Slight (or possibly major) Change of Plan

After writing my post yesterday, it dawned on me that it was going to be a real struggle to get myself as ready for the Britain and Appeasement exam in January. I feel confident about the Russia exam, but I know that Appeasement would always be my weaker paper. Having kicked around the options yesterday afternoon, I decided that I would just sit the Russia exam in January and then sit the Appeasement exam and the A2 exam in January and June 2013 respectively. I drew up a timeline and saw how it should work in terms of the dayjob and the MA. My tutor was also supportive.

I telephoned the college to tell them that I would only be sitting one exam in January and they made a note of it. I knew that this would mean that I would have paid £25 quid for nothing, but rationalised that it would be better to lose the money than do a half-cocked exam. However, I was under the impression that the £50 administration fee that I had paid for the January exam(s) was a general fee. I was told it wasn't. I would have to pay £50 administration fee for each session of exams that I took as well as the £25 for each exam. Totting this up, I would have to pay £150 to submit the coursework and sit the 2 remaining exams AND pay £75 on top in order to have them marked. I could accept a one-off fee of £50, but having to pay in total £200 JUST for administration and then the same again for the exams and coursework feels too much.

Sooo I feel I'm at a point where I need to make a decision. Do I pay another £400 on top of what I paid for the course to finish it off, or do i just sit the Tsarist Russia exam and walk away to focus on my MA? I'm pulled both ways:

* I could drop the A Level, rationalising that I am now working towards an MA and have that as my goal now. An MA will, relatively speaking, get me further along where I want to go than the A Level, but I have to square this with losing the money that paid to study the A Level. Then again, I could say that the journey has been worth the money, even though I haven't got to the destination that I wanted. I will also have failed in my quest to complete my A Level 20 years on.

* I could continue to do the A Level. I know that with the new schedule, I could fit it around the MA and work, BUT it is getting costly - the whole process will end up costing me close to £800 just for one sitting of the exams.

I need to think about this more, but the financial aspect is weighing heavily on my decision

Five Weeks to Go!

I'm now five weeks(ish) away from my first AS exam (Russia 1855-1917). On the whole, I'm nervous but feeling more confident the more revision that I do.

I've spent the last 4-5 weeks revising for the Russia exam and I feel that my grasp on the topic is better now than it was a year ago when I was working on it. I'm using a pages and pages of spider diagrams for the various units and questions and can rattle off the material when I'm given a prompt (i.e. 'why did Alexander reform?') and I can also see how the topics fit together to form the larger topic of economic and political reform in Russia in the period in question. The only material that I haven't covered in my revision is the October Revolution and the role of Lenin, so I'm hoping that doesn't come up.

This week I've started revising Britain and Appeasement 1919-40. I've made some progress but I'm hoping that I can devote more time to it over Christmas. At the moment, I feel less confident about the material than I do about Russia, and am worried that my brain will only be able to hold so much information and the more I put in about the new topic, the less I will be able to store about the previous one. The appeasement exam takes place a week after the Russia one, so I have 6 weeks to get my head around it. I was worrying about the exam and wondering whether I should try and cancel my application for the appeasement exam and just focus on Tsarist Russia, doing the English Civil War exam in June and appeasement the following January, but aside from losing 25 quid, it would be dragging the whole exam process out for too long. I think I'm just panicking. A month ago, I was considering pretending to be ill on the exam days and trying to get a refund, but I've got over that now. I just need to knuckle down a bit more and go through the pain of revision.