It’s a new year, which means a new bullet journal. Every day I’ve been writing a few notes in my daily log, so that I can write them up as a blog post at the end of the week. (If I refer to these notes sometimes in the upcoming posts, that’s what I’m talking about!)
Recently, I’ve reserved Maths and Physics lessons for my weekday mornings, and more ‘fun’ subjects like History, English, Latin for the afternoons. I have a Latin exam on Monday next week (11th Jan) which I’ve been revising for after the past few weeks. On Tuesday and Wednesday this week, I took two Latin GCSE past papers and got A*s in both of them! Hopefully the same will go for Monday…
On Monday this week, I spent the morning doing Maths and Physics as usual. I started the next chapter, on quadratic equations, in my GCSE textbook, and learnt how to solve the equations by completing the square, using the quadratic formula and factorising.
In Physics, I learnt about three-pin plugs, the three different wires inside and their uses, and the evil, evil resistor. I despise resistors.
Inside your average three-pin plug, there are three wires: the live wire, the neutral wire and the earth wire. Each are wrapped in differently coloured plastic insulation so you can differentiate between them; the live wire is brown, the neutral is blue, and the earth wire is striped yellow and green. Current flows through the live wire into the plug and out again through the neutral wire. The earth wire is purely for decorative purposes.
Only joking. It’s actually used to ensure the plug is safe by providing an alternate route for current should the live wire come loose. If this is the case, the live wire may touch the metal casing of the appliance, making the casing “live”, and should the user of the appliance touch that live casing, they would be electrocuted. The earth wire provides the current with an extremely low resistance, lower than that of a human, so that it will (hopefully) flow into the ground via the earth wire and not the unfortunate operator.
In the afternoon, I did some Latin worksheets and then finished off with a large chunk of reading. I’m around 60% of the way through Homer’s Iliad at the moment, and I’m now pushing on 20% of Dumas’ extraordinarily long Count of Monte Cristo.
I noticed that I’ve prefaced my daily log for Tuesday with “GOOD DAY!” in huge fancy letters. I can’t see what was so different about it. I did Maths and Physics again in the morning – more quadratics, and more of the evil, evil resistor. Then I took my first Latin past paper in the afternoon, and did some more reading after that. I also learnt how to play John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Road on the violin!
Here my notes read, “Morning: Maths – completing the square – before realising I don’t have to do maths on Wednesdays. Classic Lavinia moment.”
So we finished off the morning with Art History. I learnt about Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist” in order to explore further the question “What makes art beautiful?” Then I took my second Latin paper, and my mum put Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse on my Kindle as a reward. I hadn’t read any of my absolute favourite books, the Jeeves and Wooster series, for about a year, and now I’m utterly besotted all over again.
“And… oh, Bertie. Can you keep a secret?”
─A Jeeves and Wooster story
“No.”
On Thursday, I finished off the chapter on quadratics, and we took a walk in the ice and frost. It never actually snowed this year─it hasn’t over here for about three─but it was lovely and sleety and cold, a nice refresher after the heatwave that was our 2020 summer!
I finished off the day with some very educational Masterchef-watching, and plenty of chapters of Right Ho, Jeeves!
On Friday, I went to my grandma’s house for the weekend and just came back today, on Sunday. We went on a walk every day around her estate and I showed her what I’ve been learning lately on the piano and violin. I had a lovely time, and after all that lounging-about I’m ready to start work again on Monday!