Southampton Trip

Hey,

So yesterday I went on a trip with my sociology class into Southampton! The sun was shining, I had people I genuinely enjoyed talking to, it was a good trip.

We arrived pretty early so we took a slight detour, where our teacher bought us all a drink of our choice – I said to surprise me with a type of smoothie. I’m not entirely sure what I had but it was pretty decent. We then strolled to a local infant school with a large multi-ethnic majority of pupils and oh my gosh these kids were adorable. We were there to observe the culture differences between our school and their school, and how these kids represent their own culture as well. These little boys and girls were running around playing together in the playground with little hijabs on, and other cultural headdresses. Honestly, it was really pretty. They were all so proud of their religion and their cultural, even to the point they called other members of my class ‘teacher’ and proudly showed them their different religious attire.

We then visited the headteacher, who gave us information about the school itself and the pupils. She also seemed really proud of her little infant school and how it’d come along! She encouraged us to go poke around in the classrooms and join in in the classrooms so we could get to know the kids and see that they’re just like everyone else their age, just with  few cultural differences. Honestly, the whole trip was really enlightening already.

After this, we visited a ‘cultural shop’ as my teacher described it. It was essentially a corner shop with lots of Indian, Polish and Samoan food. There was nothing like this really where I live so it was interesting to have a look round. Some members of the group even bought food such as Jalebi, which is an Indian sweet with a similar taste to doughnuts. It was surprisingly good!

We then visited a Gurdwara, a Sikh place of prayer. To enter, we had to cover our hair with these multi coloured pieces of cloth. Naturally, I had to have help to put mine on as it kept falling off. Inside the Gurdwara, we were able to get free lunch. We lined up in a queue, where we served traditional Indian food by a smiling man behind a large counter. We all sat nearby and tucked into our meal and honestly, I was blown away. The only thing I recognized on my tray was rice pudding and a type of bread, but everything was delicious! Nothing was too spicy but it was all seasoned well and had an interesting texture.

After we’d eaten, we thanked the man who served us once more. He then pointed us in the direction of a washing up station, where we washed up our trays and then could return our borrowed pieces of cloth. After this, we took a leisurely stroll back to the train station to go home, all chatting about the trip and the things we’d seen. I could tell the whole day had been a bit of culture shock for most members of my class, myself included! However, I had fun. Where I live, we have a large white, agnostic/atheist population with a few Christians splattered around. We have barely any ethnic minorities in our school just due to where we are located but the fact that there are so many cultures out there that i’m not even truly aware of was… almost exciting. Maybe i’ll look more into it in the future.

In other news, my coursework got plagiarized at college. This girl asked if I could send her my work just so she could get the general structure of how to write the work after not understanding me trying to explain it. Turns out she just copy and pasted half of my assignment and handed it in as her own work. Honestly, that annoyed me hugely when I found out. My teacher was the one who told me. Turns out, if she didn’t admit to copying I could be kicked off the course as it’d seem like I was copying her, despite my teacher knowing I didn’t. It’s rather ridiculous. Luckily, the girl admitted to copying my work and got off pretty lightly in comparison to what the teacher had been insinuating would happen if she didn’t. I guess it serves me right for sharing my work in that way.

Well until next time,

Megan Stapleton

I Apply For Head Girl?!

Hey,

So today I officially have been inducted into my volunteer role for the summer! For two weeks this summer i’m volunteering at a nursery and a children’s centre so I can gain some experience in health and social care settings, and so I can have some extra information to write about on my personal statement. I’m actually pretty excited, it sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun!

However, getting to my 2:30 meeting to sign all the official paper work wasn’t exactly easy. I left college at 2 and walked down to the Children’s centre in town, entered the building and then waited patiently in the reception area for forty minutes. By this point, I was late to my meeting and nobody was in sight. I rang a little doorbell attached to the wall of the nursery area just to be told that the person I was meeting was actually in the nursery. This meant I had to run from the children’s centre to the nursery, on a boiling hot day for a meeting I was already late for.

Tired, slightly sweaty and dehydrated I arrive at the nursery… so much for good first impressions!

Luckily, the person I was meeting with was completely lovely and actually apologised to me for it, claiming she hadn’t been clear enough on where we were meeting. We then sat and filled out lots of paper work and booklets, before I could go home.

In other news, I’ve applied for Head Girl at my Sixth Form. I figured I may as well give it a go and try, even if my competition isn’t gonna be easy to beat. I kind of really hope I get the role as it means I can have an extra ‘title’ to add to my personal statement, as well as being able to help out more in college. Hopefully if I get the role i’ll even get to build up my confidence!

I’ve also officially started A2 for all of my subjects. To be honest, it’s mostly been watching movies and doing silly presentations so far (for example in sociology I have a presentation to give about Pastafarianism and why it’s a legitimate religion tomorrow). I’m guessing this is because they want to gently ease us into the harder stuff as well as letting us relax a bit after exams.

Well, until next time!

-Megan