To start off, OCR, AQA, EDEXCEL, you need to make GCSE’s much harder, the transition to A Level is far too vast, the workload triples and your time divides by the same amount if not more. So that’s my rant over!
So the title another level, well that is just what A Levels are, it’s another level of higher learning ‘broadening and strengthening your skills base’. Six months of this ‘broadening and strengthening’ left, but, I’m slowly being broken down cell by cell, of what I hope is a rather large brain.
You’d think six months is a long time, well no, the first day back of the new term and one of my friends go ‘we have nine school weeks left’ BEEP BEEEEEEP, yes that’s the alarm bells going off in my head, how on earth did sixth months go from nine weeks in a few syllables. So melt down in my head begins, how on earth do I balance everything? Work, driving lessons, rehearsals, school, coursework, social time. At times I feel like a student is training to be in a circus, every student I know has to juggle everything, and it tends to be for your own sanity. At times I have broke down, this comes after conversation like this with my mum ‘you must do well at school Tom, you don’t want to end up like your Dad and live in Dover the rest of your life’, that’s a fair point Dover is an awful place to grow up, I did deprivation coursework in this area and is going down hill fast, last month Dover was in the news, no not for its amazing FA cup run but because we had our first shooting. Helicopters were everywhere, this was just round the corner from my house, and how on earth was I expected to revise with the SWAT team above my head? (That will be my excuse if I fail geography, do I get extra marks if I write to the exam board and say this?) , but with my mum it’s just a whole load of added pressure, being an only child all the earnest is on me, to be the first one in the family to go to university and make something of themselves. Sometimes you just want your house to be a retreat away from all the pressures, but it just makes it worse with parents like mine.
You’d think six months is a long time, well no, the first day back of the new term and one of my friends go ‘we have nine school weeks left’ BEEP BEEEEEEP, yes that’s the alarm bells going off in my head, how on earth did sixth months go from nine weeks in a few syllables. So melt down in my head begins, how on earth do I balance everything? Work, driving lessons, rehearsals, school, coursework, social time. At times I feel like a student is training to be in a circus, every student I know has to juggle everything, and it tends to be for your own sanity. At times I have broke down, this comes after conversation like this with my mum ‘you must do well at school Tom, you don’t want to end up like your Dad and live in Dover the rest of your life’, that’s a fair point Dover is an awful place to grow up, I did deprivation coursework in this area and is going down hill fast, last month Dover was in the news, no not for its amazing FA cup run but because we had our first shooting. Helicopters were everywhere, this was just round the corner from my house, and how on earth was I expected to revise with the SWAT team above my head? (That will be my excuse if I fail geography, do I get extra marks if I write to the exam board and say this?) , but with my mum it’s just a whole load of added pressure, being an only child all the earnest is on me, to be the first one in the family to go to university and make something of themselves. Sometimes you just want your house to be a retreat away from all the pressures, but it just makes it worse with parents like mine.
Now I would feel comfortable if I went to a top school, in hindsight I should have gone to the girls’ grammar, just round the corner from my house (yes the same place of the shooting) better teaching and obvious benefits, if you understand my meaning.
At my school we have poor, poor teachers. On a scale of poorness it’s about on par with Kerry Katona’s mothering skills, for instance three days , before my Geography re-sit I had my teacher go ‘sorry lads I don’t know what I should do with you’. Well thanks for nothing, so this meant hours and hours of self taught lessons at home, I suppose I learnt more than I would have if I had been at school, this is because I had brain fuel; tea, milk, two sugars.
My PE teacher somehow managed to get to university on two E’s, times have changed I need so much more than that, but she thinks it’s ok to send us on a two mile run, we have 9 school weeks left and we haven’t even finished reading the book, great just great and the homework s exactly the same, ‘boys I want you to have completed three two mile runs by next week’ , yeah sure I’ll do that, when you find me the hours in the day.
At my school we have poor, poor teachers. On a scale of poorness it’s about on par with Kerry Katona’s mothering skills, for instance three days , before my Geography re-sit I had my teacher go ‘sorry lads I don’t know what I should do with you’. Well thanks for nothing, so this meant hours and hours of self taught lessons at home, I suppose I learnt more than I would have if I had been at school, this is because I had brain fuel; tea, milk, two sugars.
My PE teacher somehow managed to get to university on two E’s, times have changed I need so much more than that, but she thinks it’s ok to send us on a two mile run, we have 9 school weeks left and we haven’t even finished reading the book, great just great and the homework s exactly the same, ‘boys I want you to have completed three two mile runs by next week’ , yeah sure I’ll do that, when you find me the hours in the day.
The “study” (in air apostrophes) is more like a playground, there’s the corner crew a group full of photographers and social retards, there so busy taking pictures of other people’s lives that they forget they have one of their own. There’s the annoying year twelve group, I can’t wait till they are in the position I’m in now and realise they should have done so much more work and occasionally shut up ! I also have to be carer for the one we call the tank, big but stupid, he is so hyper active I mistake him for a 7 year old, I tell him to take his pills and sit down. Then there’s the “gleeks” I find myself spending most of my time with this group as I’m involved in all the shows and the performing departments at my school, this group is like the film ‘mean girls’, all ways casting judgement on whoever walks past. When the girls of the group leave and do hard (?) dance work, the boys tend to talk about sex or football , normal talk, not, stressed talk, light hearted and more to the point welcomed conversation. Like most of school life you tend to drift between people trying to fit in, I tend to drift to where the next hot girl is.
‘School is a dry run for your life’. I’m pretty sure that life gets pretty hectic and stressed; it’s probably why people end up shooting each other. You need to have a little me time, mine consists of listening to Adele and reading something completely non school related.
I would suggest a few simple rules:
DO have me time, it allows you to distress
DO speak to someone, teachers are actually a great help
Do REVISE, yes it does help, honest
DO plan your time and when you’re gone to do things
DO have a TARGET
DON’T Panic (Mr. Mannering) it doesn’t help you will upset yourself
DON’T work part time for more than 15 hours, I do it its hard
DO succeed, have the drive and commitment, 6 months for a yearlong party is not much really.
Good luck
DO have me time, it allows you to distress
DO speak to someone, teachers are actually a great help
Do REVISE, yes it does help, honest
DO plan your time and when you’re gone to do things
DO have a TARGET
DON’T Panic (Mr. Mannering) it doesn’t help you will upset yourself
DON’T work part time for more than 15 hours, I do it its hard
DO succeed, have the drive and commitment, 6 months for a yearlong party is not much really.
Good luck
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