How NOT to revise!

I don't know why they invent easter holidays. Easter's during the holidays when all the kids 16 and up are spent most of the holidays revising and although having chocolate eggs is a plus, still does not hide that fact that you're spending your holidays 'holidaying'....

I have about 2 weeks before my big exams coming up. It's hard to believe that I've been studying for nearly 20 years now and you'd have thought after 20 years of learning to learn and revise, I'd have got the hang of it now. But I haven't and I spend most of the time procrastinating. I particularly remember my maths A levels resits which mostly involved me doing past papers and writing notes about a week before the exam. To my own surprise, I came out with an A in Maths and B in Further Maths! Unfortunately, as soon as I decide to do engineering, I find out that I'm forced to LEARN things properly to get a good mark which has been hit and miss so far.

So, although I'm not the perfect person to write this, here's a list of things to do to revise for an exam for all those poor students and kids having to face the most gruelling days of their lives:

Find a quiet place - Your bedroom, the library, the basement, a soundproof room, a graveyard, a room full of deaf people. Anywhere where you can get peace and solitude to work.

Treat your studying like you how you would do if you're working - By this I mean work like you're going to work. As in job 'work'. In other words, get this right or you're going to get fired! In fact, you're not gonna get fired, you won't get a job! And therefore you're already fired before you're even hired!

No TV should be turned on - the only exception is if you have an exam on television programmings... though I would love to see a uni course to a study on TV programs and whatnot. Maybe they'd call it something crazy like 'Media Studies'! Ha!

All distractions should be kept out of your room - THis means TV mentioned above, games consoles magazines, porn, your girlfriend in front of you, that pen with that picture of a woman that takes her clothes off when you press the pen down etc... (actually, I don't think i've seen them in a while)

Avoid the Bed The bed is the equivalent of Sienna Miller asking to have urgently have sex with you but you are tied to a chair until you finish this revision... well you get the picture.

Coffee is your friend - Some say coffee is the solution to all of life's problems. Although they will not solve the Bernoulli Equations (a small engineering joke...), it does help you concentrate. I have bad after-effects of coffee when I get comedowns (similar to taking drugs) after a while and just sleep it off... in fact, coffee occasionally helps me sleep at night which is ironic I guess

Facebook is your enemy! - I've written down on my diary to arrange to sue Mark Zuckerberg for all the hours I've lost on Facebook...

And finally

DO NOT START WRITING BLOGS TO PROCRASTINATE!

and that's all, I will leave you with this video :)

Red Rum! Blue Vodka! Black Whisky!

Contrary to what many people think, I rarely go to the bookies. One of the only times I go is to make a small bet on the Grand National. This is the 3rd time I've done this and given the fact that I know as much information about horse racing than I do about brain surgery, I pretty much have to get really lucky to win one.

Upon my third time in betting for the grand national, I realised that I was burning money betting on horses with odds of 50-1 or more. The past two years I put a quid on a two 100-1 horses and they didn't pop up. Now if I put that statistically, assuming that the probability is actually correct (which it probably won't be), then for every 100 goes I place a bet on this, it should pop up once. Figuring that, I realised it wasn't going to happen this year so I'd put my money on safer bets.

(Those of you who do maths should already be aware that this is not actually true... Yes I'm not stupid... most of the time)

Next decision is to choose a horse based on a funny name. Last year I put a few bets on lots of funny names such as Big Fella Thanks, The Package, Made in Taipan, Hello Bud and this pretty unusual one called 'Don't Push It'. Personally, I think the odds are based on how ridiculous the names are. The more ridiculous, the higher odds. This would probably mean that more suckers would put bets on this horse thinking that they have a 'special' chance to win it. Of course it never happens (bar the odd fluke of a time) and bookies rake it in.

Of course, if I ever owned a horse, I would probably put the name down as 'Your Mum'. The joke would be hilarious the first time round. But then you'd eventually get sick of the joke because you'd hear it all the time. You then apply this logic to winning races and therefore 'Your Mum' would be perfect!

Using this approach I look for a name that looked pretty cool and not too ridiculous. Looking at the names this year, some I recognise from last year. Some that I've chosen before and regretted, others that I've chosen before and reaped in my winnings. And then some that just sound to crazy to be true. Even though I won last year with Don't Push It, I'm also aware that no horse has won it twice in a row since Red Rum so I decided not to 'push my luck' on it (see what i did there? :P)

So finally deciding, I put a few quid on Silver by Nature and What a Friend after being tipped by a punter there. His reasoning? He was grey haired and was a Man U fan (What a Friend is part owned by Sir Alex Ferguson). Using this same logic because I too was also grey and red, I went to bet on these as well. Good luck to me!

Taking a quick glance again, I looked at the weirder names on the list and I saw 'Ballabriggs'. What a name! A name so crazy like that would never win a race surely!

And there goes my story of how I didn't win anything on the Grand National.

The Significance of Protesting

Put your placards up, write a sign, speak to the world and try to fight the power!

The past few months have seen a bigger jump in popularity in protesting than Justin Beiber supporters! (actually, that's a bit of a lie, because Justin Beiber's a c***). Tuition fees, cuts, money, pretty much hot topics that have been widely debated for a while. But just how many of these protests were successful and overturned a decision in their favour?

Tuition Fees? Close, but failed. Cuts? Not really. Libya? Well, it's a mess at the moment at least. EDL? Well they just like to batter things up.

Now I'm not saying I'm against protests. I think it's one of the greatest forms of voicing your power and significance towards a government or higher power. But the success rate is so slim that it's either because their minds have been made up or it's too little too late.

And then you have the credibility of a protest(or). I'm pretty sure 99% of a protest group are actually true to their cause. But it takes just that small minority to fuck things up and bring their credibility to that of a small child. All that minority has to do is break a window, start a riot, say a stupid thing. Like many massive groups, it takes one person to fuck it up for everyone. Which is a shame really because that minority is either a little 'over' enthusiastic about a protest or is simply there just to cause trouble and sabotage the whole protest from the beginning (which I'm sure happens).

The tuition fee was just clearly asking for a riot. If you're asking students (which I'm sure 99% are clean cut) to protest. And also being along bunches of 16-17 yr old hooded gangs into the mix, you're going to massively ask for trouble. And unfortunately, the media love things like this and show the dark side of this rather than the rest of the group which are all safe and clean.

The media also like to publish credibility on ONE individual out of a protest and publish how rich this kid is to be complaining about tuition fee rises. Whilst yes, there could possibly be a fact that his parents are well off but it doesn't mean that he can't protest about cuts in fees at all.

(I should mention that I hate newspapers and havent bought or properly read one page to page in about 10 years, and even then all I read was the comic strips!)

Now the last protest I went to was in 2003 against the war in Iraq. Well I say protest, it was just most of the school deciding to stay outside after lunch in the field area. Much as I had no idea how this was going to make an impact, the idea came after the local paper put a rival school on the front page saying all these school kids were doing the same thing as a protest to the war in Iraq.

Now I got to be honest, seriously? The idea to protest a war in Iraq was to stay outside, miss school lessons and basically pull a 'sickie' at school? I'm not sure who actually started this protest but if your idea was to gather the whole school playground into one area and play truant. You managed to get that working alright. Although it actually had no point on the war in Iraq at all. No signs, placards or music. But all the kids went anyway because it's a free excuse to get out and not go to lessons. HUZZAH!

(Yes, I was a tiny 'swot' at school)

Okay, that's enough from me for now. I'm off to protest about why there aren't enough renewable energy power stations by going for lunch. Ho Train Out. :)t