Day 1

Well, Day 1 is over, and you all have tomorrow off to chillax.  Sort of- unless you are a Buddy to a junior class.  Use this time to sort out your stationery requirements, and your gear for school.  A couple of reminders:

You need a school bag.  In here you will have a pen.  And paper.  And your lunch.  And a water bottle.  Even though Summer has been CRAZY this year, you will be dehydrating quickly as your brain does all that thinking!  Make sure you are drinking enough and hydrating during the day.

You should also read over your course outlines (the ones you have at least!).  Be prepared for what is to come.  Start thinking about the time commitments and the financial commitments of your course choices.  You only have a couple of weeks to change classes if you wish, and some courses are already over-flowing, so get your timetable sorted asap.

Some of the Year 12's and 13's in our class do need more credits to pass L1 or 2.  Let's try to get this sorted out in February.  Ask your teachers if there is anything you can do in the first few weeks before the workload gets crazy.

Now, welcome to Isabela, Kylie and Robin who join us from other schools.  I was pleased to see how you all made them welcome, and I hope you continue to do so as time rolls by.

Have a great day off tomorrow, and I shall see you all on Thursday.  (I will post Luau pictures tomorrow afternoon).

New Year's Resolutions

So the time has come for the year to roll over.  For most of you it seems to be a time to enjoy and have a great time with your mates, and this is great.  Hopefully you will make some new resolutions for 2010.  If you have not yet thought about it, it could well be worth the effort.  Now is a time to make new goals for the year, goals that are all about you.

Some ideas about what these resolutions could include are:

• Gaining the 80-60 credits for NCEA 1-2-3 (whichever is applicable)
• Getting to know all the people in my formclass
• Aiming to do my best in every class this year
• Try a new sport or school activity
• Get a Learners/Restricted/Full drivers license
• Do something that is scary and challenging
• To get to know an exchange student
• Learn an instrument

The main thing about New Years Resolutions is that you are choosing what is important to you.   They generally look at ways of improving yourself or the way in which you do something.  They are always worded positively, and generally involve big, lofty goals that will take a long time to get right.

I would like to implore you to think about what you want to achieve and do in this coming year.  I guarentee the New Years Resolutions will be handy for when we start writing goals in class.

Stationery stuff

Right, you need to be as prepared as possible for next year to make a success of your education.  This includes having all the "stuff" to learn.

Below is a link that will take you to the college website.  Under Mr Shepherd's face is a link to download the stationery requirements for your classes.  You should read this through.

Soon Stationery will be on special at places like the Warehouse, Paper Plus, Warehouse Stationery and all those awesome stores that I spend too much of my paycheck at.  I would recommend going through the classes you want to take and make a list of what you need.  Most classes seem to want refil..... just get one or two LARGE blocks of refill.

Seriously, take a look at the sales, not just as I love to drool over stationery, but the pens and all that are soooooooooo unbelievably cheap, make sure you have some!  You should also get a couple of highlighters and some paper or a visual diary so that you can get set up for revision early on.  Post-its are also a giant help, and post-it pens and highlighters are the best thing ever..... Drool.

If you are taking English or another heavy reading subject like History, you should seriously think of getting something like post-it flags or bookdarts.  These can highlight or lable the important parts of a text, without damaging it.  And if you walked away with bookvochures from prizegiving or Christmas, you should think about asking your teachers which novels (etc) you are studying.  Most novels are around $15... if you had your own copy, well, you don't have to worry about returning it, you have it all year, and you can draw on it!  Also, you can sell it to those studying it in next year!

The big cheats are if you have internet and even better, the itouch or iphone.  Here you can go to www.sparknotes.com and get free summaries of books, including all the stuff on characters, symbols, motifs etc.... (you can download a pdf or kindle version for like $5, but it is free online).  With the idevices, you can download timetable programmes, study tools, organising thingies, and all sorts of useful stuff like dictionaries, thesauruseseseses and atlaseseseseseses.  Or talking books for the perenially lazy.  I will give you loads of advice and suggestions over the course of the year, but I would recommend idevices from here to Africa.  If you get one for Christmas, bring it to school and Ms Owens can configure it to use over the school network, and you will be online, for free, during your school days.

Anywho, the purpose of this blog was STATIONERY!  Remember that.  Below is the link.  Make sure you have your lists.  Or else.  I will not be coming over to your parentseseses houses with a paper copy because you lost yours at the end of school!  Be cool people, be cool.

College stationery lists