Hey Blog! This week I realised I’ve never told you what exactly I do in the Environmental Management IGCSE I’m doing – so I’m telling you about it now!
I am now 14 in less than a week (last post at 13!) and am having to consider my options for later in life. I have absolutely no idea what to do with that wonderful time, so at the moment I’m just concentrating on having fun. However, I am doing my first exams/qualifications now (as seen in my last post) and am doing my first GCSE in Environmental Management, with Jake at Humanatees, my humanities tutor. I am rather partial to the environment and know quite a bit about it and how it works. This is useful. I seem to be rather good at it, to my surprise; even to the extent that my work is used as an example for the others (ok, so that only happened once).
The topics range through nine modules: rocks, energy, agriculture, water, oceans, disasters, air, human population, and ecosystem management. We have just reached the eighth – human population – and so are nearly finished :’(. The class is a whole other matter; it is on zoom, hilarious, hectic, and utterly brilliant. Some participants use the chat almost constantly – I find this rather hard as my brain cannot focus on two things at once; some say nothing (or else they do it on private chat); and some, like me, type something in sporadically, except when we’re answering a question and then I like to put a bunch of long answers in at the same time. I do at least listen to Jake and answer the questions (albeit sometimes my answers are too long!) and write down a few notes. The notebook we bought for EM is certainly not full yet, but it has a good way to go.
We have a WhatsApp chat for EM too, it is less full than the zoom chat but is still fun. I have got to know at least one of the other students very well online and am looking forward to the Not Prom which Jake runs every year for GCSE students to meet the others in person. It seriously is the funniest class, as Jake does some of the funniest analogies known to man – from earthquakes as old men’s wrinkly bottoms shaking, to the greenhouse effect as David Bowie putting blankets on you while sleeping; and all that while telling us with perfect accuracy how these phenomena occur. Then there’s the homework, once a fortnight, which could be anything from using the information in a doggerel poem about making a potion to create a table on ocean resources, or copying a diagram of how sewage is cleaned. Yet it’s serious too; as we are learning – well, most of us at any rate. I have got A*s each mock – which is always a surprise (oh dear, I hope I haven’t jinxed it now!) and am looking forward to getting a sparkling exam grade – not that the letter matters, it is more down to the enjoyment and how much I’ve learnt. And those are both a lot!
The exam is in May and June (two papers, a week apart). By then, I will have finished the course, and be an absolute whiz at Managing the Environment. However, Jake does more than just this course, and so I think I may be going on to do some more of his stuff in the future. Wish me luck!