflective essay back and passed it at Higher Standard. Woop! I think it might have been a NAB because we didn’t get grades. Just a pass or a fail. So I am so thankful for that..! English is flipping hard. Then… then… in Art I have been working on a piece and it was seriously going horrifically. We had our reviews and the standard of my work was not at all Higher level. Then, I started this piece again, I have been going to the Art Department in my free periods and now its competing with one of the best Higher Art pieces in the department. Oh yeeea! I don’t usually brag about stuff like this but I am kinda proud of it because I really was struggling. It shows though that extra time and hard work pays off. A picture of it will be at the bottom of this blog post.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering where this sudden Perth College Open Day came from. Well, basically, I am planning on applying for German at a couple of universities and Music at some colleges. I mean, I’m applying for German because thats ‘my subject’ if you know what I mean. Like, some people are associated with being good at sciences or maths or English or art but I am good at German. However, it isn’t exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life. I enjoy it (most of the time) and I’m good at it but I actually want to study Music much, much more. So, I am going to Perth College Open Day because they have one of the best Music programs in the UK and I am hoping I will fall in love with it so that I will have even more motivation for it. I spend a lot of my free periods in the music department. I love going into a practice room and being able to just play and sing between classes. Sometimes I don’t feel particularly productive but I always want to go to the music department. That’s the thing about music. There isn’t a lot I can do in any mood I’m in but with music, I can be happy, sad, disappointed or confused but I’ll still always go back to my little practice room. I am gradually gaining confidence though, so this is good. Yesterday at youth group I sat, played guitar and sang for ages. People were walking past and around me and singing with me and I didn’t seem to mind. So we are getting somewhere. I would never have been able to do that a few months ago. Slowly but surely 😉 Anyway, back to Perth. Tomorrow I have the day off school to take a train down to the college. I have a tun of homework to do on the train or if I get there early (which I most likely will because I gave myself 2 hours to get from the train station to the college. It takes half an hour to walk to the college. Lol!) I am so excited and nervous! I will also post some pictures of the college so you can see! 🙂 

You’re Beautiful Cover and School Rantings.

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You always know when I have a tun of homework and don’t particularly feel in the mood to do it because I procrastinate a lot. I play guitar and it makes me feel productive and like I’ve spent my day actually doing something. So this song is the result of yesterday procrastination;)

 
However, tomorrow its back to business. Like, I’m not even joking when I say I have an absolute tun of homework… I have to read a German book and write a paragraph for each chapter, Practice 2 songs on guitar (which we’re recording when we get back… and I can’t play it all yet….), work out chords for 2 songs (and man… its like 20 chords for each piece!), practice 1 song for voice (which we’re also recording when we get back..), finish my theory listening workbook and do maths homework. You see, I’m not exaggerating. I keep going on about it because I’m actually seriously stressed out and nervous about it and this is where I can just get it out of my system haha!

I have been playing and recording so much music lately because it really relaxes me. Or, it feels like a lot. More than I normally record anyway. I wish Highers were as easy as Standard Grades… I passed them with flying colours (apart from Maths obviously 😉 ) but Highers are not easy for me. The thing is, I actually really love school… I don’t want it to be nerve racking all the time. The thing about me though, is that I get stressed out so easily and nervous so easily. I don’t even know why but its so annoying because I really really want to enjoy my last year of school 🙂 On that happy note, I should probably go to sleep! Its 10.15pm and my eyes are barely staying open. I hope you enjoy my cover. I think its one of my favorites so far 🙂 Thank you so so much for all of your encouragements. Keep smiling!

 

Challenging Myself.

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It feels strange, being in my last year of high school. I remember when my brother was in sixth year. I thought he was so old and much like an adult. I don’t feel old.. in fact, because of my height, I feel like I could pass as I first year. Last week, I was buddying for the Primary sevens that are coming to secondary school after the summer and I kid you not, many of them were taller than me. I mean, it is slightly worrying but at the same time I do actually love being small. I just had to laugh because I doubt they realized that I’m actually a sixth year. Anyway, this is my last year of school so I wanted to challenge myself a bit.

This year I chose Higher Modern Studies (because I’m so bad at English so I need some literacy subjects) Intermediate 2 maths (bad idea!), Advanced Higher German (Currently trying to convince Edinburgh College to make an acceptation and let me do open learning because apparently our school don’t have the syllabus for this level) and Higher Music. Maths is just not my thing. I mean really… I am literally incapable. But I’m trying. I will stay at least until I receive my exam results because if I didn’t get a good grade in Higher RMPS then I will re-take that and drop Maths. Anyway, Music. I have missed a year of music and therefore I’m pretty out of practice with the theory side of things so this alone is a challenge for me. However, my music teacher is so so patient and does anything he can to help me. On top of this, I chose acoustic guitar and voice as my two instruments. Acoustic guitar? no problemo. Voice? totally out of my comfort zone. I mean 1, this means singing solo infront of people. 2, this means singing without my guitar. 3, this means being tested on my vocal range. As you can imagine, voice is really testing my confidence. Which I don’t have a lot of, to be honest. But this is part of the reason I chose voice. All I want to do is be able to sing without shaking like a leaf. Its actually extremely annoying and I really want to have more confidence because music is something that I love.

My friend is helping me in music because he is also doing voice and plays piano so we don’t need the teacher all of the time. However, yesterday I went into my own practice room and practiced ‘ A Change In Me’ which is from Beauty and The Beast. My teacher gave me the CD so I could practice and it was going really well singing with no one there. Then my friend came in and asked ‘Are you winning?’ and I replied ‘I am actually’… bad idea.. this meant he wanted to hear it. I always sang really quietly so both the teacher and my friend could barely hear me but yesterday I just had to try harder. I asked him to stand where I couldn’t see him so I would be less nervous. But I sang. And I sang louder and it was so nerve racking. I could hit the high notes but I stopped because I was scared I’d mess up but it was ok,he helped me because he knew I could do them.But that was enough for one day. The thing is, I will get more confident and eventually I’ll be able to sing it all with people watching but that was quite an achievement for one day to be honest haha! I’m just trying to challenge myself and praying that I’ll get more confident because music is something that I love.

above, I linked ‘A Change In Me’ so if your interested you can listen to the song I’m practicing 🙂 But I realized that I think the version I’m doing at school is bit higher so its actually easier to sing with this video. Maybe I’ll ask if I can sing in a little bit of a lower key. Failing that, I can cope with the higher notes if I have to haha!