Cuttings and Cacti

Okay, I used a cheesy alliteration as my title, but I think I should be allowed, seen as its my birthday.

Yes, thats right, I’ve now reached the grand old age of 15. As has Kim [ http://keemee.wordpress.com/ ] , who says that she is a few hours older, but I recon its quality not quantity. From my parents, I got a T Shirt, a box of Thornton’s chocolates and a bonsai tree. On top of that, Lydia got me three IKEAn cacti, Georgia got me a box of Maltesers, Kim gave me a tenner and I got homemade cards off Phoebe and Georgi.
So thanks to y’all.

And more plants (there are now 8 if you include cuttings and cacti) means more naming. So now the bonsai is called Babs (taking pride of place next to Sandra on the window sill) and the three cacti, placed next to Ellie and Davina II, are Morag (the prickly one), Edna (the little one) and Dolly (the fat and curvy one).
As they say, the more the merrier.

Anyhow, for only the second time ever, my birthday is on a school day, seen as some silly person decided to make the easter break so early. However, today was a focus day, lightening the blow somewhat. A focus day is what our school does every half term or so, meaning that instead of having a weekly PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) lesson, we get a whole day of it every now and then. PSHE is generally things like don’t drink, do drugs, smoke, have sex, have kids, hoax call or its Goodnight Vienna for you. Either that or join the army, navy, air force, NHS etc (which would probably mean Goodnight Vienna also).

And today was no different. Period 1 was a rather, urm, graphic lesson on the dangers of STI/STDs, with very stomach wrenching pictures, to say the least. If anything, I’m now rather fearful of sex. Period 2 was a lesson from our tutor on revision and period 3 was an hour being directed round wierd websites by our (frankly rather crap and VERY creepy) careers advisor, Mr. Paul Stanton, of Connexions. After lunch was some personality finder thing, telling us what kind of personalities we had and how this could effect our every day lives. Finally, was a rather dull visit by some people from Shrewsbury Magistrates court, telling us what they do (for NO MONEY), followed by an example case for us to puzzle over. This gave me a chance to use a big word that I had learned at critical thinking: corroborative (i.e. two pieces of evidence that help to strengthen the credibilty of the other).

I probably should, at this point, explain this critical thinking shazzamanazz. My school has given us supposedly clever people the opportunity to study for an AS level at a girls school just down the road in Adcote, along with some Adcote girls and some people from a school in Shrewsbury. We do this after school, in our own time, on Thursdays. Critical thinking is generally assessing the credibilty of evidence (more big words), meaning that you do things like decide which side of an argument is more believable (e.g. in court), whether a witness statement provides sufficient evidence, picking faults in arguments, factors that can affect evidence and arguments (like vested interest) and more thrilling stuff like that. In my opinion, it’s quite interesting, because we often do very up-to-date topics and it can be applied to almost anything, like my campaign to get Sky in our house (which is proving unsuccessful).  It’s quite a new AS, and is apparently very helpful if you want to get into higher universities and/or study law medicine, neither of which I want to study (I’m just doing it so I can have an AS level on my CV for when I want to go to college). 

And we’re all to be on our best behaviour tomorrow, as there’s a little mini-inspection from OFSTED, so all the teachers are getting really worried that we’ll play up.

Also, I’m hoping I’ll get my French back tomorrow, so fingers crossed.

(NB: Goodnight Vienna = it’s all over etc.)