What's Next?

So now all the exams are over and most of us BTEC students are making the final push for the deadline, it’s important to think about what is next? Some of you (like me) instantly think “Summer! I’m gonna chill and just party all summer!” Although that’s nice and I encourage that, I think we should think about the V word. Volunteering.

Volunteering is a big part of what makes you stand out at uni and soon we will all be writing our personal statements, and naturally we will be making ‘statements’. Something along the lines of “I’m a very energetic and proactive student” but you’ll have to proof that you are. Volunteering is the best way to do that. I’m not saying spend your ENTIRE summer volunteering, enjoy yourself. Just because you aren’t in college it doesn’t mean you should stop developing yourself.

So what are my plans? Some of you may have noticed I have been going on about NCS for a long time now, granted maybe a little too much, but I have applied and successfully become a NCS Volunteer. I’m due to start on the 27^th of July and I can’t wait. After that I’m going to have a little look around and see if any volunteer positions catch my eye. Buuuuttt I won’t lie I am going to have a lot of fun during the summer, I’m hopefully going to Leeds Festival so that should make an interesting blog for you guys ;).

Short and sweat, have a good summer, use your time wisely. But most of all, enjoy yourself no matter what you do :)

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5 Things I Wish I Knew At The Start Of Year 12

Now that year 12 is drawing to a close I’ve found myself looking back and wishing that I knew things that I knew now that I didn’t back then.

1.    The first year of college isn’t a mess around – At first I and a lot of my friends thought that you could work moderately hard and just get through the first year on a backseat, but we were totally wrong. Luckily my main subject is a BTEC so aiming for the top grade is standard really but with my maths I did that and ended up failing my first resit. That was a wake up call and a very frustrating one too.

2.   Tutors are there to help -  For the first few months I was one of those students that if I got stuck I wouldn’t ask for help, I’d keep going at it and get it wrong all the time. It gets you more and more frustrated and it will annoy your tutors. Just ask them for help, it’s not weakness and it doesn’t make you stupid it shows that you are keen to learn.

3. Applying yourself is good – It took me quite a while to take opportunities that college put in my path. It took two presentations for me to sign up to NCS and looking back I should have done it the first time around. Now that I take whatever will benefit me, I’m on the student executive (student association, it got a ‘re-brand’ today) and student ambassadors. Both have a lot of involvement with schools and events run in the college.

4.  Free periods aren’t for relaxing – I realised that the free periods on your timetable aren’t there for you to meet friends and talk for an hour. They are there for you to catch up on work and keep productive in your day. Use them wisely.

5.   You don’t have as much time as you think – Deadlines are set for a reason, not for you to just do the work, it’s the maximum time needed for you to do the work that is set. You can’t just relax for a week and just rush to get it done the next week. Treat your deadlines like the finishing time of an exam, that extra time you have is to make sure you got everything right and to check if you missed anything.

Those are the 5 things I wish I’d known at the start of year 12.

It’s crazy to think that in 3 weeks time I would have finished my first year of college. It really has flown by and I do have a few regrets of not using my time better than I could have. But aside from all that it has been amazing and I’ve met so many amazing people and I started writing this blog. I hope I continue to write in my second year. See you in the next one :)

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Exams and Other Things

First off I’d like to apologise for the embarrassing lack of posts, it’s been a very busy month for me.

My biggest excuse the addition to the family! My little sister Ruby was born around 3 weeks ago and let me tell you, she has a really good set of lungs! She could scream the house down if she wanted to! Here she is :) So far I’ve managed to keep away from nappy changing, buuutt I have a feeling I won’t be able to avoid that much longer.

Anyway enough about my family/social life. Why have I been busy you might ask? You don’t have any exams Jayson? Well I did have my maths resit… Smashed it… Obviously… But seriously I was revising every single day for maths so if I fail again I don’t deserve to walk this earth.

It’s not just my maths exam either, nope. The course work is piling up! I mean right now I should be doing a massive line of merits and distinctions, but no I’m here writing this blog *hangs head in shame*. It’s only because I’ve been getting a few emails off of you guys (never going to get used to that by the way) and I kinda miss writing casually like this.

I was thinking, maybe if you guys want me to talk about something, maybe an issue that you have with college that you think I and everyone else could relate to, I could write it for you? I mean I want to make this a little more down deep and personal. So just drop me some suggestions in the comments here, tweet me or just go with what most of you are doing, just email me :)

Twitter - @Jayson__Knott