Weekend bits and pieces

[wildeabandon]

I had a phone call with my French teacher to go over some of the mistakes in my assignment, and she did say that she thought my second essay was a better essay in it's own right, but that in marking it she had to follow the mark scheme, which made me feel better about it. (Also the way that response mirrored my own response to the question was quite aesthetically pleasing, because I'm that sort of pretentious wanker.)

I spent most of the weekend working through the next module of my RS course, and doing the assignment for that. The content was largely familiar and pretty straightforward conceptually, at least compared to the ontology and epistemology that I'd been covering in my first assignment. The thing I found most difficult was completing the questions in the time available, which was quite surprising to me, because I remember in my first set of A-levels always having masses of time to kill at the end. But I guess that's in part a difference between essay and non-essay subjects - and looking at the examiner's reports, I'm far from the only person to find that a challenge. I think possibly one thing I might want to do is look into getting a better pen, as I'm just using ballpoints at the moment. If anyone who has more recent experience than me in doing much in the way of writing by hand has any pointers, I'd love to hear your advice.

On Sunday afternoon our neighbour Jesse came over to hang out, which was really nice. I baked a clementine and almond cake which I was pretty pleased with, and we played a game of Azul, which I'd originally encountered chez atreic and emperor and enjoyed, but subsequently completely forgotten how to play. It was as much fun as I remembered it being, so I'm going to try and remember to play it more now.

Work is going to be pretty hectic for the next couple of weeks, as we've got a major deadline on the 12th, but then the rest of that week will hopefully be relatively gentle tying up of loose ends, and then the university closes down for a fortnight, so I'll get a proper break. (Sort of, as I'll be trying to use it to get as far ahead as possible in my A-level studies...)

Comments

[emperor]

I think you probably mean me and not emporer :)

[wildeabandon]

Oops. Fixed :)

[vyvyanx]

I've done loads of handwriting for my many degrees over the years! (And I still write by hand quite a lot now.) TBH, I've nearly always used biros; I'm not sure the implement makes that much difference really. Make sure you have multiple fresh pens to hand, though, if there's time pressure - the last thing you want is for the thing to run out half way through or be on its last legs so that you have to press harder or rewrite bits. I think the most important thing, if you have a timed exam or similar coming up, is to get plenty of practice writing by hand over the preceding weeks, so that it's not a horrible shock when you come to actually do it on the day, and you don't get cramp!

Like lots of opinions about pens (this may be like a bit of a Special Interest….)

[judiff]

So like Gel Pens are soooo much nicer to write with than ballpoints but look and feel pretty similar - they are just smoother and have nicer ink quality. They are cheap so you don’t have to stress about losing them or having lots of spares in an exam. There are like lots of fancy gel pens about (like metallic or glitter or neon) that you don’t want for an exam but for just plain black or blue then Uni Ball Signo, Pentel oh gel, colour gel or ener gel or Pilot G2 are all good (make sure you don’t accidentally get pilot fixion which are erasable - they are awesome but not for an exam). We like retractable because we find it with and then lose pen caps when we are like nervous
https://www.cultpens.com/c/q/explore/product-type/pens/gel-pens
You can also get gel pen refills for more fancy/hand friendly but expensive pens of that’s what works best for you.

If you want to use a fountain pen - which are like more comfy and writerly feeling then there are lots of options. Fountain pen geekdom is like a whole big cool confusing thing. But like unless you have like a specific lucky/special pen then you prolly want a nice but cheapish (so you can have a back up) pen that takes cartridges (you don’t want to like be faffing with ink bottles in an exam!). We really, really like the TWSBI swipe (will take standard cartridges as well as the big TWSBI brand ones)
https://www.cultpens.com/s?q=Twsbi+swipe
And the Lamy Safari (plastic) or Al-Star (aluminium and like just a bit nicer) are good too (but they only take the Lamy brand cartridges)
https://www.cultpens.com/c/q/brands/lamy/lamy-safari
https://www.cultpens.com/c/q/brands/lamy/lamy-al-star

(We’ve like also heard like good things about the Pilot Kakuno but haven’t tried one yet)

For fountain pens I like a broad nib but it depends on your band writing. If you aren’t sure then like medium is a good place to start. The Lamy nibs are like particularly easy to change.

In an exam you have to use the paper you are given which is like usually not really fountain pen friendly. This article (from like a US supplier) goes through some inks that work well on cheap paper https://www.jetpens.com/blog/The-Best-Fountain-Pen-Inks-for-Ordinary-Paper/pt/971
And you can always look up inks you like on Mountain of Ink https://mountainofink.com/ to see how it does on different papers.
We like diamine inks cos they are cheap, made in the UK and the standard colours come on cartridges as well as bottles - but the different colours like respond differently to paper quality so not all of them are going to work in an exam

Re: Like lots of opinions about pens (this may be like a bit of a Special Interest….)

[wildeabandon]

Thank you! That was exactly what I was looking for. I've ordered the TWSBI Swipe and a handful of the gel pens to try out. I'll let you know how I get on.

[wildeabandon]

Thank you. I will try a few different pens in case it does feel different to me, but the pointer on practicing is definitely a good one. I've done my last couple of assignments by hand and will continue to do that, as well as all my revision practice papers, which I hope will be enough.

Re: Like lots of opinions about pens (this may be like a bit of a Special Interest….)

[juliet]

I was going to recommend both gel pens & fountain pens too -- I find both feel nicer than ballpoint and you should need to press down less so ought to be easier on the hand. I prefer fountain pens myself; Platinum do a v cheap but very nice pen called Platinum Plaisir https://www.cultpens.com/i/q/PT28314/platinum-plaisir-fountain-pen-pgb-1000-black (also in other colours).

Pilot gel pens are excellent.

Do double check exam requirements re ink in advance; I think for at least some exams you may be obliged to use particular ink colours? (But if so I would expect it'll be like black or school-pen-blue. I do like exciting coloured inks but I understand examiners not wanting eg glittery orange :) )

[barakta]

The time allowed in modern A-levels is a lot less than when we studied them too. Blame Gove, he wanted a hark back to the 1950s and part of that was cramming more stuff into each exam and making it intentionally very time pressured.

A lot of the strategies that were permitted for us in the late 90s such as answering one question in prose and the rest in short form/bullets also doesn't work anymore cos instead of PAPERS being marked, possibly by an overtired drunk teacher at 4am of deadline day, the paper is scanned and QUESTION + ANSWER are sliced up in such a way that exam marker will see umpty of question X and be allocated those in chunks with a timescale and they only get more if they mark within moderated guidelines (some are randomly double marked and so on)... So less deadline but a lot more conveyor belt. If they can't read answers they should be flagging it for review more slowly, but it's not in their interests to squint at bad writing.

I don't know why school exams aren't typed except of course where it's maths/science etc...

[ewt]

Pens -- I'd echo what others have said. I find fountain pens can be fussy about the paper used, though. Uni-ball Signo is what I usually look for if I'm in a situation where I need to buy a pen (because I've lost or forgotten mine) and want one that I know I will like and will continue to use.

In general, if I'm doing a lot of writing I do better with a pen that has a fatter barrel. I've also sometimes used a pen grip in the past, when I was having more finger problems. If I use a narrower pen, I like the ones with a triangular barrel. Staedtler triplus fineliners are what I usually use for colour-codong things, and some of the sets come in nifty containers, but I don't tend to use them for writing anything long.

I also second the advice on practising.

[sfred]

Azul is my favourite game since I encountered it.
My little sister has some of the Azul variations, and the ones we've played have also been fun.