What a week!

As I'm sure many of you know, it has been exam week for me! Out of the past 9 days i have spent at least part of 7 of them in the Library studying! I had my language exam on Tuesday we had to write 2 essays from a choice of 3 subjects. Would anybody like to know about Creative Writing or Structuring Talking and Listening Tasks? :) The thing i really like about essay writing exams is that you can show off everything you've learned from all of your studying, hopefully i was was 'showing off' the correct stuff! Thursday was the maths exam, i opened the paper, looked at question 1 and was like, oh dear!

"In a village there are 3 straight streets which may or may not cross each other. If there are traffic lights at every junction, what is the greatest number of traffic lights that could be needed? What about 4 streets, 5 streets?"

It's taken from the 5-14 National Guidelines, and is a problem that primary 7s would normally get. I think it was the exam pressure that made me think 'i have absolutely no idea what the question is asking me never mind answering it!' Lots of people (i won't name any names!) think that Primary Teaching is an easy course and that our maths exams will be really easy, yes we do get some primary maths like the problem above, but we also get questions like this one:

"Explain what is meant by the 'principle of transitivity' and why transitivity is important in learning to measure."

We also needed to know things like Pascal's trainagle, prime numbers (and easy ways to find them!), conservation of mass, 2 different meanings for a fraction, M.A.B. material and how to use it to demonstrate numbers to one decimal place. Ok, so im just putting those things in because they're things that most people won't know, and i can pretend to be all knowledgeable! :)

This morning i attended the funeral of Joan, her son Jonathan was one of the boys who had been at the camp that i went to with the Boy's Brigade company during the summer in Wisconsin. I had worked with Joan on some fundraising events and on costumes for the BB Concert. She was diagnosed with leukemia a few years ago, at the beginning of last year she was told that she had 6 months to live. She kept setting herself targets and was able to celebrate her 50th birthday in December, sadly she died last week. This was the first funeral i had been to, and it really made me realise how insignificant my problems are. It also confirmed to me one of the worst feelings in the world, knowing or seeing that somebody is upset or hurt and you can't do anything about it. It's a horrible feeling, i hate seeing people upset, it makes me upset, it was really hard to see Jonathan coming into the church this morning, i cant even begin to imagine what he's going through, but with time and prayers he will get through the greif and be able to remember all the great times that he spent with his mum.

Verse for the blog:~ "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. " John 14:1-3 (NIV)