Jack Monroe #343 A heavy dose of chickpea and loathing

[Wooh]

1) Imagine boasting about this as an adult!! I have a couple of friends who really were child prodigies and are chill about it, you'd only know if you asked. Meanwhile Thumbelina's over here shouting about having enjoyed a children's book while at the appropriate age for it. Make it make sense
7) I have a tiny hunch she meant whatever was the 80s equivalent of The Academy for Gifted and Talented Children, which wasn't a school but a venture that ran gifted and talented activities in schools. Basically, being put on a list and signed up for some activities. Academy, club, school... words is words x
ETA, g&t 'diagnosis' is normal for grammars in my experience, it makes them look good and a lot of students are bound to be good at something. It wouldn't single anyone out the way Jack described, not in that environment. But whether the students end up doing anything about g&t specifically depends on how committed their parents and Head/teachers are to developing whatever skills they've been deemed gifted & talented at. You might have a student put on the g&t list and nothing happens lol.
tl;dr probably a small kernel of truth in there somewhere in that fib!

Gifted and talented is no match for goals and hard work. Doesn't matter either from where you obtain your qualifications, but how you use them.

Jack, your regular reminder that being employed is fine

 

[Five hundred dogs]

I always wondered how she ended up with 4 GCSEs. Oh sorry, 4.5. If she’d turned up for half of the classes, even with no revision she probably could have scraped a few E grades which still counts. Her parents don’t seem like the kind to ignore warnings from the school about missed coursework. Her school seems like the type that loves to crow about it’s GCSE results so I doubt they’d want her to leave without at least five.

I’d guess there was one of two reasons. Either there was something serious going on in her life at the time which caused her to fail, possibly even not even take, most of her GCSEs. Or (and my money would be on this) she went for the “if you don’t try you can’t fail” approach. She can’t cope with failure at all, can’t take responsibility for her own shortcomings, but if she didn’t bother and pretended it was because she was too cool for school or because the evil Borbora and co had it in for her then she could, at least in her mind, save face.

 

[colouredlines]

She claims the dog is named after Laurie Penny, which is hilarious if I'm wrong and the SB truthers are right:

"What do you want to call her, pal?"

"Gosh, Mamapapa, let's name her after that nice lady on Twitter who defaced a war memorial, then Katie Hopkins mistook you for her, and that led to your landmark libel trial and after that we bought the sofa!"

It's all a bit made up. I am off the same age and I have dyspraxia. I went too see pediatrician and and educational phycologist. They told my mum my issues and along with the school my family helped me get support and the help I needed to get through. There's no way in hell she was reading her parents books because A at four she would not understand the subject matter despite knowing the words, plus they would I assume also be unsuitable subject matter as what parent would want a four year old reading about sexualencounters and or other more adult themes, which many books describe in vivid detail, even I find the books that do not have that has their subject matter.

Maybe Big Dave just liked reading old Beano annuals?

 

[Lazarus]

When's the first of SB's dream trips away? Did we get an update on where she's chosen? Somewhere out of the way enough that can take some wild campers with a dog, but close enough to public transport and accessible to someone who has duck all wrong with them uses a walking stick?

Note: all of those requirements were hers. Not a single one was listed as something which might interest SB or meet his needs.

 

[Orphan_Black]

She claims the dog is named after Laurie Penny,

What if the dog's name is only Laurie on Twitter, and in reality SB named it something else......

 

[OwlRightsReserved]

I can hand-on-heart say I've never once been able to tell which of my students were reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at 6. I know which of them work hardest, though, and it's almost inevitably those who didn't come from comfortable private or grammar schools. Jack is 100% one of those people who thought she could sail through life because she got into grammar school, and was hit with the unfortunate reality when she scraped 4.5 GCSEs.

My youngest son is dyslexic, and really struggled with reading at first. He's now at medical school. What he was reading aged 6 doesn't matter. I have no idea what his, or any of my other children's IQs are, because it means absolutely nothing in the context of being happy, well-rounded and civically-engaged people.

The sentence that wins the internet for me was 'The aquafaba loomed in the background.'
Next thread title?
@OwlRightsReserved you are surely a writer irl? X

I'm an academic I've always wanted to write a book but been too busy with children and work and life. Maybe when I retire or my daughter goes to uni!

 

[BeautifulTrauma]

Considering everything that she tweets or says is a lie or half truth, is there any proof there that she did only attain 4.5 GCSE's?

Unless there's proof, I would err on the side of this is just yet another story for her to seem like this poor girl who turned out alright despite the lack of GCSE's. Look at how many time she trots out the story about it, I can't even remember how many A-C's I got but it was enough to get me into college. Fits into the whole holding a grudge narrative though.

 

[colouredlines]

What if the dog's name is only Laurie on Twitter, and in reality SB named it something else......

It's on the infamous collar tag!

 

[Cack Conroe]

I always wondered how she ended up with 4 GCSEs. Oh sorry, 4.5. If she’d turned up for half of the classes, even with no revision she probably could have scraped a few E grades which still counts. Her parents don’t seem like the kind to ignore warnings from the school about missed coursework. Her school seems like the type that loves to crow about it’s GCSE results so I doubt they’d want her to leave without at least five.

She only counts the GCSEs that were grade C or above because she’s a huge snob. I think she actually got more than 4.5.

She has complained about being prevented from sitting some GSCEs because the school didn’t want to risk a student getting bad grades. From their point of view, if Jack never did any school work at all (as stated by her friend on these threads), maybe they thought she would be better off trying to focus on a smaller number of GCSEs so as not to get overwhelmed.

Also coursework counted for a chunk of your GCSEs, and if she never did any work that would have impacted her grades and she wouldn’t have been able to scrape by by winging it in exams.

 

[Orphan_Black]

It's on the infamous collar tag!

Jack loves a prop to back up her story! I've convinced myself now, love a good conspiracy! lol!

 

[alphaspagbol]

I’m Scottish so no experience of GCSEs. But is it actually possible to get half of a GCSE. The closest I can think of here would have been (back in the day when I sat exams) getting a comp O (compensatory O’grade) instead of a higher. I.e you failed the higher but were deemed good enough to have passed an o’grade.

 

[Mr Krabs]

Considering everything that she tweets or says is a lie or half truth, is there any proof there that she did only attain 4.5 GCSE's?

Unless there's proof, I would err on the side of this is just yet another story for her to seem like this poor girl who turned out alright despite the lack of GCSE's. Look at how many time she trots out the story about it, I can't even remember how many A-C's I got but it was enough to get me into college. Fits into the whole holding a grudge narrative though.

Good point. Although we know she’s a terrible liar. I feel that if she did lie about the 4.5 GCSEs she would have slipped up at some point. Like a tattler would find an Insta post from 2015 where she claims to have taken the most GCSEs out of all the kids in Southend. Didn’t she once claim she was in the top 12 in the country of 11+ grades or something insane and unprovable like that?

I seem to remember in the oldest Jack blog she talked about ‘not using my degree’ when working in a coffee shop. In the days before the honourary degree. In conclusion, who the firk knows.

 

[AnnRKey]

I’m Scottish so no experience of GCSEs. But is it actually possible to get half of a GCSE. The closest I can think of here would have been (back in the day when I sat exams) getting a comp O (compensatory O’grade) instead of a higher. I.e you failed the higher but we’re deemed good enough to have passed an o’grade.

Yeah - it just means only half the content has been examined. They are generally short courses like R.E.
We don't really have anything similar here at all in Scotland

 

[Wooh]

Jack Monroe Attacks 'Complete Bullshit' Daily Mail Article On Her Degree

Jack Monroe Attacks 'Complete Bullshit' Daily Mail Article On Her Degree

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

 

[Orphan_Black]

Yeah - it just means only half the content has been examined. They are generally short courses like R.E.
We don't really have anything similar here at all in Scotland

It was short course RE.

We only studied the Sikhism side, the exam had questions for that, and the other half were Christianity questions. Full course would have answered both sets.

 

[colouredlines]

Considering everything that she tweets or says is a lie or half truth, is there any proof there that she did only attain 4.5 GCSE's?

Unless there's proof, I would err on the side of this is just yet another story for her to seem like this poor girl who turned out alright despite the lack of GCSE's. Look at how many time she trots out the story about it, I can't even remember how many A-C's I got but it was enough to get me into college. Fits into the whole holding a grudge narrative though.

You could well be right. The original claim of 7 GCSEs appeared in Xanthe Clay's 2013 piece: https://web.archive.org/web/2013030...773/My-49p-lunch-with-a-girl-called-Jack.html Although admittedly not a direct quote.

In Potatoes, one of her lengthy asides aimed at Tattle claimed:

TBH I can see that this is the kind of lie that would spiral. Initially she said she had 7 GCSEs, which is unremarkable, but back in 2013, she was presenting herself as a middle class woman fallen on hard times. Later, when she was claiming to be from a lifelong working class background, the number of GCSEs dropped...

 

[BlendedSlop]

She only counts the GCSEs that were grade C or above because she’s a huge snob. I think she actually got more than 4.5.

She has complained about being prevented from sitting some GSCEs because the school didn’t want to risk a student getting bad grades. From their point of view, if Jack never did any school work at all (as stated by her friend on these threads), maybe they thought she would be better off trying to focus on a smaller number of GCSEs so as not to get overwhelmed.

Also coursework counted for a chunk of your GCSEs, and if she never did any work that would have impacted her grades and she wouldn’t have been able to scrape by by winging it in exams.

Borbora: Jack, don't forget it's the deadline for submitting your English coursework tomorrow. Most pupils have already handed theirs in.

Jack: It's coming soon! I'm just one person with a biro and a head full of furious mendacious marauding wasps, I'm EXHAUSTED, do you want me to LITERALLY STOP BREATHING!?

 

[Cack Conroe]

Considering everything that she tweets or says is a lie or half truth, is there any proof there that she did only attain 4.5 GCSE's?

Unless there's proof, I would err on the side of this is just yet another story for her to seem like this poor girl who turned out alright despite the lack of GCSE's. Look at how many time she trots out the story about it, I can't even remember how many A-C's I got but it was enough to get me into college. Fits into the whole holding a grudge narrative though.

Nah, she is very consistent with this story, and it still seems to be an ego blow that she only got 4.5.

She is also still upset at not having been to university or having a degree. Both her parents and older brother have degrees (standard working class family that they are) and both her dad and older brother went to grammar school. I think she would have seen getting A levels and a degree as the default option, and would have gone on to do A levels if she was.

She was probably shocked at getting thwarted by her poor results. Being arrogant and terminally lazy, she probably expected to be able wing it with zero effort.

She could have done a resit for one of her lower graded GCSEs the January after her results came in, and gone on to do A levels elsewhere. She got a DD in double science if I remember correctly, it wouldn’t have been difficult to bump that up one grade. But that would have been too much like hard work, so instead she’s still whining 18 years later.

 

[Lumpyspaceprincess]

If you fail your GCSEs you can still go to college. Some students do much better there. I’m sure I remember some people doing GCSEs alongside A Levels.
There are other paths to doing degrees etc as well and other qualifications . Or is this another backhanded complaint about her parents not letting her stay on.

 

[TreeTrunksApplePie]

I’d guess there was one of two reasons. Either there was something serious going on in her life at the time which caused her to fail, possibly even not even take, most of her GCSEs. Or (and my money would be on this) she went for the “if you don’t try you can’t fail” approach. She can’t cope with failure at all, can’t take responsibility for her own shortcomings, but if she didn’t bother and pretended it was because she was too cool for school or because the evil Borbora and co had it in for her then she could, at least in her mind, save face.

Is it also that she doesn’t count her non A-C grades as GCSEs? I went through a tit time age 15-16 and got pretty awful GCSEs. I’ve definitely been told before that I only have 3 GCSEs and all my D-Fs don’t count