Exams are coming up, and I've started on my revision. This year, I'm taking History, English Literature and Government and Politics to A2 level (all on Edexcel) and I'm also taking Critical Thinking to AS (this is OCR).
The Plan:
Well, I've got a Politics mock on Monday, so I've got a lot of revision to do today, but luckily over the last few weeks, I've spent about 20 hours making a set of 200 flashcards, and about 60 'Top Trumps' style cards. (I like to be creative with my revision!)
Of the books that I've been looking at, obviously I've been using the exam textbook provided by Edexcel, but I found that it wasn't sufficient for everything I needed to know. The school recommended "Political Identities" by Andrew Heywood (who is one of the Chief examiners) and I have found that really helpful, but the best book I've found is "The Politics Book" - it is absolutely fantastic for political thinkers! Thought the one downside (as with most supplimentary politics books) is that it doesn't class Multiculturalism as an ideology in itself, when the exam board has allocated it a whole topic. So examples are hard to come by.
One of the more interesting examples that I've found seems to be an example for conservatism, but I'm not sure whether I'd be able to use it in an exam. It deals with the thinking of the ancient Chinese leader and philosopher: Confucius. I've found that it deals with an early form of patriarchy - and that the idea seemed to be that the leader is seen as superior and of purer morals, and that as the people can learn from example, a strong leader can teach them good morals. This appears to be a really good justification for patriarchy and monarchy, but as it is so early I'm going to need to check if I can use it.
As a politics student, I've found that examples of political thinkers are gold-dust in exams, so would definitely recommend this book to anybody taking the same course.
At the moment, I have precisely 19 days until my first exam (scary!). Managing my school work and paid work is becoming increasingly difficult, so am going to ask to stop being given shifts after next weekend so that I can start working really hard. On average, I have been revising 7 hours a day (at weekends) and about 2 hours a night on school nights - when I don't have work - and I'm feeling 100% more prepared than I did at this point last year. I'm hoping everything's going to pay off!
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