Education, Education, Education (your chance to influence the year)

"The brain", to (more or less) quote Arnold Schwarzenegger, "is the most important muscle in the body". Let’s ignore concerns that the Governor of California has not exercised his own brain sufficiently to find out what a muscle actually is and go with the principle. Every challenge so far this year has been physical and, as the orienteering demonstrated, my head could do with some work. Which is a long way of saying it’s time to get cerebral.

This is the "get a new qualification" challenge. The rules are simple enough: get a nationally recognised qualification in a subject I have never studied before. Tragically this has ruled out such fascinating topics as lifestyle adviser (personal), primal therapy and mushroom growing - because of the nationally recognised part, not because I have studied them before.

In keeping with student tradition I considered cramming for a month and taking a GCSE but some stupid red tape about syllabuses and coursework made this impossible. However I am reliably informed that a qualification called ASET Level 2 is the equivalent of a GCSE (i.e. easier every year) and so I am going to do one of those. The question is which one? And I do mean that is the question – I am asking you to decide for me. I have put together a shortlist of four subjects and, at the top of this page, there has magically appeared a poll where you can vote for what you think I should study. I don’t care how you choose; it can be what you think is most difficult, what you would most like me to tell you about over a drink (you’re buying, I’m a student) or just the result of shutting your eyes and clicking.

The poll will remain open until the first time I access my blog after finishing Three Men in a Boat. I will start in June and hope to have my ASET Level 2 qualification in [enter name of winning subject here] by no later than the end of August (after all is extra study not what the Summer Holidays were always for?).