Imagine the thought of saving a life, you’d be likely to experience the sort of genuine lasting happiness that only altruism offers. Imagine saving a baby’s life, that might make you feel even more satisfied. Now, multiply that by two million.

James Harrison, an Australian, has a rare antibody that prevents babies from dying of Rhesus disease, and has been donating blood for 56 years to save the lives of over two million babies. This is the sort of hero that is worthy of a Nobel Prize. Click here for the original article.

This reminds me of Freakonomics where it discusses incentives and mentions blood donation. In the US you get paid for donating blood while across the pond in the UK you are expected to feel good (and drowsy). Funnily enough, the ‘warm feeling’ the UK has to offer beats the cold hard cash the yanks throw at you, as the statistics have shown that the UK gets more donations (probably per capita). Personally, I’ve been wanting to donate blood (I believe the minimum age is seventeen, so just under a month to go).

The arrogance I am expressing from my results has slightly died down, but is still potent. However, I intend for this post to be a guide, not an ‘I’m better than you so na na na-na na’ declaration (though if I didn’t know about a few extra readers here – mainly looking for answers that weren’t there – I probably wouldn’t have posted this). Anyway:

1. Set yourself targets. Good targets
I believe the main reason why I was displeased with my GCSEs was that I didn’t set myself high targets, I started off with Bs, mainly, and I realised at the end I could have got As and perhaps A*s for subjects I didn’t think I was much good at (though English, classics, and the whole writing family will always bring me down…). When A-levels came, I aimed for As, after some hesitation about the plausibility, then I aimed for >90% for three (mainly because over time I am unlikely to improve due to the difficulty curve). Even if you think you won’t get it in a million years, work for them.

2. Know what you’re doing
For me, economics was probably of relevance here. It was a brand new subject for me and I didn’t know what connected and what was relevant, and where to draw the line between relevant queries and queries irrelevant for my exam. Get your specification, and make sure you can do what it asks you to. It sometimes diverges from the contents of your book, and sometimes your book talks about topics disproportionately (economics, again).

3. Actually do some work
I didn’t do as much work as my stereotype suggests, a lot of the days I just did my homework, and some days I left it to the morning, but I won’t deny I didn’t do work. I can’t advise you much here, you find your own method. Personally, I found fear a greater motivation than satisfaction (unfortunately the fear motivation was a late bloomer – like a week before the exam). Writing notes will help I suppose, and perhaps do brainstorms (or the politically correct version), just do whatever floats your boat.

4. Past papers and mark schemes
If you do physics, chemistry and/or economics and you haven’t seen the A-level stuff section, you’re a bit of a fool. Any relevant past papers, mark schemes, and other crap I find online I put there. Some exams repeat questions, so memorising the mark scheme could be your ticket, especially for definitions (but I guess you’re fucked in this area if you do English or something). I think they were the main helping hand for the sciences.

5. Pray for a snow day (or snow week)
Leaving most of my work to the end wasn’t wise, but without that snow day I’d have had to rely on what I hesitate to call study leave. As I’m sceptical that snow will fall during May, don’t leave your work to the end.

6. ‘Do the questions. Get them right.’
A friend told me that like a day or something before the C1 maths exam. There’s not really another way about it, don’t panic, don’t let a bad question have collateral damage on others, and work efficiently to preserve your scarce time. Finally, don’t give up. I’ve realised you can be at the height of pessimism and still get a good grade.

Don’t take this as an absolute, obviously. It might help, but some maxims are quite obvious and you probably do them. This has just worked in my experience, in the same way that my Mac has as opposed to my Windows predecessors.

Procrastinating time, yay! Perfect time to write a post. Anyway, my music taste has developed from ‘random songs/pieces of music’ to anything that was played on Capital Gold from about the mid-’90s to now (notably the Beatles) in the last year or so. There’s a property about music that I’ve noticed that I think is in women, this is by no means an absolute for me, but I might be on to something…

Let me throw in a couple of examples, take these two versions of Let It Be:

I believe the first one was released, and the second was another take used in the Let It Be film. You should note that the first one has been through a lot of editing to add some sound effects, make sure all the voices sound immaculate and whatever while the second is kind of ‘raw’. Now, leaving the video aside, I prefer the second one. The same goes for Radio Ga Ga compared with the Live Aid live version:

The sort of perfection that these excellent musicians aim to achieve turns me off, but why? And why do I prefer live/raw versions where they struggle and can forget words? I think it’s because I find flawlessness plain, and I just like the small imperfections that bring these gods back down to Earth.

Where am I going with this? First, let me warn the 0.5 females that read this blog to go away for the remainder of this post, I don’t know what pisses them off but I better play it safe. Anyway, I think I can say the same about music for women (generally). Supermodels and celebrities just don’t give me the ‘boing’ downstairs as they do to my male counterparts; make up and photoshop just turns me off. To be honest, however, I think it’s a matter of beauty amplified by compatible personality, but to me beauty does not have to be high, it’s just the foundations for me to admire character (but I know less about women than I do about politics).

Yes, it’s that time of year again, and Jesus fucking Christ:

Maths: 100% (A)
Physics: 98%* (A)
Economics: 89% (A)
Chemistry: 97% (A)

Again, Jesus fucking Christ. I was not expecting that, and quite obviously I’m over the moon. It’s hard to continue this post without boasting, but I don’t care.

I said I was going to delete my Facebook account if I got 90:90:90:80 at least, and I’m not because I assumed I wasn’t going to get them (screw being true to your word). In the midst of death threats from my peers as (apparently) no one beat me, people asked for my secret, and to be honest I don’t know. Sure, I did some work here and there and I’m not an academic idiot, but not to the extent of these results (that said, memorising the mark schemes from past papers really helps).

*The results paper said ‘118’ and I was told that it was out of 120, the rest were out of 100.