Wilf Wilson

I’ve just finished listening to the audiobook version of Stephen Colbert’s “I am America (and So Can You!)“. It’s satire; making fun at the right wing in quite a funny way. I liked it, but I don’t know if you would.

I’m a big fan of astronomy, as you may know. 20th March was the vernal equinox this year. There are many ways of saying what this means, but for me it means that we’re half way towards the longest day. Summer is getting closer. I can’t wait.

NOTE: FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN TIPS AND ADVICE ABOUT ADVANCED HIGHER FRENCH, CLICK HERE.

It’s a date that I’ve been thinking about for a long time – and now it’s over: the day of my Advanced Higher French speaking exam.

Ever since I chose to take Advanced Higher French (over a year ago now), I knew that one of these days I was going to have to sit in front of an external examiner, and talk. In French. For 20 long, stressful minutes.

Well, it turned out to be not so bad after all. My examiner was a native French speaker who teaches at Carnoustie High School, but her English is near-perfect. She was a really friendly person (it was also her first time doing these exams!), and she made it clear that she wasn’t going to try and trick us or anything, but instead she was going to try and let us do our best.

Prior to the exam, we had each sent off a list of topics which we would like to talk about. Mine were immigration, the internet, and the press. All I knew was that I would be having a discussion on these topics, and it was up to me to make the discussion go where I wanted.

The exam started off with a nice little chat for a few minutes; about me, what I’m doing now in this final year of school, and also what I hope to do in the future. All good stuff. Then we moved on to the general topics – and I actually quite enjoyed it. We spoke for about 10 minutes on the internet – its uses, its dangers, and also more general issues. The internet is something which I use every day and which I am very interested in, so even though most of the questions were ones I’d never thought about in French, on the whole I did have some ideas to convey. Then we talked about immigration, which was similarly alright

By this point, we were over my 20 minutes, but there was still another aspect that has to be covered in the speaking exam – talking about certain essays that I have written over the year. This bit was pretty boring. And then that was the end of the exam.

Well? Yes – I’m happy. This exam was worth up to 25% of my final grade, and you can get 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 marks for it (it’s a pegged marking scheme). Judging by how much I had to say, and how I felt it went – as well as feedback from the examiner to my teacher – I think that I at least got a 40, and possibly even a 50. I shall find out in August when I get the rest of my exam results.

The irony of it all, is that now I feel semi-confident speaking French, I now never have to formally do it again. If only I could have got to this level of competence some time before the exam! Such is life.

Ah, Asian translation can be funny:

From Engrish.com

I’ve discovered a great way to have some crazy dreams.

Some Dream Theory

General dream theory says ((Use of weasel words? Guilty as charged)) that we only properly remember a dream if we’re woken up whilst it’s still going on. All of our dreamy thoughts are still floating around in our heads, and it is only then that we have a chance to catch and then solidify them into permanent memories ((This aspect of dreaming really interests me, and I will soon return to it.)). If we allow dreams to finish naturally, the idea goes, then the temporary memory where dreams are stored is wiped ((citation needed)).

This suggests a pretty obvious way of remembering your dreams – interrupt your sleep.

My Technique

I started doing this a little while ago. On most school days, I get out of bed at 7:30am. I used to wake myself up around 10 minutes before this, so that I had enough time to fully regain conciousness. However, I decided to see what would happen if I set my alarm back a bit, perhaps to 7am. With my body clock used to a 7:20am wake time, perhaps I would still be dreaming at 7am, and so be better disposed to remember my dreams.

I’d say that I was somewhat successful at this; I have certainly been remembering more of my dreams recently. One that particularly sticks in my mind involves driving an old car around a racetrack, dodging balls of burning gas. I think my car was on fire at one point too. There was also a particularly nice girl, too ((I’ve also had success at the weekends too. It’s always annoying to get woken up early at the weekend – that’s when I get my best sleep – however, I’m usually deep into a dream when it happens.)).

The problem is that my body might soon adjust to a 7am wake time, making interrupting dreams a lot harder.

Bonus!

However, there’s another advantage of my 7am technique, regardless of whether or not I am in a dream. On waking up at this earlier time, I’m still very tired, and I still have half an hour before I have to get up. This means that I can fall back to sleep. Wonderful. I keep my alarm switched on (only having pressed snooze at 7am), and for the next half hour it goes off every 7 minutes or so.

More dream theory ((Unreferenced, of course. It’s just what I remember reading)) says that we are best able to control our dreams when we are less tired. Read this from the article on lucid dreaming from Wikipedia:

Wake-back-to-bed (WBTB)

The wake-back-to-bed technique is often the easiest way to encourage a lucid dream. The method involves going to sleep tired and waking up five to six hours later. Then, focusing all thoughts on lucid dreaming, staying awake for an hour and going back to sleep while practicing the MILD method. A 60% success rate has been shown in research using this technique^. This is because the REM cycles get longer as the night goes on, and this technique takes advantage of the best REM cycle of the night. Because this REM cycle is longer and deeper, gaining lucidity during this time may result in a lengthier lucid dream.

When you first fall asleep at night, you generally fall straight into a very deep, non-dreaming state. This means it’s hard to keep hold of your conciousness as you start to sleep. However, in the morning, you’re a lot less tired, and more prone to just slip straight back into REM sleep (basically, the sleep where you do most of your dreaming).

I’ve had some very nice dreams between 7 and 7:30am. Even though they last only around 7 minutes, they feel a lot longer, and really set me up for the day. I remember one specifically, where someone was asking me where the Moon would be in the sky. The time (in my dream) was 6am, and I could draw on my knowledge that it was one week past the full moon. Therefore, I could accurately place the moon somewhere above the horizon in a northerly direction. ((At least, I think this is accurate)).

Overall, I’m having a really fun time dreaming. I’m trying to focus my thoughts when falling asleep, waking myself at a varying time, and also letting myself have several more dreams once I wake up in the morning. It’s going well.