Hey, long time no see!
I thought it would be a good idea to start my website back up since it's been inactive for 2 years. And it's not even because there's not been a lot going on - there really has. Since I last posted on here, I got accepted to Newcastle University!
It feels like a really long time ago now that I had my year out after not getting into my first choice (Leeds) and second choice (Newcastle) for 2017 entry. Re-taking an exam that had nothing to do with the subject I wanted to do at Uni (Ancient History) felt like a bummer at first, but it ended up being a real silver-lining in the end. I actually only had a quarter of a subject to re-sit because I'd got a B on 3 of my Ancient History exams, the only one I had to re-sit was my year 2 Roman History exam that I got an E on. Proooobably the worst official grade I've ever got and biggest mistake at exam-level. I would love to get that paper back just to see what the hell I thought I was writing with that.
Bonus story: I came home and told my dad (who is super into Ancient History himself and had helped me with some of the revising) the answer I put in my Roman History paper, and he sorta reacted like: "hmm, okay..." And a little while after I got my E grade he said "I knew as soon as you told me that you got that completely wrong." He was absolutely right to tell me that story after I got my grade, Jesus.
Needless to say, results day 2017 was miserable. This shows how wonderful of a life I've had because it was probably one of the worst days of my life. The rush of clearing: trying to find a good last-minute place that'd take me, reading though all their course descriptions and trying to make the fastest decision, calling so many different Universities to ask if they'd let me in when I was still teary. Not to mention friends direct-messaging asking about my grades, excitedly wanting to tell me theirs (which I don't blame them for!). My partner at the time and friends were all due to go on a night out to celebrate, too - and I didn't go. Instead my partner comforted me the best they could and talked about all the new things I could do with this time. And, both they and my parents were keen to stress the fact that I could always try again.
I decided not to rush and pick a University I hadn't even visited but thought sounded cool, like Sheffield Hallam or Manchester Metropolitan. So, the next decision was: do I still want to apply for Leeds as my 1st choice and Newcastle as my 2nd again, and re-sit? My grades were ABC; A in Film Studies, B in English Literature and C in Ancient History. To get into Leeds I needed AAB, meaning I'd have to re-sit my English to pull it up to an A, and my Ancient History to a B. However, this was just at the time that the A-levels were starting to be reformed so that both of your years studying it at college counted, rather than your first year acting as an AS-Level and your second year acting as an A-Level. I guess they picked some of the more popular subjects to be reformed and so English Literature, when I studied it, was one where both years counted as A-levels - meaning that if I wanted to re-sit it, I'd have to re-sit the whole 2-years worth of A-level.
Like I explained, the Ancient History grade was unreformed, meaning you could choose which exams to re-sit and you could choose to only re-sit the ones you did badly in. I was happy to re-sit my Ancient History, since that wouldn't actually be a lot of work (a quarter of a subject), but re-sitting English Literature would be a lot of work. It was quite a tough decision in its way because I knew either way it would be less work than what I'd technically done at college that year anyway, and I knew I really liked the look of Leeds University. I went to a whole new set of open days of places that I already had the grades to get into like Bradford, Manchester Met, and a few others that I can't even remember now.. But upon re-visiting Newcastle, I knew I would love to be there. The facilities, staff and content of the course was right up my alley. It had a great 50/50 mix of practical and theory, and there was one module that genuinely stood out from the rest: JPN4002: Contemporary Japanese Animation, which I'm hopefully going to study next year as of writing this!!
I thought to myself: "you know what, Leeds is great and all - but is it worth all the extra work when I can tell Newcastle is going to be great, too?" So I spent the rest of my 2017 and early 2018 studying to pull my Roman History grade up alongside part-time working. I tried cafe and retail work, and it was the first time I'd ever actually held a job before. During high-school my parents had always encouraged me to focus on studying and didn't want me to worry about money and so I never got one during college or high school, so I was very lucky in that way. But I felt even more lucky that I'd actually got the chance to work and gain a whole new set of experiences that I never could have in education.
Socially it was also great because I pretty much had a year of cafe trips & nights out to the best nightclub in the world: The Warehouse
It's funny because that year period between July 2017 and August 2018 started out with such a lot of sadness and fear for the future, and ended up being one of my favourite years. I ended up getting an A in my Roman History exam, pulling my grade average for Ancient History from a C to a B, meaning I had the ABB I needed to get into Newcastle!
I've been studying Film Practices there for two years now, and as I'm writing this I'm a few months ahead of starting my third year. This morning I chose the optional modules I'm picking for this next year too! It's exciting to think about being back at Uni no matter how effected by Coronavirus it is.
Writing all this has persuaded me that I want to try to keep a better record of what I'm up to and what I've done at Uni, so I'm going to be making follow-up posts about what I did during my first and second year at Uni on here.
Thank you for reading, and I'll check in again soon.
Kat x
