h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What is unusual about being fourteen? I used to be fourteen and I found that it was quite straight forward.

The unusual bit is that I'm both fourteen *and* taking my GCSEs. Being fourteen is in itself, as you point out, not very unusual. Neither is doing GCSEs. Both together, however, is quite rare. And not at all straightforward.

The smarter you are the more straightforward life should be. It doesn't work like that though.
Good luck with your GCwhatevers.

Impressive, I was 15 1/2 so quite young for the year. I'm in my first year of Uni now, I 've got a mate who's up a year, 19 in late September.

Thanks... currently I've got a holiday in which I really should be revising for the exams next week, but I'm planning on getting through them all okay...

Yeah... my birthday is early September so in fact the peeps in my school year are between one and two years older than me... which has got to be easier than them being between two and three years older. So... what are you studying at uni? I'm aiming to get a good job in computers, so Computer Sciences seems like a good option... although I'll probably take at least one year out before going to university, don't wan't to be too young...

Exactly, I mean my birthday is 3rd Aug so I'm quite young for my year. I was going to take a gap year but it got to the point where I had to decide, and I couldn't think of anything I really wanted to do that required a gap year. BTW, I'm at Bath studying (hah!) Electronic Engineering. I looked at computing, maths and physics as well but maths was too theoretical, physics too difficult and computing too business based.

Sounds interesting...

I've heard the odd rumor about courses in computer game writing... certainly that's a field I'm interested in, and who knows, in a couple of years time there could be some very relevant courses to what I want to do... I'm keeping my options open.

http://www.ucas.ac.uk/instit/datafile/s51/index.html

Tht's the UCAS web address for a games design course run by a St. Helens college. Looks like it's a college allied with Uni of Liverpool. I couldn't find any others - but it's only a 2yr HND. I have a sneaky suspicion that you'd be better off with a plain Computing course at a Uni - I think it'd be easier to get employment at the end. However, don't take my word for it and look in if it's what you want to do.

Agreed, it seems likely that a plain computing degree will be the right option... but I'll see what options are available when I leave college.

Well, there's loads of computer degrees. I mean, as I said the only reason I didn't do one is cos the one at bath seemed to be business based and I didn't want to do that so much. If you find a degree that you want to do then go for it. Remember, it's 3/4 years, not 2 like GCSEs.

Your 14, so i'm guessing your year 10? yeah? Does the whole of your year take GCSE this early, or just you? just wondering...

Hehe nope I skipped two years... if I were in school now, and normal, I'd be just about to leave year nine.

But I'm not, so I've just left year eleven.

It was easier this way.

Wow! I thought I was bright.... Lucky you. Advice: don't waste it, use it.

Hmmm, having seen your homepage I'm fairly sure you're not wasting *your* intelligence... it's impressive. I have the '...' disease as well, I wouldn't worry about it... we'll probably both grow out of it.

If you have ICQ I'm #34385144... if not, you should definitely get it, as it's about the most useful piece of internet software in existance, possibly excluding Dialup Networking...

I'm intending to be a programmer... it seems like a decent career, and the money's there... although being a pilot sounds interesting. My sister was in the RAF cadets for a while...

Do you have any accepted guide entries yet?

You would not believe the trouble I went to to find the ASCII for this particular fish... I tried and tried to find what it was, and couldn't... so in the end I wrote a program to create 10,000 attempts at drawing a fish, and I uploaded it with "Preview Message"... and sure enough, there was a single fish amongst the mess of characters.

I'm currently (somewhat halfheartedly) petitioning for a picture of a cow to be included, along similar lines...

Okay, I may not be wasting my inteligence no my page, but i think i'm wasting my time. I spent more time on that page than i did on my maths GCSE courswork. But then, i hate courswork anyway, and try to spend as little time as possible. Yup, I've got ICQ, although i havn't really used it yet, my number is on the bottom of my page, under 'contact me'.
I think programming is the way to go, although, no matter how much i like fiddling with computers, sitting at one day after day, churning out pages of code, seems a little daunting. I need to do something with a bit more variance in it.
Nope, i havn't got any accepted entries, but i've been waiting 8 weeks on one, and have got a few hopes for it, i havn't written or submitted anything in ages, and i'm gonna wait for my last one to be rejected before i write any more.
Good luck with the cow.

I also haven't written any pages in ages... they take a looooong time to be accepted. There are, however, signs that your entry is being considered... if the article number (e.g. A23453 or whatever) suddenly increases massively... they've made a copy of the page which they indent to edit to produce a guide entry. Other than that... patience is a fine thing.

I reckon I could cope with sitting infront of a computer all day, every day... because I do that anyway. As for churning out reams of code... I *think* I could do that. But either way my real ambition is to become a games programmer, and I think if you're a *good* games programmer, it doesn't get boring...

Maths coursework... I quite enjoyed doing my maths coursework, until it transpired that I would have to write another three pages of explanation before anyone could understand what I'd done. Which was irritating. It was only an algorithm for finding ever single possible pythagorean triple... hardly immensely complicated.

I'll register your ICQ number, and it's quite possibly that we'll be chatting merrily in a few minutes time... or not.