I myself was feeling the pinch as I walked into the gym this
morning, but I have never found myself so nervous and worried about what
awaited me on the other side of that piece of paper. Maybe it was because that
exam was worth 30pc of my overall Alevel ,or I felt that I hadn’t revised
enough, but I don’t think lying wide awake at 2am the night before with your
phone on do not disturb and panicking, is how exams are supposed to make you
feel.
This year more than ever I have been feeling pressure to
perform well at school and in exams; and it stresses me the fuck out. Sometimes
I feel like coming to such a high performing school/college is the worst thing
I’ve ever done to myself. I know for sure that on GCSE results day 2 years ago,
I was way too hard on myself because (deep down) I know that achieving straight
As and Bs is not a bad letter to be pulling out of that envelope. Nevertheless
I was wailing in the street (how embarrassing) and crying on the sofa at home. It
was all because I thought that I wasn’t going to get into this college and that
I’d let my family down, let my old school down, and most importantly let myself
down (classic). But, yanno, with a little bit of retrospective you realise that
it literally isn’t the end of the world. So, yeah I was disappointed with my C
in Statistics, but now that I can’t even remember how a stem and leaf diagram
works, I’m really not that bothered?!
Before I even arrived at this college I was feeling the
pressure to perform well just to get in. It kind of messes with you when you’re
so stressed about school. In the past I’ve tried to never let my schoolwork get
in the way of my literal sanity, but the high demands of getting your grades to
get into university and this grammar school level performance, have messed me
up a bit. Like I said, sometimes I feel like coming here was the worst decision
I’ve ever made and I don’t enjoy it at all as an institution. I have some
fucking major clashes with the ethos of this place. It seems that all my
friends at some point or another find themselves sitting with the school
councillor and, not only is that sad, that’s just wrong. Why should young
girls be in such a way that they need counselling, or it all gets too much and
just comes flowing out to someone, anyone, who’ll listen. Also, some teachers are really
bad at spotting the signs of mental health issues and sometimes just when you
have a problem. I told my form tutor I was having a rough time at home, but
then a week later when I got a note in the register to go and see my English
teacher and left but didn’t go because I was so anxious to see her about my coursework,
I got shouted at and humiliated in a room full of my classmates. The fact that
some teachers are so unwilling to accept that you have a problem that prevents
you from getting on with your school work is horrendous. It’s very easy to tell
someone to momentarily put aside their problems and focus on the task in hand,
but when it’s a massive problem looming over you and occupying your every
thought – it’s not so bloody easy.
It’s also why I was so concerned during the election about
the topic of mental health because there are such massive problems around it,
such as the underfunding and the waiting lists – especially amongst young
people like my friends. I cannot begin to describe how disheartening it is to
see some of your closest friends have to take meds, constantly need picking
up, or needing a shoulder to cry on. There is something fundamentally wrong here and the
government, or the NHS, or even the governors of this school, need to do something
about it.
I sit here and moan about school (which is kind of ironic as
I’m writing this on a computer at college) but there are some things that I
would never change. There is nothing in the world that I would exchange for the
people that I have met by coming here. I think sometimes I sacrificed a little
bit of my sanity and probably my grades to a certain extent (as I can’t
cope in this high pressure environment), in order to meet some people that I
know will truly be friends for life. I don’t think I ever realised how
much the people here make a difference to me until I was laying on the desk
sobbing on the last day of term, and my friend wrapped her arms around my waist
and murmured “I’m so glad you came to CCHS.”
It has definitely changed me as a person as well. I’ve become
better at handling people and now I know how to deal with being a single sex
environment, which I never would have known before coming to this school. As cliché
as it sounds, I have also met people from more walks of life and that’s always
a good experience I think - seeing as much of the world as you can is the only
way you’re going to learn anything of value from it. So although I still
despise school and hate digging out my transparent pencil case every June, I don’t
think I’d change a thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment