Gap Year Plans

While I'm writing this post, I'm sat in a picturesque location of the Lakeland fells.  I'm in Blencathra Field Centre, completing my Gold Duke of Edinburgh residential, at the moment I'm waiting for everybody else to arrive (which they will do at 3.30pm).

I decided about 2 weeks before results came out that I'd really like to complete a Gap Year before going to University.  Law is a really intense course, and career, to go into, so I've decided that if I want to go travelling, I'm only really going to have this one opportunity to do so.

So, I'm going to talk you through a few of my plans. 

Firstly, next year, for a few months the title of this blog is going to change.  I'm planning on walking all 214 of Arthur Wainwright's fells in just over 2 months, wild camping and B&Bing my way around the beautiful Lake District.  And, every week or so, I'll be logging on and talking about the routes I've taken, the weather, the views, etc.  I can promise some stunning scenery!

This is all training.  By the end of the year, I'm hoping to have completed the 3 peaks challenge; have gone to Sicily with my sister to climb Mount Etna; and train up my school's teams for the Ten Tors Challenge.  Maybe I could have another go at the Gold challenge if they need a reserve.

Other things I'm planning on doing are learning to play the violin (something I've wanted to do for years, but have never got around to) and getting shed-loads of work experience.  The ideal would to get a 3 or 6 month contract for a firm, and do basic secretarial tasks (and get paid) but that's so incredibly unlikely to happen.  So, work experience in the day, and a part time job in the evenings to fund the rest of the challenges that I take on.

That's more or less everything I have at the moment :)  Lots more to think about, and I need to get some of these plans finalised.  Most importantly, I'm going to be keeping September 2014 free in order to complete my University application and LNAT.  Excited!

Extended Project: Primary Research

Another post about my extended project.  You might be bored of it, but I need somewhere to go through my ideas, so here is where I'm doing it!

Tonight I've taken on the challenge of looking for primary research.  To get the top marks, I need to feature quite a lot of research that I haven't just lifted out of books and off of the internet, and I've decided that I really want to contact people that I really care about the opinion of.  So, I've been contacting all of the people that might be teaching me in the years to come that specialise in Criminal Law.

My current title, if you didn't know, is 'to what extent should violent crimes be subject to contrasting legal consequences in the English Legal System if it can be proven that there was no intent to cause harm?'

It's slowly becoming more and more specific.  It began life just considering intent, and then I was told that there was a word limit.  Not impressed.  My supervisor had told me that I could write as much as I liked, but when I had to be signed off by my Head of Year (in order to be allowed to finish for Summer), I was told that I was allowed a maximum of 5,200 words.  Maybe this might have been good information before having written a 2000 word introduction, but now I'm having to cut down massively.

I'm covering Manslaughter, Self-Defense, Euthanasia, Crimes of Passion, and what I'm calling 'Passionate Crimes.'  This includes my favourite piece of case law that I've found so far, which you can find in my earlier post 'What is meant by intent?'  I'm probably going to need to cut it down substantially, but I really don't know which bit to cut out.  Crimes of Passion is a possibility, but Euthanasia is going to be the most removed section.  I've two options really, if it goes massively over the word count:
(1) Not talk about Euthanasia at all
(2) Write about Euthanasia for fun and post it here for you to read...

Depends on how much effort it takes really, and if you let me know whether you're interested in reading my findings (that's a cheeky request for you to comment about your thoughts, by the way).

I've been talking about collecting primary research, and commenting, so I'm going to give you something to comment about.  Could you please let me know your thoughts about the following points (could be one, two, or all, it doesn't matter to me) and let me know how you're 'qualified' - this might mean that you're a 'prospective law student from Sheffield' or a 'law lecturer from Dundee' or 'a past magistrate' or even 'just a guy/girl who's interested in reading your blog'  I'm genuinely really interested to hear your thoughts, whether by private message or in the comment box below.

Thank you for reading, once again, and hope to hear from you soon!