Life at Bellerbys College

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!

One Week and a Bit More of My Life

Posted by Ksenia

Hello my dear readers!  Hope you are enjoying your time as much as do!  Before I forget – if you have something to say or to ask – please to not hesitate to leave comments.  I will be very happy to answer you!

Ok, last time I wrote that my mum was coming.  It was great!!  She was in Brighton for few days and every evening after college I went to meet her, we had a nice dinner in a restaurant and a long chat, of course!  Obviously I did not do much work, but my teachers were real angels – very understanding as usual.  On Friday we went to London by train.  That is very convenient, only 50 minutes and you are in London Victoria!  What did we do in London?  I think the answer is quite predictable…  Like every female human being, me and my mum love shopping!

But London is much more than just great shops – after visiting our favourite places we decided to find an unusual restaurant to eat.  I’ve been to London so many times but I could never find China Town, do not ask me why.  I am absolutely hopeless and never know were to go.  But this time we were well prepared, we followed the map and finally succeeded!  That is really a great part of the city which does not look British at all and there were so many restaurants there, that the choice was extremely difficult.  But the food was really worth it!

We also visited Tate Britain Gallery (something for our cultural development).  I was very pleased to see some paintings of Brighton.  One of them was done two centuries ago on the exact place where Brighton Pier is situated now.  It was such a strange feeling to see it…  I also really liked several pieces done by artist called Rossetti.  Surprisingly he was born in England, even though his family name sounds Italian.

Great January

Posted by Ksenia

Hi again!

So, the first month of 2008 is coming to it's end.  Time for a short summary!

Until January 7th I was in Russia, it is so nice to be at home!  I visited all my relatives, went out with friends, went ice-skating, did some shopping, read books, listened to music, and did not think about studying at all.  So when I came back to Brighton my head was light and empty.  Thanks to my teachers, they were quite understanding...

The 18th was my birthday!!!!  I've just turned 17!  It was a great day; I received lots of presents, cards and greetings!  One more time I realized how wonderful are my friends and family.  In the evening we went out with my best friends to have a cup of tea and a piece of cake in the coffee shop and a good chat (see photos!).  As every girl I just LOVE sweets!

Of course there were some serious things as well!  I've already been to two meeting run by Mr Corcut for students who want to apply for Cambridge or Oxford. Obviously a chance to get there is very small, because they take only exceptional students, but I still feel that people should try.  Anyway it will be a good experience for us!  During these meetings students will give the audience a talk about the subject they want to study.  We have already had a very interesting one from Wang who started by saying that there is no randomness, so everything is our destiny and finished by stating that radioactive decay is random, so there is no destiny.  People were a bit confused but there was a good discussion afterwards.

I talked about GM products.  In my opinion it is a topic everyone has something to say about and people tend to think about this it a lot.  The following Monday there were two talks about economics.  Even though I do not understand anything about this subject I found them quite interesting and useful, especially a short discussion about happiness and its connection to economics!

There was one more event I need to mention - WTO Economics Adviser, Philippe Legrain lead a discussion on why he believes immigration is a good thing in our Exam hall!  He is really a great speaker, usually it is quite boring to listen to a person talking for more than an hour, but this time it was not!!  There were some very good questions from the audience as well, and Mr Legrain was very confident in answering them.  And free tea and biscuits were served (sometimes it is so easy to make people happy).  We met some Sussex University students; we will have a debate with them later this term.  Hope they will lose!

And just to finish this post - my mum is coming this Wednesday!!  I miss her very much so I am extremely happy now. And we are going to London for the weekend! I'm really looking forward to it!