Picking up a Course in Your Second Year

Today I’m going to talk about my experience with trying to pick up another course in my second year. Let me give you a little bit of background. When I originally applied to this college I wanted to do Business Studies and Psychology, but unfortunately because of my maths grade D I couldn’t do Psychology so I just went with business. However I didn’t let this stop me. I was planning on getting my C in maths and then picking up Psychology in my second year so I made sure that the course leader knew of my interest, so after multiple talks and various emails I managed to sit in a weeks’ worth of lessons and I have to say it was fascinating for me. But now I’m not so sure. Journalism is a MASSIVE interest for me right now and I thoroughly enjoy my law units in Business so I’m considering taking law. This has put me into a dilemma. As of this moment I’m still talking to course leaders about picking either course so I thought I would share my so called ‘tactics’ on getting into a course in your second year.

Disclaimer – In no way am I claiming that this is an exact science, this is based off of my experience so far and whether or not it works out that is yet to be known.

1)    Make them conscious that you are interested – When I say this I don’t mean just asking about the course and what it covers. I’m saying that you should actively talk about the process of getting in, what the requirements are and then what it covers. It’s also useful to suggest sitting in lessons to get a feel for the course, this is the benefit of already being in the college because it usually isn’t much inconvenience for a current student to sit in one of their lessons.

2)  Read up on the subject – This is very good way of showing that you are enthusiastic about that course because they aren’t going to let you in lightly because they will take your current course into consideration and not many students are even allowed to stay in for more than 2 years because chances are that the course will be 2 years.

3)  Be in close contact with someone of power – This could come across as manipulative but it isn’t in no way. Assert yourself with someone who you can go to for advice in college. For me it’s the head teacher of my college, however I was quite lucky to meet her because of the fact that I enrolled late and she must have been managing the late enrollers because she was the one to email me back on my application. Since then I have been able to get VERY useful advice and information from her and typically people don’t say no to their boss. She is lovely too :)

4)   Sell yourself – Think of it like you aren’t a student at the college because then you will have the mind-set that you have to show off your determination, interest ect and that would make you a more attractive candidate for the course. It is also worth explaining why you want to take the course up in your second year and why you didn’t apply for it in the first place. If you don’t have a legitimately good reason you can be honest or you could do what most do which is come up with one.

So that’s it. Pretty simple for now, however this is what has worked so far and the future seems promising.

Are you looking into picking up a course?  Or did you successfully pick up a course? Share you experience with me on Twitter! @Jayson__Knott

My First Offer!

I got my first offer from university today! It caught me completely off guard, I usually check my email every day whenever I get the chance to see if there has been any changes to my application (this typically means that you’ve got an offer) but today it didn’t even cross my mind. It’s a massive relieve never the less, I was a complete nervous wreck every time I got an email and now I can relax knowing that all I have to do is finish this year with the grades I need and I’m off to uni!

I already went over this in my last blog but I seriously didn’t think this was something I was going to do, but that’s what has made it so exciting for me. Just because I want to go to uni I have found myself getting involved in things that I would typically avoid like volunteering and taking active interests in topics that I would have otherwise overlooked. So far the journey towards university has been a very eye opening experience and some would say it’s a way of avoiding ‘the real world’ but I strongly disagree. To me it’s a more educational method of learning to manage money and plan for the future.

I may be going off on a bit of a tangent but I’m just full of inspiration and excitement now. This is just the motivation I needed to keep pushing through mountains of coursework and revision :)

This is a bit of a short post today, I think that’s what I’ll keep doing because you guys seem to like these the most, see you in the next one!

Leave a comment or tweet at me if you have any questions!

Follow me on Twitter! - @Jayson__Knott (double underscore)

Applying To University (Already!)

Well guys, here we are. After a long summer of no posts (sorry guys) it’s come to that time where I have to start picking uni courses and the unis themselves. I’m not going to lie it’s a massive change for me, when I first left school uni was the last thing on my mind! But not look at me, applying for law in some of the best universities going! Without turning this into a sob story, I used to think I wasn’t good enough to go to uni. It just goes to show that our only limit is ourselves (sorry for the borderline cringy quote)

Well after a couple of weeks researching what university would be the best for me I managed to sift through about 10 to get to 5. This is the hardest part of the application if you ask me. I’ve managed to choose Manchester, Salford, BPP, Manchester Met and The University of Law. All based in Manchester, which for me is ideal because it means I can spend most of my time at uni and still come back home to see family and friends whenever I want to. I did originally plan on going to somewhere like London or Durham, but that was a step too far for me.

Skipping the boring stuff, it came to my personal statement. Wow, just wow. I never knew that having 4,000 characters could be so stressful! It seriously does limit what you have to say about yourself, because you’ve been essentially asked to market yourself to 5 universities in 4,000 characters. To put that into perspective that’s just under a page of writing. But the upside is that you have to be concise and put some real structure in there that means that you get everything you want in whilst reaching that character limit.

Having someone look at your personal statement is key. I personally think it’s a good idea to have someone who knows a lot about applications in relation to university and job applications. I had our careers adviser look through my whole application and personal statement, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Once she gave me the nod I had my personal tutor look at my personal statement. This is especially helpful because your personal tutor is typically the one who writes your reference, so this means that they can get a look at your personal statement and take some pointers for your reference. This would make you have a well-rounded application.

So this was my experience so far with my application, with a few little pointers in there. Obviously I won’t know if this works until I get offers but until then fingers crossed!

Jayson :)

Twitter - @Jayson__Knott

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 :)

Follow me on Twitter! - @Jayson__Knott

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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

Keeping Organized

Organisation, this is something that is considered more of chore than something that is quite useful. The little things like keeping specific pieces of coursework in organised folders. This is a topic that could become somewhat confusing so bear with me.

I’m going to go off of my own organisational skills so some of you might even be better organised than I am. To view the full sized screen shot click on the images that are all in order at the bottom. So what do I do? Personally most of my work in college is on computer so it’s pretty easy to keep organised and I've noticed that if I didn't stay organised I would have to search through hundreds of files to find the work I’m currently doing and I could see that getting pretty confusing. The first thing I do is create a folder with this structure in naming “Frederick Knott – Business Studies” this is what it looks like. I like to keep it in a first letter capital structure because of my slight OCD. After you go into this folder you’ll notice that I have a folder for each tutor that teach me different topics to others and the ones who teach the same topic get put into the same folder. Jumping into the folder with two tutors for example sake my law folder, I have the folder with Beth and then Jasmine, then I have the assignment sheets and assessment records on the outside, this is so I know exactly where they are and I can just go straight to them when I need to. Once you go into the folders you’ll be met with pass, merit and distinction folders, these are self-explanatory. Once you get into the pass folder I have yet more folders and most of you are probably thinking “another folder!” but this is because in these units there are a lot of passes that have to be done in comparison to merits and distinctions. I have them split into different categories like “Business Law – Leaflets” and “Business Law – Posters” this is to ensure that I don’t have to look around for what I need to get to. For the units that require that I have lots of different images I then separate them from the work itself so that I have something to back me up just in case I lose the work.

That’s pretty much it for my way of organising my work. I can’t help with organising paper based stuff because I don’t do that kind of thing, but if you guys have any suggestions just leave a comment on how you do it :) Also most of my organisation is OCD like and convenience so do what works for you and I wrote this because when I've managed to have this standard of organisation in my work I feel proud of it (weird I know) but I thought I'd share it with you guys :)

Tweet me! @Jayson__Knott

Getting Help When YOU Need It

We've all been there, that time where you feel like everything is getting on top of you and the stress becomes a little too much. Some people can cope others (like me) seem to just give up sometimes and it’s easy to forget that there are people that can help you in these situations. So here’s a little advice.

1)   Accepting that you need a little help – A lot of people never even acknowledge that they need some help with this, accepting that you do isn’t a weakness. If anything it’s a strength because it involves accepting that you can’t deal with everything that is going on whether that is to do with your work or personal life it’s good to get the practical things out of the way, especially coursework because you don’t want to the work to pile up in times of stress as it would just end up adding to your stress.

2)  Seeking Help – This is another thing that people struggle with, most feel embarrassed or as if they are being a pest. I can guarantee that you wouldn’t be the first student to struggle, you’re only human and your college or school will know this. There is most likely someone to help you in school or college to email people you think will know about said person, for example your tutor or head of year if you’re in school. Remember you can get help with the stress itself or with the things that are stressing you out like coursework of the whole subject, just going to a tutor and having them explain things to you does a world of good.

3)  Follow the advice! – This is the biggest of them all! A lot of people go to see someone about some help in a close minded attitude. So because of this the advice they give you could be the best advice ever but you won’t follow it because you either think you are above it or you just don’t want to. So ironically, my advice would be to follow their advice! You’ve gone for the help that you need so you do need to follow that advice no matter what!

4)    Find stress relievers – this is the final step which is the most useful one of all. Find things that calm you down, whether that is just taking an hour or so to watch something on the TV or listening to music just do it. You need a rest you can’t be expected to do everything at once all of the time, you’ll just become more frustrated and everything you’ve gone and done so far would have been a waste, just sit back and relax!

That’s what I think you should do based on my personal experience, you’re not the only that struggles every so often :)

If you’ve got any good tips for relieving some stress let me know by either leaving a comment or by tweeting me at @Jayson__Knott :)

Is It Worth Leaving It Last Minute?

The one thing I've noticed about college is that in those subjects where you have a lot of coursework its easy to let the work pile up. I'm guilty of this myself, there's always that one thing you want to first "oh I'll do it when I've watched this" or the classic "I'll do it tomorrow instead" and before you know it, your doing the work in a last minute panic barely scraping the deadline.

I don't know about you guys but personally I worry about the work more than I actually do the work itself!

I think it's time that we all stopped with the excuses and got the work done. I've recently stopped making those cliche excuses and just making a start as soon as I get the work. I can honestly say it feels WAY better. You are able to just relax after it knowing that now you can have those few hours of procrastinating doing whatever you want! 

My advice would be just simply get that work done as soon as you get it, mainly because now in BTEC there isn't the case where you can just hand the work in over and over again, get it back marked and then easily get the grade you want. Now you've only got one chance at a resub and that's it, if you fail, you just fail.

So is it worth it? 

I'll leave that to you.

What was your best excuse for not doing any coursework? Let me know in the comments :)