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 :)

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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

Here Comes The Exam Season

First off, sorry for the lack of posts lately. Like most of you guys I’ve been snowed in with revision and coursework. This is only going to be a short one for now, but I’ve got a big one coming for those who love to read.

Anyway, the exam season is just around the corner and many of us (myself included) start to feel the very real pressure of possibly failing, whether it be psychology to law, or English to maths, almost everyone is stressing. For me it’s all about maths, I personally can’t be dealing with another fail in maths. But even though I’m well on track for passing, or maybe even getting a B in maths I’m still feeling a very real threat of failure. I think it’s time that we all stop stressing about these things and just focus on doing well, not thinking about the grades themselves, but just focusing on doing the best we can, because then if you fail, you know that you’ve done your best and you can’t beat yourself up over it. So come on guys, stop stressing and just get on with it!

Want to get in touch?

Follow me on Twitter - @Jayson__Knott (double underscore)

Or just leave a comment :)

Student Association, Student Ambassador and Associate Mentor!

So today I thought I’d do something different, I thought I’d tell you guys about what I’m trying to get involved in and maybe it might make you guys think about going to do the same things, if you have these kind of ‘schemes’ set up in your college.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve applied for the student association and student ambassador positions in my college. Being a student ambassador is almost like being a prefect, well it seems like it to me and it is supposed to be a good experience. It’s also something I can put down on my UCAS application, but that’s not the only thing that is motivating me to go for it. I’ve always been that kid that wanted to help out in my school, however in this case its college.

The student association though, that’s what I’m really gunning for, this is something that is extremely beneficial to me and other people in my college. I would essentially become part of how the college is run, I and everyone else in the association would take issues, or ideas, to whoever we think would help and basically tell them what we think needs to change or improve. The student association also organises most of the events in college, for example some of the events in my college are pink day, little events or shops for red nose day, all that kind of stuff. You are essentially the go to students if something needs doing I guess. I don’t know much about the role just yet. But there’s a catch, you have to be elected. I’ve got to say, there is some competition but I think I’ll pull through.

I’m also trying to become an associate mentor for NCS this summer, I got an email about this around two weeks ago and instantly applied. From what I can gather from the information I’ve been given, this position is where you essentially help out the mentors in NCS. That’s all I know so far. I do want to do it non the less, because I really wish that I could do NCS again and this would be the closest I could get to that and it also gives me more experience, gives me the chance of possibly working for NCS and yet another thing to put on my CV and UCAS application.

Well these are the three things I’ve been trying to get involved in and I would be happy if I got just one of these positions. It’s something that’s different and worth doing so I thought why not at least try, because usually I don’t bother with these things because I never think I would get it. But I made it through shortlisting so you never know :)

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Comment if you have any questions or reach out on twitter :)

I'm Back!

Hey there guys! I’m back! Sorry for not posting over Easter, I’ve been having trouble with my laptop so I couldn’t post.

So what am I going to talk about today? To be honest I don’t have topic, I just want to get you guys up to speed on what’s going on. But I do want to talk about that feeling you get on the first day back from a decently long half term. You all know what I’m talking about, that horrible Sunday night where you tell yourself that you should get an early night, but you never do. If you are like me the first day back is the worst day back, because I personally can’t get to sleep. I stayed up until around 4am last night, and I’m feeling the regret from that now. I mean right now, I just want to back to bed and just watch Netflix all day.

You’ll never guess what happened to me on Saturday though. Well basically I had a very messed up charger for my laptop so I decided to buy a new one. Bear in mind my laptop is 10 years old so I can’t find an official site for this charger. So I found a charger on some site and I decided to buy it. So after around 4 hours of continuous revision and coursework I lay down next to my laptop and I hear this electrical spark like noise, then my laptop essentially blue up and burned my right shoulder. This destroyed the charger, the laptop and my USB with all of my work! Because of that I’ve been in college for the last couple of hours trying to meet my deadlines! I just have the worst luck ever.

Some of you might be wondering why I’m doing this kind of post right now. Well I got a couple of emails from you guys asking why I haven’t been posting and what’s going on with me lately, so I thought I would do this for you guys. Thanks for those emails by the way, they made my day :)

If you guys would like to get in contact with me just tweet me @Jayson__Knott (that’s a double underscore) 

P.S. never buy a charger from a dodgy website!