welcome to my world

[mrsbrown]

It was my RDO today, a day I like to have to myself. I justified to my workplace on the basis that it gives me a day to do all those mum things I don't normally have time for. I did the mum thing today.

I arranged a meeting with Northcote High for enrolling T, then I un made it when we got an invitation to a meeting at MGSC

I took G and T to look at Brunswick Secondary and enrolled G there.
We had lunch at the best lunch place in Brunswick - A1 Bakery. It was lovely to sit and chat with 3 lovely people - my children.

We came home via their Dad's house to pick up computers for the Lan party G is having here from 10am tomorrow (12 computers in G's bedroom!!).

Then T and I went off to MGSC where we were completely disorganised and T couldn't even answer a question like, "why do you want to come to our school?" We must have done something right though - they offered her a place and we accepted.

After that, T and I went off to buy her bras and shoes and jeans. Failed to get jeans. I bought a nice top for me though.

Got home, and I took Z to the computer shop to buy a new motherboard, cpu, memory and graphics card for the secondhand computer I bought for his xmas/birthday present on the weekend. Z was disappointed with the power of the machine I bought (a 1GHz pentium) and has used his birthday money to upgrade it. G's getting the castoffs for HIS christmas present.

After I cooked dinner (while half supervising a twelve year old upgrading his computer) we packed up G and T and took them off to Arrowsreach Fighter Training. It was nice there and I collected a few more praises for the food at William Marshall. Margie says she'll come and work in my kitchen anytime if it means singing while we work like we did then.

I'm glad to be home now, I've made laundry soap, put on a load of washing (T's wet clothes from the w/e were starting to smell) and will soon go to bed.

Comments

[hometime.livejournal.com]

Obviously you liked Brunswick SC then? I thought that it had a really nice feel to the school when I visited it last year. One of the things that I liked is that they had students show us around the school, and the students were friendly and articulate.

G & T sounds like you spent most of your RDO drinking!

[vonstrassburg.livejournal.com]

I heard good comments about Wm Marshall repeated during my brief stay at Rowany Yule Feast. So you guys must have done something right.

[mrsbrown.livejournal.com]

Yes, the kids noticed the difference between BS and NH as soon as we got there. We had a lovely chat with the yr 11 coordinator - all of us!! A big difference btn Northcote and Brunswick.

I was particularly impressed when he told us that the computer network is the responsibility of the year 7 and 8's.

Hey, you may have an opinion. Should G do General maths as well as Maths methods? I understand he doesn't _have_ to do both, but how desirable is it?

[hometime.livejournal.com]

I really don't know about the maths question. What are the prerquisites for whatever he is interested in post-VCE? General maths is rarely a prereq for unis courses. Is he likely to get good/easy marks in it? Is there another subject that would be more interesting or give him a broader depth of knowledge?

This site http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/studies/mathematics/Mathssum.pdf has a nice overview of the different maths subjects. It comes from the VCAA site (http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/), which has lots of useful information.

maths

[jadeluxe.livejournal.com]

can i throw in my opinion on the maths thing? i will anyway :) i did vce in 98, so it might be different now, but i don't see the point of doing general as well as methods. it would be a waste of a good preference. if one has the aptitude to do methods, general is just a very basic, boring waste of a subject selection. uni courses that require a maths subject only require one maths subject, as far as i remember, or if it's two, it would certainly be specialist and methods, not methods and general.
methods is quite an interesting, challenging vce subject. on the other hand, i did general in year 10, and frankly, it bored me to tears. i was glad to get it out of the way so i had an extra pick in vce. i certainly didn't learn anything, not a single thing, that i didn't learn more thoroughly and more usefully in methods...
it's true, most people are likely to get good marks in general because it's quite basic, but (for the same reason) it's downgraded significantly when they calculate ENTERs, so that cancels out any potential score advantage. if he was to do it entirely for reasons of getting good marks and boosting his ENTER, he'd be better off doing specialist maths/a science, because the scaling system works such that even average marks in one of those higher-ranked subjects would make a better contribution to his ENTER than brilliant marks in a low-ranking subject like general. and again, the boredom factor... ;)
that's how i remember it, anyway.
so i'd say definitely do methods and a science subject, because they are pre-requisites for so many uni courses (if he's even interested in uni!), and do something he loves instead of general. or, if it's maths he loves, well, do general, but there's certainly no real advantage or reason why you'd do it otherwise.
here ends my repetitive spiel on the state of the mathematics syllabus :)

Re: maths

[mrsbrown.livejournal.com]

You're completely welcome to throw in your 2cents. What you said was what I expected anyway.

G has decided/been talked into doing General maths. The alternative subject was legal studies - something I see as a waste of time.

Besides, he has the whole, 'change in focus' thing to do in changing from steiner to mainstream. I figured having a subject you could do falling on your head would be a good thing.

He's doing Physics, Chem, Maths Methods, General Maths, Business Management and English. If he gets off his arse he might do French at Saturday school too. I guess if it all gets too much, he can drop the General Maths.

My only concern is that I'm a pushy parent who just wants their child to do what they did, although I didn't do BM and you wouldn't have caught me dead going to school on Saturdays, even though it meant giving up french.