Btec Business.. Theres less drama in an episode of Eastenders..

I'll just jump straight in here.

Enrolled, Joined the course, met one of our teachers.. The first teacher we met was called Claire.. She was also a new teacher, but she was nice warm and caring.. We got comfortable with her over 2 days.. things were looking good, we were at Hellside college still, but the one in Runcorn at least I didnt have to travel so much to get my poor education. 3rd day on the course and she dissapears, bye Claire. Seems Hellside was too much for her. Apparently one of the second years stole and hid her car keys, and she got upset and locked her self in a closet and started crying.. Nice huh.

Me and mathew also took a while to get used to being in the class, at lunch and breaks etc we sat on our own, and Jason.. The class retard (and thats the nice way to put it) Came and sat with us.. We facepalmed inside but felt too shy to come sit with everyone else, at this time there were still some assholes in the main group of people.. so we just avoided them. We were very reclusive anyway, we could of delt with being seperate from the class, or atleast that is what we thought. Jake, one of the classes most outgoing people came and spoke to us and persuaded us to come sit with everyone. We made the effort and soon got chatting to everyone, we were the quiet geeks of the class soon to be the people who spoke out the most and made everyone laugh from time to time. Thats probably thanks to Jake making us feel comfortable.

The second teacher we met was.. guess who ( I told you we would meet the jolly old giant again ) Yes thats right, Ian.. He was a blob of a man, and somewhat reminded me of the fat controller.

He introduced himself to the class, and remembered me obviously. He was a wonderful man and would always speak with me when I was early for lessons. He actually managed to stick with us on the course for about a year as well. Which was a pretty impressive lifespan of a teacher on our course.

We also met a teacher called Paul, he was the man who enrolled both me and Mathew. We were told he was going to be teaching us, he knew his stuff and was really nice and funny.. well as far as we knew he was nice.

Just to put a mental image in your head.. he kind of looked like Family guy.

We had some lessons with Paul, we were happy it seemed like we were going to be taught well on this course.. and it would end in the two years.. with few or no problems.. He was soon promoted to course team leader and we rarely seen him. A shame really, this later caused great hate towards him from our class.

We also had another teacher on our course called Jo. We hated her at first, I'll follow the trend of what ive been doing and give you another mental image of what she looked like.

She was strict and we hated her because she was awfully frank.. Funny how she said only around half of us will even make it to the end of the course and that if we could prove her wrong she would eat her hat.. No hats were eaten, she was entirely right..

She was also later promoted so couldnt teach us as much as our timetable said she should of, So instead another teacher was brought in.. Up until now, we had our first few ups and downs as a class, people arguing amongst them selves, rivalries arising and the typical bitchiness that comes with being in college. Me and mathew stayed well clear, laughing at everyone from a distance. We've seen it all before, hey.. MMORPG's have the same if not more ammount of drama in them, and who says video games are useless hehe.

Because there was a huge gap in our wreckage of a timetable that needed to be covered, a new teacher needed to be appointed, so Hellside assigned someone from the agency to teach us.. Probably the only good thing Riverside college did.. Her name was Anne.. She was always there for us, and saved us really.. If anyone would be my role model, it would be her.

I couldnt say a bad thing about Anne. It was as if we had a list of all the aspects of a perfect teacher.. and Hellside ripped it up and threw it into a fire.. and *poof* Anne arrive.

I can always remember the first time we met, we did an icebreaker for the class, everyone was to tell each other who they are and what they enjoyed doing. "Hi I'm Nic, and I like playing WoW" *class chuckles* :<

At this point the course was a shambles, Unit 1 wasnt taught to us first that year.. infact it was taught last and we could of used that unit to branch all of our knowledge of.. We were subject to countless substitute teachers and we had absolutely no structure.. Anne slowly but surely got to work and did what she could to try make the teachers communicate so that we could scavenge some good grades.

Around about the time we got Anne, We also got another teacher called Gary. Gary didnt know what a btec was, he thought we were being assessed via exams. We even corrected him on that, but he still proceeded to teach us methods of speed reading and exam techniques. Alot of his lessons were the same, he would send us to the Library and told us to use several Meta search engines to find online articles about irrelevant business facts.. He was clueless. One of his lessons he said "what is business related, I know.. Dragons den.." So we played dragons den numerous times until people didnt know what to invent anymore..

Me and Mathew didnt like him, we said on our first lesson "We do not like Gary, he doesnt have a clue and he is not fit to teach the class" We made a complaint to Jo, who then later said infront of our class "I have had a complaint from 2 members from this class about Gary" she then looked at me and Mathew, as did the rest of the class and people began to sing his praises as if he was the best teacher in the entire world, following that certain people in the class didnt speak to us.. It wasnt so nice.. We had this gut feeling about him, and people just couldnt see how bad he really was.. It wasnt until a few weeks later he was fired because it came to light just how much of a moron he really was. Me and Mathew are yet to recieve an appology.

Gary was replaced with someone equally as stupid.. Martin. Martin was your stereotypical English 40 year old. Liked watching the footy with his mates at the pub, wore jeans and a polo shirt. Bear belly, Going grey, and wore glasses. He was actually an ICT teacher.. Why the fudge was he teaching Business studies I dont know.. He would always insist you were late even if you got there early.. He never thought to fix his watch?  His lessons were unprepared and consisted of him google searching things infront of us.. after constant complaining and people finally seeing mine and mathews points.. He was soon to go, well after he fucked up a couple of months of our education. But nvm, nothing more could possibly go wrong..

Apart from the next teacher we were to recieve, David Bell. He was really nice to us, admittedly, he even had me and Mathew fooled. His lessons taught us useful things and we even completed some of our units thanks to him.. But at the same time he was Bullying and sending abusive Emails to our beloved Anne. Anne had worked her way up to course team leader.. Because Paul got a further promotion. Anyway, David wanted what Anne had, Control over the course.. So he was constantly sending abusive emails.. Anne didnt say anything to the class at the time because she just wanted us to pass, no drama involved.. we felt so guilty when it all came to light.

Around this time it had been found out that Ian who was teaching us the boring law subjects had done some of our work for us.. It was actually me who found this out as I was there early every day and well, when someone else noticed. Emma in my class, we spoke about it and told Anne. For about 15 people Ian had used all of our previous formats for our other work, we were behind and an inspection was coming up.. He didnt want to get in trouble, but at the same time we hadnt done the work because we were struggling with other subjects also due to poor teaching.. a vicious cycle really. Ian was then sadly fired from the college.. Well, he handed in his resignation a few days before he could of been dismissed. We never seen him again.. The sad thing is, nothing bad would of happened to him if he didnt forge it.. it was all in his head.. At least we wouldnt have to put up with the rain of spittle when he spoke to us anymore.. (he drooled and spat when he spoke D:)

A lady called tracey replaced him until the end of the course.. She gave us lessons in word search form.. and didnt know a single thing about personal Hygiene. Enough said.. She like many of the other teachers, were morons.

It was almost the end of our course.. what happeneds next is kind of sad.. We had to complete a number of units and we had done less than half of the assignments we needed to do.. 2 weeks before the end of the year, we rushed like hell.. Almost killing Anne through stress. She had to mark so much and it was a shame to see her like that, it was the first time ive ever seen her shout at anyone.. We all managed to scrape past with passes..

The first year was over.. No trips to Paris like we were promised.. Just a bunch of bad experiences.. We wouldnt of made it without Anne pushing us as a group and keeping our spirits high, even at the cost of her own.. Now that is a good teacher for you.

The second year at Hellside was no better even though on our first day back we were promised a change from last year.. Structure! I was so happy, especially since Anne seemed rather refreshed after what seemed to be a very straining two weeks. The summer holidays did her good. We were shocked to find out that anne had been moved to Cronton because of the first years for a large ammount of her time table, to only see us once a week.. She was our support system.. we needed her..

That year we had a trip, it was meant for the first years but there were too many. But hey, it was a trip.. and better yet it was free.. It was to Menai in Wales. A 4 day trip to Menai as a group.. (what was left of our class got pretty close, it was needed to endure the terrors of hellside, there was many  more than I can think to write.) We were excited. A trip with our now very friendly class.

I packed my case and got ready for the trip, me and mathew left early and arrived on the campus to wait for the rest of our class, and the coach.. We were with a bunch of the IT students the trip was initially intended for, but there was space so they let us go on the trip too. We boarded the Coach and engaged in typical coach activities, taking pictures of sleeping people, singing, sharing sweets and all around fucking about. It was fun,  we finally arrived and were shown to our rooms.. WHAT A FUCKING SHITHOLE. Our rooms were dorms, it was as if they didnt clean up after the previous people.. and the sheets looked as if they had been jizzed on.. alot.. Lucky we brought our sleeping bags.. The boys had one dorm, and the girls another. We generally tried to avoid the IT students, so we took a dorm for our selves and seperated from them.

The food was bad, over cooked and tasteless. I must of eaten about 8 million bananas that trip because it was the only thing i felt safe eating. Anne didnt even come on the trip either, she had to teach the first years.. so we didnt have a tutor of our own there to share the experience with. During that trip we had lots of fun.. From my friend Tom making a kingsize bed (6 beds stacked ontop of each other) or me and Mathew canoeing and Mathew not paddling properly, so we went in random directors.. and I annouyed the instructor because I kept singing random water related songs.. So what? I felt like I was in the Navy! ok?! Or me and my friend Leo being in the same group for some adventure tasks.. and we completed some blind fold assault course.. I held onto his hoody the entire time XD. I even got over my fear of hights a little too. I climbed an 80 ft tree.. Then looked down.. eek. Then I ziplined down. The zip lining was the worst, I hate the feeling of falling.. I just shut my eyes and cringed.. but it was all really fun.. Was nice to be with my friends.

Thats me on the right standing up, about to get on the raft we made.. I didnt want to get wet.. I just sat on it with my feet up. I didnt even help row.. I just sang "row row row your boat" Much to the annouyance of my team mates. I didnt even help put it together much either. We came second but it was all good fun. Coming home was sad, but we were all on a high, ready for the craphole that is Hellside College

We resumed our lessons as usual after that. We had a man called Cliff come teach us instead of Ian, Cliff lasted until the end and turned out to be a really nice man.. He was an ex school teacher so put on a hard face to us.. even treated us like children, The class did not like that and well.. Acted like children in responce. He tought us accounting, it took 8 weeks to cover break even.. the ammount of money a business needs to cover its day to day running costs and shows when it can make profit. We grasped that after the second lesson. 8 weeks later we were bored of it and wondering why we were still learning that when we had much more ground to cover.. I wanted to not make the same mistake of last year.. I demanded structure..

So I wrote a letter to the principal.. As if students literally bursting out in tears infront of Paul etc wasnt enough.. Why didnt the College learn from the first year? I dont know, but even a 7 page letter of me explaining all the faults of the college and asking for basic structure didnt work.. I ensured it was sent to the principle. His deputy head came and spoke to our class, and a very disgruntled Paul was reassigned to teaching us. He was the manager of Business in the college at the time. "Nice letter Nic, well done" He said trying to force a smile. I laughed so hard inside, yet at the same time wanted to stab his eyes out with the pen I was brandishing.

We also had another teacher called John, who taught us Law. He was a complete Meat head. He was very theatrical maybe its because he liked to act in local productions etc he fancied him self as quite a good actor. I think it was some grand delusion people just let him keep.. He would rather talk about him self than law in our classes, and when we did talk about law he repeated him self numerous times and had little no clue about a word he said. If a question was asked, he would simply tell us to refer to the slideshow he presented that didnt help obviously.

One of the main things I asked for in the letter was also that we could just be given the assignments so we could complete them on our own merit at least.. it took several weeks for John to write the assignment that should of been prepared at the start of the year. Or within the first week of him being there, he was too busy with what he was doing in his personal time.. Persuing a rather lame acting carreer or playing Fable or assasins creed. He openly told us this, and we happily used it against him when the time came to destroy him like we destroyed many other teachers who were not cut out for the job. I hated him from the start, and it took an argument between mathew and John to show the class how much of an asshole he really was.. Mathew and numerous other people in the class failed to complete an almost impossible homework task set to us by John, and he was threatening to put us all on report or some other method of punishment. We stood up and disagreed and highlighted his downfalls as a teacher.. he didnt like this and then continued to argue with Mathew. No one liked him from that day on.. Especially since he couldnt get us through the units we needed.. weeks later he still didnt produce the assignments we needed to complete, just kept running us through theory.. He then shown us the unverified assignment which he really wasnt allowed to show us.. insisting that we should start it now, and promised that nothing on it would change.. The real assignment after many changes then came out and well.. I had to redo all of my work for him, as did alot of the class. Not fun.

He was fired, but not for his poor teaching.. but simply because he made one of the first years stand in the corner like a dunce.. And alledgedly tried to come onto some of the girls in his class. Parents wernt happy and phonecalls were made.. Bye John, hope you die. He really was an awful man.

Rob replaced John, and wasnt the best teacher ever. He was very padantic. For example i had to reprint an assignment 8 times for him in a single lesson because there was some spelling mistakes he noticed for example. Act not being spelt with a capital A or Bill not being spelt with a capitcal B whilst being used in a sentance.. Really stupid stuff.. instead of being constructive on the work and letting me figure out my grammar issues later.. The grammar nazi refused to help me, instead forcing me to reprint the same assignment over and over.. this happened for other students and myself again on other peices of work..

There was this one unit on the course.. We all enjoyed it. It was called Event Management. We were to plan the entire end of year ball for our college.. We got to work straight away, it was the first time I have ever seen my class like that. We were aided by student teacher Debbie and Anne who had been given some more hours with us after we complained. We enjoyed it so much, we had the ball planned, the location planned, all the food sorted. I had designed posters and flyers, we raised money through tuckshops and carwashes.

Bet you can guess what happeneds next.. We get shit on by Hellside. Thats right, they cancelled our ball.. I emailed the Principal and after numerous emails and a huge battle.. I got the ball back.. Even got a round of applause.. Whilst the ball was cancelled we passed the unit through theory work. We didnt end up doing the ball, because all interest we managed to get was lost because they asshats cancelled it for no reason. At least we fought, and won.. making the idiot who cancelled it look like the idiot he is. Its a shame they spoiled the fun we had doing it. Especially since it was a fund raiser for the Rainbow trust.. All money we raised in events for the ball were given to the trust.. so it wasnt too bad.

Instead of a ball, we had a meal, Ill show you a pic of that later. We went to the Trafford center.. and had a blast together.. Met up with Cliff and Anne, our favourite teachers and just enjoyed our last night together..

We got to see them just as friends rather than teachers.. and good friends they will be for the rest of my life I hope.

It was a btec, not a levels.. And the teaching wasnt so good unless Anne or Reformed Cliff taught us.. But aside from that I managed to some how get triple merits.. Which most universities will accept. So I am extremely happy, Salvaged a fucked up 2 years. I didnt even try though, I played world of warcraft most nights and bitched about College over skype with Mat.

Paul left the course just before it ended. I guess he didnt want to associate himself with what he thought would be failure..  Good riddance, he was supposed to be the guy who organised the course, and all he ever did was try not to get us to complain when he should of been focusing on actually making a decent course which would provide us with a decent education.. GOOD RIDDANCE INDEED!

Its a shame I wont see the people as much.. but I learnt some life lessons and I really will miss everyone.. Especially Anne who turned it all around for everyone.. and stopped me from wasting another 2 years of my life..  <3 Anne.

 (Im taking the picture, so thats just my class, Anne is the lady next to the grey haired fellow. The guy with the gray hair is Cliff) thats us getting drunk and remembering and laughing about all the hard times.. We left with hugs and smiles.. on a beautiful summer night. It was a perfect Evening..

At least things ended well.. A nice end to so much Drama.. and well, a nice close to a chapter of my life.. Sorry about the huge rantfest, but I felt I needed to speak about this to gain some closure so I can move on, and blog about things a little more interesting!

Worst first year of college

Ever felt like buying a machine gun and going on a rampage? DUGGADUGGADUGGA! Take that ignorant assholes! DUGGADUGGADUGGA! Take that dinner ladies who can't cook! DUGGADUGGADUGGA! Take that foolish teachers..

My time at Hellside college was aweful, and by the time you finish reading this post.. You'll want to take a machine gun to me.. Thats how long this thing is going to be, Just thought I would mentally prepare you! I'm going to tell you the story :)

Lets start where any good story starts, the beginning.. *flashback dream*

I first enrolled at Hellside College 3 years ago, after speaking to an advisor.. She was tall and blonde, and before you ask.. Yes, she did fit the dumb blonde stereotype. She helped me decide what I thought I wanted to do, In all honesty I didnt really know what I wanted to do.. And I chose subjects I thought might be good rather than what I thought I might of enjoyed.. Pressured by this woman who I had this appointment with which I was forced to attend I ended up picking 4 A level subjects, Business, Economics, Accounting and Computing (So fun..). Then I decided that I wanted to study these subjects in a college that was a good few miles away in Cronton. I had to take 2 busses to get there and 2 busses to get back.

Shortly after school I finally enrolled, I had the most attractive art teacher enroll me.. Trying to stop my jaw from dropping at the sight of his perfectly chisled face, stubbly facial hair and amazing smile I answered all his questions and left smiling and actually excited about college.

My first day was good, met some new people. In computing I fell in love for the first time, His name was Dave.. I will speak about him another time.. Probably under the title (My eyes worked yet I was so blind)

My first lesson was Business studies, my teacher had an incredible lisp.. So much that I couldnt understand him.. I mean, it was like he was speaking another language, Poor guy must of had a stroke or something, after 2 lessons I had enough and switched Business for media (does that make me awful? lol), where I then met 2 old school friends, people change so much when they go to college..

I also then met some other good new friends, who later I spent all my spare time between lessons with.. They also helped me grow as a person and become not so shy anymore and let me feel like I could be more open to people. This was really nice for me, times were good. It's a shame this was my only positive experience of that place.. Theres really nothing I can write to entertain you at this part in my life.. it was boring and crap.

Anyway, it was a boring year in general.. Basically what the college failed to tell everyone is that they recently changed ownership and it seems that our year was the test subjects for lots of new changes they were making.

I recently found out that alot of the teachers left because they had their wages reduced so all that was left were the crappiest of the crap. Our Computing teacher for example didnt have any idea how to teach as he was new, Didnt get us through any of our content, instead we took 5 months doing a task that was meant to be completed in one lesson. Once he left because he decided teaching wasnt his thing.. ( I mean.. seriously wtf) We then were subject to many substitute teachers, one of which was chinese and didnt speak a word of English "I jus' showu vidu now" And we watched irrelevant videos about computers on production lines.. This was not helpful. We then had a teacher named Collin. Who forgot to inform us that we had our exams until 2 days before them, So appart from being nervous like all of the other students before exam time, We had NO actual knowledge of what we were meant to be studying.. It didnt just stop at computing either. During accounting I was constantly left behind as our teacher only helped people who knew what they were doing, because they were redoing the course and had a basic knowledge from the previous year.. Economics was also hell, we had a teacher called Ian, He was a lovely man now I come to think about it.. you'll hear more about him when I talk about the hellside college I later attended in Runcorn. Anyway, for economics, people soon realised Ian was a big softy and then didnt seem to want to do the work.. It was a combination of him being unbelievably boring and him seeming to have no actual authority.

Apart from the lessons we chose we also had mandatory form periods, we were grouped with strangers and taught random things each week.. Well, they attempted to teach us. It was awful, our tutor for that period I thought that we could confide in, some time during the year I told her that I was gay.. and it was a big thing for me at the time, she almost told my mum in a meeting with her at one point.. it was completely out of order, I later told my parents anyway.. Over MSN XD The cowards way of coming out, thank god for technology..

Anyway, that chapter of my life, although it felt like it was a drag, soon ended. Results day came, Everyone.. there must of been 500+ people there collecting their results, they all came outside with tears in their eyes, comforted by their angry and obviously not proud parents.. It was a really sad day.. Hellside college stole a year of mine life, and what did I have to show for it.. Nothing.

I spent the summer holidays doing the usual mix of World of warcraft and lazing around.. My spirit slowly deteriorating. I wanted to enroll in a more hands on course next year, make my parents proud of me.. I've never made them proud, i've just been perfectly average and quiet, nothing outstanding at all.. I wanted to do something that would stir me to be enthusiatic, inspire me and allow me to do something I loved.. I wanted to study food technology.. I turn up for enrollment at numerous colleges in my area FULL! FULL! FULL! I was heartbroken, so I then took what was second on my list.. Business Studies, I figured a btec would be easier than serveral A levels.. And that I would enjoy it more because it would be with the same group of people and I wouldnt have to keep switching classes and adjusting to new people in every class. So it was perfect for me, that and my best friend in the entire world took the same course. Things looked good, we were promised trips to Paris and Italy. At enrollment they made it seem so wonderful, I wasnt doing what I wanted to initially do, but I was at least excited about learning..