I awoke this morning, with typical coordination and elegance to the sound of the phone ringing. I answered it dutifully and once I had oriented it correctly (which took several attempts), surmised that the person on the other end was my father. We had a brief chit chat before I returned to bed - 8:30am is an unconscionable time at which to rise.
The phone rang again at 9am, heralding the call of my Aunty Laura and then once more at about 10am, ensuring I had just enough time to get comfortable again before it interrupted my dozing. Whilst all the conversations I had were cheering and enjoyable they were not sufficiently so (as few things can be) as to eclipse my longing for a warm duvet.
I noticed that I had been left a list of duties to complete on the family whiteboard and so set about completing them. It was when I reached the curious instruction of "Tidy Thomas and Francesca's bedroom", a task which was entirely alien to my normal duty roster that I realized the handwriting in which my morning's labours were set out, was curiously unlike my mothers.
In fact it looked rather more like that of my little sister.
The wording was rather more stark than I was used to as well. An insistent "Do not sleep instead!" was scrawled above the tasks in place of the rather more cheery salutation I normally read each morning.
However it was the insulting, yet rather skillful sketch of my face, distorted by stick-out teeth and piggy nostrils, which cemented my thoughts on the matter.
The list had been the product of my sadistic 10 year old sister, and worse still - I had fallen for it hook line and sinker. I was already half way through the bogus schedule!
Therefore I offer you, today a view of this entirely humbling gag in the snapshot window. Rest assured however, revenge will be mine :)
As always you can see the other snapshots in the archives. I also realized that it isn't much effort to make 2 sizes of picture so the snapshot archives can contain the full resolution pictures, straight from the phone. Admittedly this resolution isn't great but the one I previously used (the size displayed in the snapshot window) is only 40% of the actual picture size.
When I finally surfaced in earnest today, I hit the books straight away. I spent a few hours of my last day completing my total set of detailed notes (oh the irony) and then every hour after that doing every single past exam question I could get my hands on.
I didn't write them out entirely as that would have taken far too long, been entirely pointless and wouldn't have given me a big enough field of questions for my limited time. Instead I just submitted big'ol detailed plans. By the end of them I was seriously confident in my abilities to totally 'pwn' this exam. What is more the exam papers seem to have actually gotten easier as time has progressed. The 1997 paper seemed markedly harder than the 2003 one, albeit by a margin too small to excite Tabloid journalists.
I actually put the difference in difficulty down two alternate factors rather than insisting things were harder 'back in the day'.
Firstly the typefont is ridiculous and almost unreadable. It boggles the mind to think that people used to put up with something that looks like a 'print' command return from a BASIC app on an old BBC computer who's parameters were:
10 If you'reabastard = andyouknowit
20 Clap your hands
30 Set $typefont = "unreadableMTCserif"
40 Print $randomlegalbollucks
50 GOTO 10
60 END
Secondly, the actual subjects of the questions were different from those studied in our new improved course (pursuant of the university's obligation to actually teach relevant law).
The second factor is especially important. I watched a program on Channel 4 last summer, which was devised and televised for the sole purpose of allowing a load of middle aged farts some sort of empirical evidence of schoolwork being harder 'back in my day'. It was called "That'll teach 'em" and it followed a group of dozens of modern school children subjected to the rigors of a 1950's boarding school.
At the end of the series all the children failed their 50's O levels. Particularly math. The results were aired to much back patting and self congratulation amongst the over 45's.
The thing is that those kids were failing their math because they didn't know the requisites to learn the subject itself. Nowadays kids don't get taught as much pure arithmetic as they did before because a $2 calculator outperforms them spectacularly.
However if you were to sit a 1950's kid in front of a modern GCSE he'd fail and flounder too. The mathematics we teach children today are complex by virtue of the evolution of low cost tools to aid their calculation.
What it boiled down to was that the students in the series failed because their syllabus had changed. Just as my university exams seem to be getting easier by the year as syllabus topics are phased in and out.
As for the rest of that show my reaction to it can be summed up thusly:
"I didn't need to watch a 6 part series to know that school in the 1950's sucked"
I react similarly to those odious programs put forward by terrestrial channels in which people are put through a change of circumstance.
eg: "I didn't need to watch that 2 part documentary to know that being poor sucked"
Anyhow, it was after this long slog that I realized that the 23rd was in fact Friday, not Thursday as I had initially envisaged and that I had another day to revise.
Part of me was playing rather enthusiastic air guitar to a certain Queen song
The other part was dimly recognizing that this cut my revision time for Company Law down to just 3 days. At least I know the Company Law syllabus considerably better than I did Sale and Supply of Goods and Services. Nonetheless I'd rather have at least 4 days if it's all the same :)
Ah well, I only have 2 exams to face before the new term starts and I can hop back on the study bandwagon. Once I've done both my tests I'll have time to sit around and wait the new semester. If only more subjects were examined through coursework, it seems a better analogy for Legal work in the field.
Later
John