So I got an email yesterday from Nottingham, inviting me to interview for Medicine. Yay! Only thing is, it's on Monday. Not so yay.

I was a little worried about it being so close yesterday, but after school today my German teacher offered to give me a mock interview to help me out (I love her), and that's when it hit me. I started crying in front of her because of how sudden it all was. She was really nice about and said I had good answers to her questions (despite my habit of overusing the word 'like' :P), but I'm still really nervous about it.

It's just that I'm worried this will be the only interview I get, and that if I mess it up it could be goodbye Medicine. My teacher told me it was less time to get nervous, but I'm still managing to get fairly damn nervous in this short space of time. So whilst I am ECSTATIC to even get offered an interview (for Nottingham, 700 out of 2000 applicants get interviewed, and about half of that 700 get an offer), I know how competitive Medicine is and I know how much is riding on me doing well. I just hope I don't let nerves take over :S

Anyway, after my slight breakdown today I'm wondering whether I should duck out of LJ Idol. I absolutely love doing it but I know I'm not giving it as much attention as I should. I'm also doing NaNo and all of that combined means that I'm not spending enough time on schoolwork and I'm not spending ANY time on my extended project or doing reading around my subjects/medicine.

Agh, I don't know :S

"You looked very serious up there. You could do with loosening up a bit - I'd have liked to have seen you smile a bit more." This was the remark of a certain judge, after the first round of a debating competition. I grinned in response, laughing at the criticism. "Yes, like that!"

In truth, I'm quite a cheerful sort of person. I'm not one of those crazed people who thinks everything is a joke and is constantly on a high, but I know how to take a joke, how to laugh, and definitely how to smile.

I love debating. I really do. My face when I'm taking part obviously expresses otherwise, but I really enjoy it. It scares me senseless half the time - especially when you're addressing a room of thirty or so people on a subject you really couldn't care less about - but I wouldn't trade that feeling of pride when my team wins for the world. It's a lot like playing a sport, except there's less danger of me injuring myself.

I don't want to give the wrong impression here; I'm not a private school kid, and I haven't been doing debating since I was ten - those are actually the people we take on in competitions every year. Our school team, as the token state school, is always the underdog; every round, we role up in as close as we can get to matching colours, and are subsequently greeted by blazers, emblems and people named Basil.

We can hold our own well; we're always well prepared, and have as good an argument as anybody. It's our presentation that lets us down. Not our dress - although it does set us apart somewhat - but the way we deliver ourselves during the debate. We get so wrapped up in our points and statistics that we don't capture the lawyers and generals who make up the judging panel with our incredible wit and breathtaking smiles. Because of that, we've only ever progressed as far as the second round.

That's the trouble with these competitions. Your argument can be flawless, but it's your ability to flash those pearly whites that really counts.

It's the stubborn man's way to end a dispute; the way to say sorry without apologising, the way to finish an argument without conceding defeat. And I learnt it from none other than my father.

"I'm sorry (you feel like that)."

Don't get me wrong; I love my dad. I think he's great. I mean, what's not to like about a guy who shows you 'classics' such as Alien and Poltergeist and Jaws before you even hit ten years of age, but refuses point-blank to let you get your ears pierced? I actually think he'd be something of a genius, if Mum wasn't smart enough to see through it all.

You see, in my house, arguments always follow a certain pattern. My dad will piss my mum off about something - he'll want to start 'saving independently' for a new bike, or he'll stay out in the garage-cum-study until all hours working on his Maths assignments. Then, Mum will turn completely irrational; usually she'll tell him to "stop raising your voice" so loud it'll make your ears ring, refuse to eat dinner and then go to bed. And that's when the empty gestures start.

Firstly, Dad will bring Mum a cup of tea. That's nice. But he does make one for himself whilst he's at it.
Secondly, Mum will explain (a little bit more rationally) what she's so upset about. And no matter what that is, Dad will never "mean it like that".
Thirdly, after Mum getting worked up again, Dad will issue that classic line to her, tailored to fit the situation. I'm sorry you thought that. I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm sorry you didn't understand me.

I'll usually go to bed myself after all of that, and in the morning everything will have blown over. And that's how it has happened for as long as I can remember.

Maybe there was a time, at the start of their marriage, during those newlywed fights, when those gestures of my father would have been apology enough for my mother. But it's twenty years later now, and she's cottoned on. I suppose my dad's greatest fault was never updating that old routine of his.

At least I know how to wrap up marital disputes of my own when the time comes. After all, I do inherit my stubbornness from him.

In a desperate attempt to get back onto LJ properly and to stop being so lazy, I am officially joining up to Season Six of LJ Idol. zxwx led me to this, I'd never actually heard of it before yesterday (the horror!). I think it'll be good to get myself into the writing mood before NaNo comes around again.

So, hi everybody!

It's been ten weeks since I've posted, and around that since I've last been on LJ. God, I've been lazy. A fair bit has happened but nothing that I could've posted about quickly, if I could've been bothered.

I'm just back from Corfu, which was lovely :) I'm not very tanned because a) I really don't like sitting out in the sun for that long and b) I don't tan well even if I DO sit out in the sun for long, but meh, I'd rather pale than skin cancer :) I went scuba diving one of the days and I'm looking in to starting doing it back home now.

I'm currently having a 'Charlotte has left the chat' moment. It took me five minutes to hit the enter button too :|

I went to Germany the week before that, to do work experience in a city called Koblenz. I was in a hospital which I was really pleased about :) I got to do SO much more stuff than I've ever done volunteering in an English hospital, I was taking pulses and temperatures in my first few hours there. I did really like it when I was actually DOING something, but because I was only there for one week and tbh couldn't understand them half the time/was scared to talk in German, there wasn't a great amount for me to do. I spent SO MUCH of my day cleaning the same spots over and over to kill time.

My Charlotte came back online and replied to me and actually agreed to my invite, life is good :)

I did my D of E expedition which was an absolute MISSION. I couldn't do the last day because I was physically sick, I'd been feeling awful for the other days too and couldn't eat a lot. I'm really considering whether I should do the real thing because I'm not sure whether I'm up to it.

Results are TOMORROW, I'm seriously nervous. I'm resigned to doing awful in Maths and I'm slightly worried about Biology, but I think Chemistry and German went well. Fingers crossed!

On a school theme, I've been looking around lots of universities and have probably decided on Sheffield, Nottingham, Southampton and Brighton&Sussex for my four choices for medicine. I did a course at Nottingham called MedSim which was a bit like a taster course, that was good fun :) OH and there was this exam going on to get an interview for studying at the Charles University in Prague. I took the exam and fluked my way to an interview, then actually got an unconditional offer to study medicine there :D Shame fees there are about £10,000 a year, but oh well, it's good to have a back-up!

Oh, and I got a new hamster, Jeff. He's majorly hyper and evil and looks like Voldemort when he yawns but apart from that he's really cute :D

There's probably other stuff but I'm knackered from the night flight back from Corfu, and dad's on at me to go to bed.

DIVERSITY WON BRITAIN'S GOT TALENT :D

I thought SuBo was a dead cert to win, especially seeing as she got put through on public vote in the semis and Diversity went through because of the judges. I was SO shocked, but happy too, a) because their act was so original and brilliantly choreographed and b) because I voted for them :D

( bgt musings )

The Big Bang Theory is my latest crack, it's the ultimate way to put off revision. I've only seen about half of the first series because that's all they have On Demand but still, it's brilliant ^_^ Dad loves it too, which is a little odd. He watched the thirteen episodes available in about four days. I think it's because he realises that, if he had gone to university, he would've ended up like them XD I even had a dream about it last night, and it was a good one. Koothrappali proposed to me =D

Emma and I took a 'which TBBT character are you?' quiz; she got Penny, I got Howard. HOWARD o_O The moral of this story is that Facebook quizzes are unsurprisingly inaccurate.

So I DEFINITELY need to buy series one after exams!

I can't believe I just cried at the end of a football match, but three out of the past four years, Leeds Utd have been in the play-offs. And three out of those three years, they have just thrown it all away. They even managed to miss a penalty. Fools.

I haven't cried before now at football, ever, unless you count that time I wasn't picked for the school football team back when I was eight. I'm not even that big a supporter any more. Maybe it's all the years of complete failure finally getting to me. I remember the good old days, back when I was into football enough to try for the school team, where we'd always finish around fourth in the Premiership. And now look at us. Eight years on and we're still finishing fourth, but in League One. That's TWO LEAGUES DOWN.

The worst part is that we're still a bigger club than half the ones in the Premiership; are crowds are usually around 20,000, more than the rest of League One and the Championship AND half of the Premiership.

I'd bitch about the match in general, and about the twats that are Millwall, but I'm too depressed now, so /footballrant.

Turns out, that minor nervous breakdown was for nothing. The exam went really well!

The text discussion was absolutely fail, it was about ethical clothing and very boring. But apart from that, I thought it was a really good exam. It was more like an actual discussion than a question and answer by the end, which is a good sign, and I relaxed a lot as the exam went on. The questions she asked were all nice, LOTS on mobiles and the internet, which was great, and nothing on sex, which was even better! Unfortunately I didn't get Bevormundungsstaat in there (she said she'd laugh if anyone said it), but NOTHING she asked me related to it. More questions on drugs or alcohol would've been nice, I had so much vocab for that, but I think I just didn't have time because I extended a lot of my answers.

Hoffentlich werde ich gute Noten bekommen, oder muss ich nächstes Jahr NOCHMAL Mathe machen!