A Home-Schooler's Experience of a Sixth Form School

 The above is a random picture to really confuse you. Infer what you will.

Decisions, decisions! Recently I have been rather tossed... trying to decide what to do with my educational life.
I could either: study at home, go to college, go to sixth form or go live in a cardboard box by the side of the Thames.
It could be any of those, bar the last: (it would have to be a very comfortable cardboard box)
So, what to do?
Well, a couple of months ago I attended a spate of Open Days around the area....
I went to a university, a college, a girl's grammar school, a mixed grammar school.
Can't get more diverse than that :D

In the end I applied to a sixth form at a girl's (but mixed) grammar school. It was the only good one in the area. Last week I attended their open days on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

The first day I hated it. It was loud, noisy, everyone I spoke to swore every other sentence (something I am not used to) and I got lost. Quite a few times. Involving walking into the year 9's locker room by accident. Ouch. However, on the other hand: the lessons were really good and I enjoyed them, the teachers are all very nice, and I made a few friends.

The second day was not too much better. I spent it mostly thinking, can I face and will I cope, coming to this building every single day for the next two years, working and studying and doing homework and hearing gossip and eating gross school meals or squashed picnic lunches, basically in a secular enviroment? All for the sake of the experience and an easy way out to studying the subjects I most enjoy?

The third day was better. It was sunny, I had made friends, and I brought my own lunch. We did oil-painting in Art and composed character music in Music both of which I love doing. I'll also mention that some fellow students were talking about taking drugs, and that on the way home, some school boys knocked the window from the bus stop onto my head and found it funny. Then again, I had some really good conversations and a chance to witness to some of the friends I made. The atmosphere in the school is fun, friendly and hard-working, but just also very worldy.

So, that was my experience of a sixth form.
And I still have no idea wether I like... or hate it.
For a full picture, if I go to this sixth form, I will be able to stay at home and then catch the bus to it every day. Bearing in mind I will be having to pay for the bus.
The other alternative is staying at home or... going to college. I'll give you my impression of that college in a later post.
So yes, there are so many decisions that I'm facing. Am I scared? Yes. Terrified? Maybe even that. But I can trust.
Because in the end it's where God leads. He knows my future. He knows me. And that's the most important thing.

Herman the German (but it's a cake!) and a WEIRD coincidence...

You've heard of it, right? If you haven't, then by the time you've read this, my poor uneducated reader, you will! (Please don't let that put you off.)

Yes, yes, you're perfectly correct. It's the plastic container of bubbling dough, passed on by a desperate acquaintance... the friendship cake... it's Herman the German.

But, I hear you say, I thought he was your monkey?

He is!!

And here comes the weird coincidence. I was the only one on camp who to my knowledge had heard of the HtG cake version. And I wanted to call my monkey Horatio. Peer pressure forced me to call him Herman instead. And Herman rhymes with German so I suppose that was inevitable.

But that name was not original. It was already the name of a gloopy mixture.

Yet when I protested that I did not want my monkey named after a cake, no one believed me...

And weirdly enough, Herman the German was re-invented!!... as the name of a monkey.

My theory was that someone had heard of the cake, and so the name was floating around in the back of their mind, and popped up when I was looking for a nice name beginning with H.

But a-a-anyway, let's move onto the cake.

Right now I am wavering between abusing Herman with cynical wrath... or gushing about him in ecstatic praise.

On the one hand, we have been eating barely anything else all week.

On the other, he tastes rather... tasty.

Oh, please, you have to have heard of him! No? He's basically a mixture of sour dough handed to you in a container by a friend, usually desperate to get rid of him. You look after him for ten days (during which you become very fond of him), stir him to keep him producing bubbles, feed him milk and sugar and lumps of apple and cinammon and... well, numerous other things, and then at last, divide him into four and bake one of his babies.

It sounds rather gruesome, but it has a gorgeous end result.

The smell as it comes out of the oven... it's glorious. Really.

The other three parts, you pass on to your most devoted friends... or by the time you've finished with Hermie - anyone you can persuade to carry him away.

We've only just got rid of ours, after about four weeks worth of Herman clones. I'm rather sorry to see him go - he'd almost become a fixture - but on the other hand, I was beginning to worry about getting too fat.

So Herman got passed on to the populace.

I thought we were finally rid of him.

I then turned up at our Young People's Fellowship one evening, and guess what was on the snacks table? Slices of Herman.

And... wait for it, it gets much, much worse... My poor brainwashed (or Herman-washed) mother, told me this morning that she wanted to get him back from the friend we'd bestowed him to, so that she could pass it on to some interested family members!!

Those family members being people I will see in a relatively short amount of time...

I'm being haunted by Herman. I'd prefer the monkey.

Blessings...

Yes, that is exactly how I am feeling right now... although hoping I don't actually look that bad in reality. :(
I have a streaming cold... and its JUST when I have so much going on!!
So - it is the perfect time to remember to count my blessings, its so easy to become ungrateful!
I'm so privileged, I have - a family who I love, lovely friends, a wonderful church, clothes and food and so many other things I don't deserve.
When I think of the millons of other children in this world, without homes, parents or things we take for granted, it makes me realise I really can't complain about a little common cold!
And it has its funny side...
I'm supposed to be recording a speaking test in Mandarin. Try pronouncing tones with a blocked nose... no kidding, its a joke!... ;)