I may not be the next Jimi Hendrix but there’s something about music which draws me in - something that causes me to get lost in albums and the rhythms - so I wanted to write a blog post exploring the reasons why music is so magical and powerful.

Adequate self-care has, in my opinion, a huge impact on your mental and physical well-being. So, what is self-care?

Not long before I started at Yipiyap I began volunteering at a charity shop of a local children’s charity. A month had passed since my final exam and I was equally as restless about my future as I was bored at home every day. So, I thought I’d spend a few hours a week helping others instead of watching TV all day.

I know for some people art is the very last thing they’re thinking about right now but for me it’s how I’m staying happy. What’s difficult with drawing or painting is knowing where to start, much like when writing an essay for example so here’s plenty of arty things I’ve been enjoying to give you some ideas.

Something I did not necessarily expect to be such a valuable element of my Yipiyap experience is being part of such wonderful teams. At the start of my Gap Year I underestimated the significance of having a team assuming working independently at a school would be the predominant dynamic of the role.

The idea that despite how our biased minds perceive it, things can never be endlessly bad or good, eventually they have to come back to the middle - to each subjective norm.

It’s now officially halfway through the school year and this also marks the halfway point in my Gap Year with Yipiyap. Since September it feels like I have been on a never-ending rollercoaster and as it’s the beginning of March and many of you in Year 13 will be preparing for your A Levels and considering options for next year, I wanted to reflect on my experience at Yipiyap so far with the aim of helping you decide if Yipiyap might be right for you.

All aspiring Medics can relate to, I’m sure, the pressure of MMI Interviews! They can be extremely daunting which is why I cannot recommend enough to the 2020/2021 cohort, Yipiyap’s practice MMI Interviews!

In early November I attended the Battle of Ideas Conference at the Barbican in London for the sixth time and, as ever, I came away having gained new insights into many contemporary issues and dilemmas.

The journey to University is a strange and complex one. You start hearing about it very early on; barely into your GCSEs, people are telling you what Universities will be looking for in applicants, how it’s so different from how it used to be, and how you will spend thousands on books (the latter is a true story; I heard this from a guest speaker at my school!)

In an English session based on Creative Writing, one of the best techniques I found to improve the student’s standard of work was Group Peer Review. I’d tried Peer Review before, but I wanted to make the process of review more transparent and productive.

I think I speak for the entire 2019 / 2020 Yipiyap tutor cohort when I say that everyone was looking forward to the two Induction Days, mainly to put our worries aside. For most of us, this was our first professional job and so a really informative Induction was essential to help us prepare for the role of a Tutor - Yipiyap did just that!

I was working as a member of the SEND department in my placement so the need to differentiate was near constant as I worked with several students with varying and complex needs.

Questioning Techniques with one student I've been working with since the very start of the year has made a really big impact and helped improve her Maths skills no end.

The Royal Norfolk Show is one of the biggest events in the Norfolk calendar with people flocking from across Norfolk and the surrounding counties either for a day out in the sun or to compete.

I had a student ask me this during a small group session with some of their class’ lowest ability students. With their exams only a couple of months away, I was trying desperately to engage these kids in what they were learning - cracking some jokes with them, allowing them the freedom to dictate the direction of their creative response, all in an effort to help them engage with the complex nature of the tasks.

The past two months have had me thinking of Anatoli Burgoski; the unfortunate Soviet scientist who stuck his head into a live particle accelerator and swiftly received a right hook from a proton. One minute you’re fiddling with a wire and the next you’ve got a tunnel seared through your skull.

I thoroughly enjoyed working for Yipiyap in my gap year. So much so that I'd been dead set on coming back ever since I left to start my Sociology degree at the University of Manchester. Well, three years later, here I am again.