So... New Year came and went, and, as per ever, I had an optimistic view on the year to come. This was going to be the start of a brand new me, it was going to be the best year of my life so far and, as a starting point, came six resolutions. Well, as predicted by my close friends, five of these goals have failed dismally and the remaining resolution, judging by my maths report, is likely to meet the same fate.
Considering my malcoordination in simple tasks such as transporting a glass of water from the kitchen to the room next door, it will come as no surprise that I am no good at sports. In some instances during my school career I have had specific teams created just for me - whilst everyone else was happily partaking in games of tennis, I was trusted with neither the ball nor the racket in fear of me beheading someone, running was also deemed too dangerous, as there was always the risk of tripping over my own foot, and so I was set the task of doing endless starjumps - this constituted the training of the G-team, i.e. me. This is precisely why four of my resolutions were all health, exercise and coordination related. However, whilst my weekly one-mile run started off well, as the weeks grew on the distances became less and less until they finally stopped. It has come to the stage that walking inbetween lessons counts towards my mile-run...
Resolution 2 was similarly atrocious - healthy eating went gone down the pan with me justifying each item of food I consumed irrespective of whether my point was valid or not -chocolate is made of cocoa beans, beans are healthy and so chocolate must be healthy too; chips are made from potatoes, my mother always encouraged me to eat more vegetables and so therefore I was being healthy, crisps could be argued similarly. The list of justifications is endless, my failure at simple tasks and rationalising of each has become so intense that I may as well create my own term for it, I shall call it Stephodicy (derived from the Greek word "dike" meaning "justify" - I have too little imagination and too much self respect to randomly making up complete words).
Resolution 3 was to manage 10 press ups in a row. My best friend, knowing my Stephodic nature, decided to assess all attempts at this resolution to make sure I did it properly. The shame and destitution I felt when she burst out laughing at my failed first press up will forever be implanted in my head, alongside her description of how I looked like I was quote "humping the floor". I have since concluded that careers of an athletic nature are not within my limits unless that career is labelled "sports coach", as from personal experience, all that is required for such profession is a loud voice, a sadistic nature and a penchant for lycra.
Resolutions 4 and 5 weren't ever going to happen either - I don't know what I was thinking when I decided that teaching myself to ride a unicycle and juggle (albeit not necessarily at the same time) would be an effective use of the year to come. After a week of lobbing socks up into the air (some of which I am still finding in the cavities between my desk and wall) and failing to catch even one pair, I gave up on the juggling. The unicycling lasted but a day - I fell off ten times, got my foot stuck in the wheel and somehow twisted my thumb which resulted in a unanimous decision from my family and I that the best place for my unicycle dreams would be deep within my head and that I should never enrol in clown school. Something I can't say I've ever aspired to do, but to have that option cruelly taken away from me by my incapabilities at life in general is of deep distress to me.
Alas, I have since thrown myself into making sure that resolution 6 (to get straight A's at A level) will go ahead as planned. However whilst my other teachers are happy with my academic capabilities, my maths teachers do not seem to share my confidence in my mathematic abilities. Something displayed on a bi-termly basis through the consistent writing of "solid yet unremarkable" in my reports even though these three words remain a mystery to me - what do they mean? If I'm solid at maths, surely that means I'm keeping afloat and understand it which arguably means I should be getting higher than a 3 out of 5 in my report. Also by extension what constitutes a remarkable mathematician? Surely they don't expect me to spew out new mathematical theories in lessons when it is widely acknowledged that no-one in my year fully understands all these supposed useless facts we are meant to blindly parrot on an exam paper? In any case I will agree that I have little mathematical talent but I will keep strong and continue on my mathematical odyssey through the waves of polynomials and hyperbole crashing down upon me.
