I love the brain.

Look at it! Look how big and squishy and complicated it is! And now I know things about it, actual proper things; I know how I understand what I see, how I understand what I hear, how I formulate words in my mind and transfer them to the shiny computer screen. It's amazing.

It feels so good to be really, really enthusiastic about something I'm learning in school. Biology better stay this good, all the way through to university, and then I might start looking forward to it more as opposed to a feeling of impending chaos, doom and despair. Hooray!

I have now heard back from all six of the unis I applied to, which will have me if I achieve as follows:

Nottingham- AAB
Sheffield- ABB
Cardiff- ABB
Southampton- BBB
Leeds- BBB
Royal Holloway- need to interview

Royal Holloway are actually my favourites from their letter, as theirs was the only one I have received to be signed by hand and indicates that they actually bothered to read what I wrote in my personal statement. (It may have all been crap, but it was time-consuming crap.) I know that they must have just copied and pasted a standard letter after the initial heart-warming paragraph of 'thank you for your application, I am delighted that you understand the research that goes into allowing doctors to do their jobs etc', but that still shows more effort than any others. Especially Southampton, whose admissions officer it seems could not be bothered even to write a signature out to be photocopied, so I just have Sue typed in Lucida Handwriting at the bottom of my letter. If I 'signed' official documents with my first name typed in Lucida Handwriting, I'm sure I wouldn't get away with it so easily.

Also, I now have employment again! Starting Sunday, I will be working 4 hours on both Saturday and Sunday as a dead proud Woolworths temporary Christmas-time employee. Well worth it.