How Yipiyap helped me to reapply AND get into the University of Oxford
If you are reading this as someone who is considering retaking subjects or reapplying to university, I can relate! I did both on my gap year with Yipiyap. Last year, I was downhearted to find I had been rejected from my top choice university. I had never considered taking a gap year before this point. A year on, having resat a subject and submitted a new UCAS form, I am now holding the exact offer that eluded me last year: taking a gap year was justified from a university application standpoint alone, and never mind the many other perks which come as part and parcel of it too!
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Why I attend the Yipiyap tutor enrichment programme (TEP) events
A bleak, ash covered road…
The bleachers of an American football game...
Under a blue sky on a desert island...
Thrust into the black emptiness of space after failing to convince your so-called “friends” you aren’t actually an alien imposter...
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The History of the Yipiyap Bird
A question that has played on my mind ever since joining Yipiyap is; what’s with the logo?! As someone who is very interested in the history of art and how it shapes the world around us, I couldn’t help but wonder about the story behind the Yipiyap bird!
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Book Club: “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy
Reading the book, I felt two types of dread; the dread of the man and the boy walking through a decaying world, starving while they narrowly survive encounters with those who have rejected any sense of humanity out of desperation to keep living; and the dread of realising I’d picked an extremely bleak book for a relaxing evening! As I entered the Zoom call, I expected a black screen of exhausted faces. What I didn’t expect was for the team to actually enjoy the book, even more than I did!
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Yipiyap's GCSE Resit Tutoring in TES
With the summer’s exam resits an especially hot topic this year, Yipiyap recently received a write-up for our GCSE maths and English resit tuition in the Times Education Supplement.
Anne Haig-Smith, director of the Applied Learning Foundation at our partner, Activate Learning, describes the challenges of improving GCSE resitter outcomes in maths and English, and how Yipiyap’s online tuition has been helping this year.
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Three reasons you should start journaling
Writing in a journal can improve your memory, boost your productivity, and help you process emotions healthily. Yipiyap Tutor Rebecca writes about how she came to journal, her preferred style of journaling, and why you should give it a try too.
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Happiness can take time and effort - here's how I did it.
Happiness can be a choice, but it’s not as simple as just deciding to feel better. Yipiyap’s Continuous Improvement Director Michael Bauer writes about six simple changes to his life that helped him find happiness.
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Music: The Power Behind the Melody
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.
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The Importance of Self-Care
Adequate self-care has, in my opinion, a huge impact on your mental and physical well-being. So, what is self-care?
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How a gap year helped my career
I began working for Yipiyap in September 2019. Throughout the year both my role in school and my team have provided so many valued memories and experiences. The very first memory I have is my interview; I was nervous plus I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the sound on my laptop!
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Helping out where I can
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.
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Art in Strange Times
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.
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The joy of being part of the team
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.
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Regression to the mean; an eye-opening truth and motivational stepping-stone
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.
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COVID-19 and Yipiyap - How we are tackling it
The effects of Covid-19 have been felt all over the world and are impacting massively on the way we all now live. The decision to close schools to all but the children of key workers or the vulnerable in order to reduce contact and save lives has inevitably caused severe disruption.
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Six Months In
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.
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