Jake Dubber

I haven’t blogged in a while. Not since I started college actually. Since then a lot has happened – I made some good friends, drummed in what can only be described as ‘Shakespeare in Space – The Musical’, enjoyed some hardcore studying, learned how to complete the 3×3 Rubik’s Cube, went to Prague, hung out with my Aunty Kelly (who’s leaving tomorrow), played computer games, been snowed on (left), argued ethics, bought a laptop, had an exam and rearranged my room. This post is about only about two of these things, namely my exams and my conquering of the 3×3 Rubik’s Cube.

My study leave started yesterday, Monday the 11th, and was the day of my first and only exam (meaning my ’study leave’ is effectively just a week-long holiday). It was in English Language and although I was nervous, I’m actually pretty confident about how I’ve done. The test is divided into two parts – Section A and Section B. The whole exam’s about text analysis, but the first part looked at how the texts conveyed information to their intended audience. The second part is all about bias. How the author uses rhetoric devices, semantics and register to convince the reader that the author is right. I’m confident because of what the texts were.

Section A was based around two texts, one a newspaper article and another an eyewitness account of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. I figured they’d be really boring, but were surprisingly graphic. For example, despite being shot in the head, it took Lincoln like 10 hours to die. I especially liked the over usage of the word ‘oozing’. Nice. Section B was a review of a Star Wars toy, the Ewok Village. Just awesome. In GCSE we got given a story about a tall woman married to a short man and the wacky fun that ensued (not wacky at all!). For AS we get gory assassinations and Star Wars! I love college.

During my free time I usually practice silly hobbies like juggling and balancing. Well, I have a new one. I was taught how to complete the 3×3 Rubik’s Cube by a new friend at college called (Crazy) John a few months ago. It took me weekend to learn, but I’m still getting time down. I started at about three minutes, but my record now is one minute and nine seconds, with an average time of roughly a minute and a half. I’ve started recording myself solving it everyday and putting it Vimeo. The first of these is below. I don’t know how often I’ll be able to blog with all my college work, but I’ll try to do one at least once every few weeks from now on.