All Done

Well, over a year since I began studying Russia 1855-1917, I finally took the exam today; marking (most likely) the end of my A Level experience.

I took the exam today at Birkenhead Sixth Form College, say on a row by myself at the end of a number of rows of 17ish-year olds doing their papers on the French Revolution. As I sat waiting for the exam to start I must admit that I felt the nerves but they went instantly once I flipped the paper over and started writing. I then wrote almost constantly for 95 minutes - something that I haven't done in years and at the end just watched the clock tick down for the last 10 minutes.

On the whole I think I did the best that I could have done (which is obvious to say, I know). I was able to answer the 4 questions and did not find myself struggling to recall what I need to.

The paper was very much focused on the period 1870-1917, largely ignoring the Emancipation of the Serfs, The Bolshevik Revolution, and economic development. The four questions I tackled were:

* Explain why, in 1905, revolution broke out in Russia

Here I discussed the proximate cause (the Bloody Sunday Massacre) and the short term factors (defeat in the Russo-Japanese war) as well as the long term factors (demands to reform, autocracy, and the discontents of industrialization/modernisation from 1855 onward)

* How successful were Stolypin's policies in restoring stability in Russia in the years 1906-1914.

Here I started by discussing Stolypin's agricultural reforms, saying that it was difficult to assess how successful they were because WW1 intervened. I then broadened my answer out to look at both Stolypin's work with the Duma and his repression of dissent. My argument was that Stolypin was successful through the use of a 'carrot and stick' method (I used that phrase) - giving some degree of reform to pull the liberals away from the radicals and persecuting dissent (social revolutionaries, peasants, nationalists, social democrats).

* Explain why the Bolsheviks had little support in Russia in 1914.

My brain initially went blank with this one and I don't think that I answered the question fully. My argument was that they had limited support among peasants (who were the bulk of the peasants/workforce) as their message of workers' revolution did not fit with the peasant experience. Similarly, the liberals did not want revolution when they had the Duma and somewhat of the constitutional monarchy that they had been hankering after since at least the 1850s. Finally, I said that they also had little support as the Bolshevik leaders were in exile and so were unable to provide effective leadership for the workers.

Again, I don't think I answered this question very well. I was throwing enough ideas down to get some marks - hopefully.

* How important were military problems in explaining the Tsar's decision to abdicate in February/March 1917.

I was soooooo happy when I saw this question and reasoned that it would be worth taking a hit with the last question to answer this one. I started off by outlining the proximate causes of the abdication (riots, army mutinies and then calls to abdicate from the Duma and military) before looking at the role of military problems. My argument was that while they were significant, they served mainly to exacerbate existing social, political and economic tensions within the country.

So, all in all I don't think that I could have done any better (aside from possibly in the third question). I found it an exilerating and strangely enjoyable experience taking the exam. At one point I even thought that maybe I should try my luck with the Appeasement exam next week, having paid for it, but I don't think I will. Now all I have to do is wait to see how I did...

Exam Tomorrow!!

Well, after a seeming age, I finally have the exam for Russia 1855-1917 tomorrow. I feel pretty relaxed and haven't done any revision this weekend. I'm pretty confident that I know the material as well as I ever will and that I can recall most of it and how it all links together: I also have to keep telling myself that the exam that I will be taking is designed for the average 17-year old.

I'm also calm because after giving it a lot of thought, I don't think that I will be continuing with the A Level after the exam. I said a month ago that I'd been blindsided by how much the local college were going to charge me as an administration charge per exam. This, I must admit, is a big factor in why I can't see myself taking any more exams: I'm not prepared to pay a couple of hundred quid to take the exams (75 quid per exam at the rate that I want to take them). I reserve the right to change my mind on this if I found a college or school that would just charge me per exam, but at this point I can't see myself doing that. I also want to devote more time to the MA and reading generally around history and the history of crime in particular for the day job.

When I began the A Level, I had fallen back in love with history and I wanted to get the qualification in it that I didn't get for various reasons at school. In the course of things, I've oscillated between wanting to get an A-grade by all means necessary and trying to enjoy the journey as much as possible. More recently, I've started the MA and am enjoying that (mainly) and doing pretty well with it (so far, so good). Again, I veer between wanting to get a really good grade for the MA and wanting to just enjoy the process, but I think I'm more 'ok' now with the journey side of studying.

So, unless I decide to continue this blog for the MA, this will probably be one of my last post for the blog. I'll post something tomorrow reflecting on how the exam went, but the blog will probably end in March when I discover how I did tomorrow.

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.

20 Years Later: One Year Later

Today is a major milestone: exactly a year since I started my A Level and approx eight weeks until I sit my AS exams. It's been an interesting year; I certainly know more about Russia in the nineteenth century and various other historical topics than I did a year ago, but I still feel very much a neophyte, especially on the MA. I still feel very much like my toe is just only in the water and that I need to find more time to throw myself more fully into the subject, but I'm hoping that will come with the MA.

Aside from the day-job, my major focus are the exams in January. As has been the case throughout the last year, I'm pulled between the two poles of obsessively wanting to do the best that I can and knowing that, particularly the A Level, is something that I am doing for interest and that I should enjoy the process. I find myself veering between these two poles, thinking "I have to get a good grade in the exams" and then consoling myself with "yes, but remember, you're doing this for fun; whatever you get, an extra A Level won't go on your CV".

The hardest thing recently has been getting my head around revision, not least as the last exam I sat was in 1996! I started revising back in mid-October, but made little progress for the first few weeks. When I've been able to make time with the MA and the day-job, I've started to make spider diagrams for the various topics and, all things being equal, hopefully I should be able to finish the Britain and Appeasement ones this week. Then, it's the hard slog of trying to memorise as much as possible the material and order it in my head in such a way that I can answer questions. When I think of the topics, I can faintly see the material (as if through a fog) and how it all fits together, so I'm hoping that the more I devote myself to it, the clearer it will be.

hopefully...

Revision is driving me mad! :-(

I've spent the last few weeks revising when I can and nothing seems to be going in and I'm beginning to panic about whether I will be ready for the exam in January.

It's years since I've revised for an exam and I've tried various strategies to get the information to go in with, as yet, little benefit. I started trying to do plans for past questions but found that (thankfully) I had covered them pretty closely with my notes. I then spent a while writing model answers based on my notes but, again, found that I had probably done as well as I could with the answers to questions that I put on the blog. I've also had occasional goes at reading the course books, but keep giving up, thinking that I need to spend my time more explicitly on the exam.

Every so often I wonder whether I could cancel my exam fee, but I know that the college wouldn't let me and that If i did I would have wasted the money that the course is costing. I also keep thinking 'do I need to do this if I'm doing an MA?' but again think of the money and time that I would have wasted.

I think it comes back to a question that I raised right at the start of the A Level: is it about the journey or the destination? Yes, I'd love a good grade, but ultimately I don't need another A Level and it should be enjoyable. But whenever I think this, I then think the opposite: that if it was all going in, then I would be banging on about the destination as well.

I think I should give it a break for a day and then maybe try doing revision diagrams and listening to the Teaching Company lecture series on Russia that I have.

AS Revision has Begun!

I've started revising for my AS exam in January - trying to fit in as much as possible around the MA and the day job. The last exam I took was in 1995, so I have to throw myself back in at the deep end in terms of revision techniques. Looking back at my notes, they are pretty good and already are focused in terms of the broad topics and themes within each unit. My plan now is to get all the past papers on the units that I'm going to be examined on, try and work out what questions are asked and then work up model responses - just like what I did for my A Levels back in the day. For example, in terms of Russia 1855-1917, the broad questions so far have been:

Questions on the 1855 Reforms and their Success

'Explain' Questions on the Reforms

* Explain why Alexander II emancipated the serfs

* Explain why Alexander II decided on a policy of reform in Russia

* Explain why Russians were dissatisfied with the decree emancipating the serfs in 1861?

Evaluating Questions on the Reforms

How successful were Alexander IIs reforms in modernising Russia before his death in 1881?

Questions on Opposition to Alexander II and Its Success

* How successful was Alexander II in overcoming opposition to his regime (24)

* Explain why liberals were dissatisfied with Tsarist autocracy in 1881?

Questions on the Russian Economy 1881-1914

'Explain' questions on attempts to modernise the economy

* Explain why Russian governments promoted economic development in the years 1881

* How important was the work of Vyshnegradsky and Witte in the development of the Russian economy in the years 1881 to 1904

* Why did Witte promote industrialisation in Russia?

Evaluating questions on attempts to modernise the economy

* How important was the backwardness of agriculture in contributing to weakness in the Russian economy in the years 1881 to 1914

* How far was Russia an industrialised state by 1914?

Questions on 1905 Revolution and 1905-14

'Explain' questions on the revolution and the Tsar’s reaction

* Explain why revolution broke out in Russia in 1905

* Explain why Nicholas IIs regime survived in Russia between October 1905 and the meeting of the First Duma in 1906

* Explain why Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto of 1905

* Why did Tsar Nicholas summon a Duma to meet in 1906?

Evaluating questions on the impact of the 1905/6 reforms

* How important were government concessions in enabling the tsarist regime to survive in the years 1905 and 1914.

* How successful was the tsarist regime in restoring stability to Russia between April/May 1906 and the outbreak of the war in 1914?

* How important were the Dumas in contributing to stable government in Russia in the years 1906 to 1914

Evaluating questions on Stolypin’s reforms

* How successful was Stolypin in strengthening the Tsarist regime?

The Revolutions of 1917

'Explain' questions on the impact of military failure on the Feb/March Revolution

* In what ways was military failure important in the collapse of the tsarist government in February/March 1917

* Explain why Russians were increasingly dissatisfied with Nicholas IIs wartime leadership in the years 1915 to 1917

Evaluating questions on the impact of opposition groups on the Feb/March Revolution

* How important was political opposition to Nicholas II between 1914 and the February/March 1917 Revolution in bringing about the fall of the Tsarist regime?

Evaluating questions on the factors that brought about the October Revolution (Lenin, Provisional Govt, continuing war etc)

* How important was the role of Lenin in bringing about the collapse of the Provisional Government in October/November 1917?

* How far were weaknesses of the Provisional Government responsible for the Revolution of October/November 1917?

Once I've done this, I'll start looking at Britian and Appeasement around December.