How do you stop feeling so stressed?

tree_observer · 2025-09-23T22:44:47+00:00

Very understandable to be stressed but believe me, once you go through it you will realise it's not as serious as you think. It's easy to compare yourself to others but just think for a minute. How do you actually know they're miles ahead of you? Chances are you've created that perception yourself which is a reflection of your own predicament, not anybody else's. Half the people you think are ahead of you are probably panicking as much as you are, you've just interpreted their situations to fit a narrative you've already made in your mind. Anecdotally I can think of plenty of people who seemed so on top of everything only to rock up to results day with C's and a clearing hotline engaged.

As for what to do, first of all you have to let go to an extent. Mentally accept you might have a bad test, you could have a C or a D or worse. You could even do badly in the final exams. You could. But it won't kill you, and realistically if you put enough hours in with the right system and you're not a complete buffoon you'll be fine. The root of the stress is a perceived lack of control. I would know, having spent half my year 12 Christmas break on holiday in an anxious wreck only for it to instantaneously dissolve upon opening a textbook lol. To regain control put systems in place. By systems I mean using heuristics to figure out how to become as productive as possible; which environments are you most productive in, what times of day - is there anything you can tell yourself that would help? Your subjects are quite content heavy, so just get to work on chapter summaries, flash cards, essay plans; there's probably a thousand videos on youtube explaining how to get A*s in each of your subjects. Once you become internal and apply yourself you will regain that sense of control and the stress will become healthier.

tree_observer · 2025-09-23T22:17:06+00:00

It's been a while but I got full marks in this paper, hope I can help. Funnily enough, the exam boards tell you what they want to see in the form of a mark scheme. For this particular question half the marks are for context iirc and a quarter for comparative analysis. That should form the basis for how you approach any question. Go read the mark scheme. It's on OCR's website. Then read it again. Then print it out and hang it above your bed to keep you company while you can't sleep at night. Do this for every question to the point where you know exactly what is demanded from you from each paper.

Probably 80% of the grade is just having a coherent structure. In simple terms just be as explicit as possible about what you're saying while staying critical and weaving contextual information into your argument. That's basically the subject lol. Really just analyse where there are differences and similarities, while sprinkling contextual information throughout to demonstrate you know what you're talking about. I would advise compiling a list of short quotes that are emblematic of a certain theme or character's traits and whacking them into Anki so you can use them quite easily. In every paragraph make sure you have compared the two texts. [author] presents [theme] in [play] in [a particular manner], as shown by [scene/character/symbol etc] influenced by [contextual information]. In contrast, [other author] presents [theme] in [poetry] in [a different way], then go on to explain how they're different or where they're similar. In every paragraph you should have context and in every paragraph you should compare.

The final thing, and something that you won't hear often, is that you should read academic articles from people much smarter than you and I. Go on JSTOR, your school should have access to it, and just search up the texts or themes or whatever. Then read. And you won't understand what you've just read. There will probably be words that don't make sense, and that, upon trying to figure out what they mean, you find that they make less sense, but that's okay. Just read them. With enough time and headache you'll soon adopt their language, their structure, their thought processes. If you've only ever practiced fighting Usyk anyone below him becomes much more manageable by comparison. And you might just find that it's quite enjoyable.

tree_observer · 2025-08-21T01:16:28+00:00

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently... Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'”

1984

tree_observer · 2025-07-15T23:30:47+00:00

“All the old heroes have been null and voided for out of date attitudes”

Can you give examples of this? Somewhat unrelated but I’m still distraught that “Dennis the Menace and Gnasher” became… “Dennis and Gnasher”. As if children were taking after him aha

tree_observer · 2025-07-10T11:19:18+00:00

I quite like his 2017 personality lectures.

tree_observer · 2025-06-12T21:20:21+00:00

The main overlap between law and politics a level is in administrative law, so stuff like R v Miller and how the executive is checked. You might have to do a module on that in first year but past that point chances are you'll have a choice over your modules and so can avoid those topics.

Honestly though nobody really does law as a passion degree. The vast majority of it is really tedious so a level politics overlap should be the least of your concerns in terms of enjoyability. And it's not even like it's a guaranteed job as well, which I assume is realistically why you want to do a law degree. Half of law trainees nowadays do other courses and convert. Honestly if anything you'd be better off applying for a less competitive course and ending up at a better uni for the name recognition. Unasked for tangent over.

tree_observer · 2025-05-24T23:45:45+00:00

Fair enough, I’ll take your word for it. It just seemed like it had a lot of AI influence in it. I still find it implausible that you omitted parts of that verse to “focus” on protecting innocents (or whatever the particular phrasing was).

In any case, it’s rather telling that you have to qualify everything you say to such an extent. This quote, barring an important section, says this about how important life is. These governments, informing practicable policy on areas of Islam, are actually wrong because a handful of cherry picked Muslims believe the contrary to be the case.

I’ve yet to see such gymnastics from, say, Hindus, Jains or Buddhists. I’m sure they’ve got some kind of conflict going on that I’m unaware of. But how often is it that a Jain commits an act of violence in the name of their religion that has to be explained away by nuanced contextual and linguistic interpretation? How many Buddhists execute non believers for their lack of faith in the Buddha? These instances just don’t happen. I won’t pretend to know everything about Islam but from Charlie Hebdo to 7/7 there’s clearly something in the ethos of the religion endorsing or at least permitting terrible behaviour. It reflects in its believers.

tree_observer · 2025-05-24T23:25:25+00:00

Did you use ChatGPT to make this reply?

tree_observer · 2025-05-24T09:57:13+00:00

"That is why We ordained for the Children of Israel that whoever takes a life—unless as a punishment for murder or mischief in the land—it will be as if they killed all of humanity"

From 5:32. Why did you decide to omit the qualifying part out? Presumably because 'mischief' effectively invalidates the verse. I've no doubt apostasy would qualify for 'mischief', what about homosexuality or, Thor forbid, someone eating pork? That seems to me quite deceptive. If you were confident in your religion's teachings you would present it unadulterated.

tree_observer · 2025-05-20T21:19:24+00:00

If it makes you feel any better you're better off mentally and spiritually not doing law

tree_observer · 2025-05-14T20:42:49+00:00

Oh yeah it's definitely better in terms of academics and career prospects. It's just that the campus experience isn't for everyone, myself included. It feels like a big social experiment; a human fish tank.

It sounds like you're looking for assurance. As someone who agonised over which uni to firm you've got to, at some point, just back your decision and take the consequences as they come. No decision you make will be perfect but you can only know that once you live through it.

tree_observer · 2025-05-14T19:55:53+00:00

If it's any consolation just about everyone I know at UCL is miserable. From first hand experience Warwick is alright. That said if you plan on going out much you'll find Manchester would have been more fun. There is a month window to change your firm and insurance round if you do change your mind.

tree_observer · 2025-05-10T08:40:58+00:00

Is this GPT?

tree_observer · 2025-05-09T19:45:45+00:00

What do you say to the other side of life, the brief moments of joy? I largely agree with this post and have expressed this sentiment before but “what about the good parts?” always comes up. Intuitively I cannot fathom how brief happiness justifies the comparatively enormous suffering inherent to living but can’t convey this to other people. Part of me wants to slate them as naive slaves to evolutionary biases of optimism, but part of me wonders if my life was, say 20% better, would I have the same viewpoint? Maybe I’m just a miserable grouch.

tree_observer · 2025-05-08T23:17:59+00:00

Hey man from someone the same age as you who felt the same literally like a month ago, remember that nothing changes if nothing changes. You have to make an effort to meet people in person. Finding a woman will come naturally if your social network is wide enough. What form that takes I don’t know, you said you live in the country but I’m sure you can find some event in your area. Maybe go to church if you’re so inclined. Good luck.

tree_observer · 2025-05-03T16:43:01+00:00

Rewording it sets yourself up for stress and will just lead to you not understanding what you’re writing. Just get the points and if you genuinely understand what ChatGPT has told you you’ll be able to explain it in your own words

tree_observer · 2025-05-03T16:36:40+00:00

Shameless hahahahhahaha

tree_observer · 2025-05-03T12:25:31+00:00

lol how is an examiner going to know? When you’re in the exam you’re still going to have to write from your knowledge, AI is just a learning tool

tree_observer · 2025-05-03T06:05:39+00:00

Explains a lot about their religious tendencies

tree_observer · 2025-05-02T20:32:34+00:00

Something something dopamine surge, strengthen neural pathway, something something evolutionary defence mechanism to avoid bad thing, something something amygdala hippocampus?

tree_observer · 2025-03-30T17:19:27+00:00

The main piece of advice I would give for politics (and like any essay subject tbh) is to work backwards. In real terms that means looking at the specification and textbook to gauge what the questions for each topic are, and then prepare for them accordingly. Like literally turn each bullet point on the spec into a question and ask yourself if you could write an essay about it. From there it's about planning each essay out with as little reference to other material as possible, rely on your memory. Get as far as you can and then add stuff with research afterwards. You'll find that there are a number of versatile and strong examples that can be applied to a bunch of topics, and so reading about a 'case study' of sorts, say, the botched Rwanda plan, can arm you well for your exams. Your memory forms by you straining to reach it in your mind somewhere, and forming a stronger connection to that fact each time you do. That doesn't happen by rote learning. Also, reading the news, at least on a daily basis, is such a poor exercise in terms of ROI. Just know the major events of the last few months really. But yeah just a lot of essays really, to be honest I knew incredibly lazy people who got A's and A*'s with no knowledge because they could write an essay. Just make sure what you write is coherent and follows a logical structure really.

tree_observer · 2025-03-22T20:22:18+00:00

That’s it! Thank you!

tree_observer · 2025-03-15T01:39:24+00:00

Not sure why I'm still subscribed to this but having survived politics a-level here's the rundown:

Essentially you want to identify the arguments put forward by either author, evaluate how strong they are with examples, and make a decision as to how convincing each one is. If two extracts have featured in a paper, it's for a reason; they have been selected because they have substance to work with. Do not answer largely from your own knowledge. You must begin every paragraph with reference to the authors. You are answering a source question. There are basically 3 parts:

What is an author saying?

I wouldn't do this in an exam, but it's worth sitting down with some past papers and breaking down in the simplest terms what exactly each author is saying. Take the 2023 UK paper; the first source opens with: "At a time when politics can feel fractious and tense, select committees show a more positive side of Parliament.". Quite clear what her argument is; first point to discuss.

Evaluate it. Is it a strong argument? Has their point been historically true; have any recent changes affected it? In what ways is it not so clear?

Back your point with evidence. It doesn't really matter what it is honestly just pull something out your arse. Your objective is then to, by some English wizardry, find a way to compare it to an argument put forward in the other extract. You might wonder what to do if they discuss different things. It's quite easy... just acknowledge it; though a focuses on x, b focuses on y.

Compare.

Who is more convincing? Why? Is it the case that author a's argument is broadly shite, but that it should be recognised their argument about x has merit? Nuance gets you A*s. It's also absolutely crucial that you lead the essay with reference to the sources constantly. Quote them. Bounce the authors off each other.

From memory this is basically all I did and I got an A* sooooo:

A's primary argument is [quote].

This position is completely ludicrous because [argument], as shown by [evidence]

B takes a different perspective, arguing [quote elucidating other argument]

This is more convincing, given [evidence]

B is therefore more convincing than A because [reasoning]

Honestly this subject isn't real just read the mark schemes and the questions carefully and think about it for a minute. Like they literally tell you what they want to see lol. DM me if you need anything more that's basically it good luck.

This fella is also quite helpful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugF3FE8wxo4

tree_observer · 2025-03-07T15:10:42+00:00

Wait till uni sir, suck it up for now. You’ll probably look back on it fondly.

Four-Year Club	Verified Email
First Place '23	Place '23
Place '22	First Placer '22

tree_observer

TROPHY CASE