The First Exam and Easter Again

Posted by Ksenia

The spring has finally arrived in Brighton.  With some sunshine (hopefully!), plenty of flowers around and fresh green leaves appearing on trees, the feeling is completely different.  It is just so natural to smile, be happy and wear short skirts! 

Nevertheless, people in Bellerbys College are becoming more and more serious and words like 'past papers', 'revision' and (the worst of all!) 'exams' can be heard everywhere in college.  During break times the library is always full and more and more students are coming there not just to chat or leave their stuff but to study in attempt to memorise as quickly as they can everything that should be learnt thought the year.

On Saturday, the 26th of April I had my Biology experiment that is considered as part of the exam.  It is a whole piece of coursework with a huge amount of tables, graphs and written work.  Introduction, method, analysis, evaluation: does not sounds very exciting, doesn't it?  However the actual experiment was real fun.

I was investigating the effect of temperature on amylase activity with starch (probably this won't tell you too much).  Firstly the experiment does not work at all as the concentration was wrong.  Then everything went pretty well until the solution started to change colour at the temperature that it actually should not do that.  I was not too disappointed because at the end of the day it gave an opportunity to write about it in my evaluation.  The whole experiment took about 3 hours and at the end everybody was very tired.  I've never thought that science could be so exhausting!

On Sunday it was Russian (or to be more precise and not to hurt anybody's feelings, orthodox) Easter.  My friends and I got together to eat the traditional dish of boiled eggs, usually brightly coloured or with some stickers on them.  When I came to England last year I was quite surprised to learn that English people do eat eggs on Easter, but they are almost always chocolate!!  This nation really has a sweet tooth!  Some of my friends went to church; I didn't as I do not regard myself as particularly religious.  Anyway it was really a very nice day and it seems to me that the traditions of your own country are becoming even more important and dear when you are away from home.

Mr Corcut continues to prepare us for our application to Oxbridge.  More students are turning up, discussions are more emotional every time and questions that Mr Corcut asks us are becoming more complex and therefore more interesting.  We have already talked about international trade, science and its applications. Obviously there are some more exciting topics to come!

There are just a few more weeks till the end of the spring term so get the most of it.  Good luck with your exams and revision!