Spam-a-lot

In my embarrassingly long absence, I have had a rather large number of comments. Well, by large, I mean more than the odd one or two from friends that I know read my posts. Unfortunately, these haven't been wonderful new people who have discovered my blog hoping for me to post more. Instead these have be spam.

Most spam is just annoying. I don't want to look at your website, even if that link is genuine; what I want is constructive discussions and feedback. Nevertheless, before I have a tidy up and delete these comments boosting my comment numbers (probably reporting them for spam), I thought I'd share some of the funnier ones.

Some of the posts, like this one look like they might be genuine... but it just seems too stilted...

Good dаy! I could have sworn I've been to this website before but after browsing through some of the post I realized it's new to mе.
Anyhow, ӏ'm definitely delighted I found it and I'll be bοok-marking 
and checking back often!

 However, most of them it's just so obvious that they haven't read the post and that, in fact, they are probably a bot.

Write more, thats
all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on 
the video to make your point.
You definitely know what youre talking about, why waste your intelligence on 
just posting videos to your blog when you could
be giving us something enlightening to read?

This one was  posted on Settle ALL THE PLACES! Which, is most definitely not a video... But thank you bot for calling me intelligent... I think...

Ok, it felt like there were most spam post than this but the rest were much of the same, if anything duller. However, after a comment spring clean, I urge you to leave comments. I'd like to think actual intelligent comments will encourage me to blog more... I guess we'll have to wait and see!

Examinate, examinate

Exams are pretty much unavoidable if you want recognition for any form of education. Whether it's a food hygiene course or a university degree, there is bound to be at least one exam. Between May and July, students everywhere can't ignore that fact as they sit at individual desks in sports halls and classrooms across the country, trying to focus on the paper in front of them. Of course, I'm no exception.

At my university in London, everyone has around 8 exams, all approximately 2.5 hours long. If you're lucky, you have them all nicely spaced out over the whole of May; if you're like myself and a number of others on my course, you'll end up with a clump of three in,a row. Always helpful for knowing how to order and organise the revision.

The thing about exams is that I'm never very sure if they're the best way to test the knowledge we should have gained over the year. Sure, they're the easiest way to standardise marks and bulk assess but are the people who get good grades the people who will be the best employees or are they just the ones who are best at memorising and conforming to the system?

I'm not saying I have an alternative.far from it. Coursework can only test some areas and there simply not enough teachers for each student to be individually assessed over the year. However, with the age of the internet, you can find any journal article you need without searching the shelves of the library and a lot of text books are now ebooks, almost eradicating the need to step into a library or memorise facts quite so precisely. There's an ongoing debate whether this is making us lazy or just helping us focus more on what we're really interested in but I have to admit, I'm yet to use the university library for books...

Whatever your opinion on the accuracy of examinations, I think most people agree that they are stressful and unenjoyable. So, as I head home from exam 5 of 8 I'll ask you: is there another way to test our assimilation efficiency?

Brains....

In the silvery light of the new moon, rats scurried over the abandoned tombstones of blogs past. Every now and then, a new stone would appear, already covered in cobwebs, cracks showing through the mist, but no one was there to see them come. The only movements in the whole graveyard were the scurrying and flapping of unwanted rodents, taking refuge in a place long forgotten. A grey mist covered the whole site, hiding the edges. If anyone had been there, they would have assumed that the graveyard went on forever: the shrivelled grass, withered plants, moss covered tomb stones and the deathly silence. Almost everything was thought dead in the graveyard. This dilapidated  deathly place was where blog ended up accidentally  abandoned by their owners and stagnating in the air of forgotten musings.

Today, the graveyard seemed to be the same as every other day. The sun still couldn't quite break through the clouds, the rodents present as ever and the silence almost deafening. Until, a scratching noise broke the never-ending silence. The rodents ran in panic away from the personal section of the graveyard, scurrying in every direction as a grave marked only as hannahlikessheepbaa.blogspot.com shifted conspicuously. The ground began to shake and the ground beneath the grave seemed to be rising up.

The noises got louder and louder. The scratching became a deafening roar, joined by screams and moans. First one hand then another burst through the vibrating ground until a fully formed, yet somewhat decaying, blogger burst through the ground.

"Braaaaaiiinnnnsss" moaned the blogger, slowly but surely heading towards what she hoped was the land of the living. For today was the day that the zombie blogger attacked....

So, technically, this blog is dead. It had an official funeral and everything however, I have decided to bring it back. I mean, I didn't really intend to let it die in the first place however I guess life got in the way and then I got out of the habit and then... well, just imagine your own excuses, they're probably on the long list somewhere.

Technically, I should be revising. I am half way through my second year exams (4 down, 4 to go) with another exam tomorrow afternoon. However, after a very stressful exam this afternoon and a feeling of relative preparation for tomorrow, I decided now was as good as any other time to revive this stagnant blog.

It has been way too long. I mean WAAY too long... I've finished first year and almost finished second year, move from university to (rather leaky) private accommodation and  have been busy with goodness knows how many things.

However, the main reason I've wanted to revive this blog before the summer is because I am going to be VERY busy in the summer and, as this includes going to Borneo, I am hoping to keep some memories of this summer in more than just photos. It would be nice to be able to look back and see how I felt, what I experience when my camera wasn't in my hand, and what events I thought were most important at the time. This is going to be a big summer, not only because I'm doing so much but this is potentially my last proper summer holiday as I have no idea what I'll be doing after university.

So, keep on bugging me and don't let me slip up so badly again!

I hope to see you soon,

Hannahlikessheepbaa