Is it all really worth €95?

Ok, so I'm in the middle of the mocks. Or the Pre's as we Irish call them. And for the priviledge of having our lives ruined for 2 weeks, we pay €95. Every paper we sit has to be sent to an external examiner which in the case of the pre's is some trainee teacher who needs a few quid. Generally the result we get isn't actually the result we should be, and end up spending a very long time going through each paper with our teachers looking for mistakes in marking. When I sat my Junior Cert in 2007, I managed to gain an extra 5% because of cock ups made during marking. Now I'm not one for piling more work on our already over worked teachers, but I honestly think they'd be better off marking our pre's themselves. At least then we know that the mark we're getting is accurate, because bar one of my teachers, I know all of them are competent enough to be able to mark the paper to the same standards as the examiners. It's stupid that we pay stupid amounts of money for this, and then for the real thing have to pay another €130. I don't mind paying it for the real thing, because I know that the examiners are smart enough to mark them well, but paying nearly €100 for it for the pre's is ridiculous, especially in the current economic climate when not everyone can exactly afford it. It pisses me off something chronic that the government are forever moaning that they don't have enough money when the amount of money the Dept of Ed get from the exams is appalling. Grrrr.

I'm gonna topic jump here, to something that's quite close to my heart because of what my boyfriend does. Chris is a trainee paramedic for East Midlands Ambulance Service, who have recently been in the news because of the (in my opinion) fully justified actions of a solo responder paramedic in Derby. She was called to a pub at about 1am in the morning to a woman suffering a blood clot as a result of recent leg surgery. Bearing in mind the time and that she was being called to a potentially dangerous situation due to alcohol being present, the standard procedure is to wait for back up before entering a situation. The crew that had been requested were 2 minutes away from finishing their meal break and were told they were not allowed to respond until they were finished. Wanna know why this is? Because if they're interrupted for anything other than the declaration of a major incident, they can claim £130 off EMAS. In the end the paramedic went to the pub alone and found CPR being administered and of course she started her own treatment. There's an EU directive about rest breaks you know? They have to take them, whether they like it or not. Because that crew were on a rest break, they were not allowed by proticol to answer the paramedic's request for back up, and as a result the paramedic is now suspended. What the fuck? How is that justifiable? Because of EMAS proticols, she got in crap and is now fighting for her job. It's stupid and annoys me. I wouldn't deny Chris his rest breaks, He works 12 hour shifts and can go 10 hours without getting 5 mins for a toilet break or anything. If he gets a rest break he's entitled to it. But I know that if he had 2 mins left and there was a critical call waiting, he'd take it. The only reason EMAS refused to let them go was because they knew fine well they'd have to cough up over £250 for 2 interrupted meal breaks. Ragggge

Anyway. It's late, and I'm going to bed. I feel better for that rant haha.

The beginning of the End.

Well, the mocks began today, and it wasn't fun. They had time tabled it so that English paper 2 was first. We needed over three hours for it, and the only way to do it where that would happen was to have the paper in the morning. It was all going well until I started the last big question on poetry. I knew from the moment I started the unseen poetry section I was screwed. I had 40 minutes to write a page on the unseen poem and 5 pages on the poet I had studied, Emily Dickinson. It was a disaster. I wrote about 14 pages on everything else and completely flunked the question I had prepared the most for. I was raging. But at least I'm making the mistake now and not in June. I think in June I'll start the seen poet first and then work my way through the questions, and leave the short 20 marker to the end when I know if I'll have time.

Paper 1 was this afternoon, and I swear, my hand hadn't fully recovered from the mornings attempted massacre of my metacarpals. I had to answer questions on Nando Parrado, then write an article giving Leaving cert students advice on how to suceed in their goals. Then it was on to the piece I was dreading the most. The essay. They really did give us some seriously lame topics, and in the end I decided on the one about a "Male-dominated society" which got me going into a full blown rant. I do feel sorry for the examiner who's reading it if it's a bloke. I really don't speak very highly of them. Oops. Well, We shall see next month when the papers come back whether my 30 odd pages of waffled garbage has been enough to scrape me a pass!

R.I.P Bill Smyth. 1936 - 2011

R.I.P Bill Smyth.

I've known Bill since I was about 8. He used to always bound into the studio in the radio station and stick his earphones in the headphone jack on the news readers desk and start the news with the most articulate speech you could imagine. He made every story seem exciting, and even the stories that would bore most people to tears, Bill managed to inject some life into. I will always remember the Saturdays when dad took me into work with him, and I got to sit in the newsroom with Bill looking through the newspaper articles for something interesting to talk about. Bill's hatred of technology was apparent, and instead of using a dictaphone like most reporters, Bill preferred to write in shorthand, much to the dismay of anyone else trying to read his writing.  His catchphrase quickly becoming "It's not bloody working!" Bill will always be in my heart not just for his quality of reporting, but for his outstanding kindness and warm heart.

R.I.P Bill, Radio has lost one of it's last true legends in Northern Ireland

2000 Views

Who's gonna get the 2000th view on my blog and make me smiley?

UPDATE

I dunno who it was, but 2004 views is pretty cool :D

Inevitability

It happened. I ended up incosterated. It was nowhere near as bad as any of the other times though and I was only on IV anti-biotics, steroids and o2 this time. So it wasn't that bad. It did mean however that I didn't get to see dad as much as I would've liked as I was stuck in Cavan. But he came and stayed in the B&B that Chris stays in when he came over, so he spent a good part of the day up with me on Friday. I spent most of Friday in A&E and having him there to talk to made it slightly less boring which was cool.

My mocks start this week. I'm a bit scared to be honest. I've done very little revision and I'm still not feeling overly great. I'm worried I'm gonna cough my way through them. I didn't manage to get it where I'm in my own room because I left it too late and stuff so :S. I'm just gonna have to give it my best shot and hope for the best.

We'll see what happens!

Noooooooo!

I have the lurgy! Feck feck feck feck and feck again. Dad's coming on Friday. This can't be happening!!! I rang my respiratory nurses this morning to see what I can do until Saturday when dad goes home. Their suggestion being 60mg of prednisolone, 4 puffs BD of both inhalers (Urggggh) and 2 hrly nebs. I'm shaking like someone having DT's from booze, and trust me on this, I know what people shake like when they're detoxing. Pray this clears on it's own, I need to stay out if I have any hope of passing this year. On top of that I'm eating like nothing I've ever seen before. It's not good! My diet's going out the window! Arrggggh!

Please please please pray this doesn't get any worse. I want to see my dad!

I'm a success!

Finally things are going my way!  Well, mostly! Things in school are going well. Apart from Thursday when I had to take the day off (will explain in a bit) I've completed 2 full weeks at school. The first time since September! This is good, and my teachers are noticing it. I'm doing quite well in all my subjects and things are starting to really look up. Apart from the fact I have to do the pre's (mocks) I'm quite optimistic about the leaving. It's annoying though, they're telling me to do the mocks, but to use my book. So I'm technically doing something I could do at home and paying €95 for the priviledge. Grrrr.

But yea, I don't know if I'd said, but mum broke her wrist about 8 weeks ago. She was directing the ambulance up the lane for me and slipped right in front of it breaking her wrist quite spectacularily. What a way to do it. But she had to get the cast of on Thursday and she didn't know what time she'd be back, if she'd be back on thursday. There was talk of sedating her for it so she wouldn't be allowed to drive. So there would be nobody to pick up me or TJ from school, so I had to stay at home and look after TJ *read sleep all day* so I got a day off school.

Asthma-wise *whispering now* things are going really well. I've got my Prednisolone down to 15mg and am able to do a lot more than normal. This is very good. For once I'm having a good run of things and I'm going to make the most of it. Getting to school every day is fantastic. I've missed it. I can finally climb my own stairs at home without ending up in a heap. School's pushing it, but I'm managing a lot better than normal. Peak Flow's are hovering around 200 which is good for me and I'm still reducing the pred. Life's gooooood!

Things with James (Arsewipe or AW for short) aren't going quite as well. He rang an ambulance on Monday night telling them he'd taken an overdose. Needless to say he actually hadn't, but it had gotten to the stage where he wanted that badly to have a warm bed for the night that he was willing to go to that stage. They found out he'd had a Minor heart attack and pulmonary embolism. These aren't good things, but he discharged himself anyway. It's stupid, he's risking his own life and he's going to leave TJ without a dad if he carries on. But I don't care. He's not my problem anymore. I have enough going on in my life to worry about without having that AW causing problems for me aswell.

But I will leave you with the thought that I'm getting better and life's good!