Sixth Form Shenanigans
Last week, I finally started Year 12, and how crazy does it feel that I’m now entering into Sixth Form when I still remember my post two years ago about rising up to a year with double digits? It’s truly crazy how fast time passes when you’re so focused on the present. Contrastingly, I think for the coming two years until I graduate, I must start looking into the future and planning for a variety of projects, the most obvious being considering the universities and subjects I look to study post-high school. After listening to a speech giving by the Head of Sixth form on the second day back, there are some thoughts I hope to recollect and reflect upon as I look towards my new goals in the coming academic year.
Locked in
This may sound extremely cheesy to some of you, but I do sense an urgent need to lock in even more. I need to reorganize and reflect on my current study and leisure habits because the thing I’ve heard from every one of my teachers is how different A-level is going to be compared to the IGCSE. Considering how stressed I was through IGCSE mocks and the real exam, I think I need to adapt my mindset towards working hard while giving myself a chance to breathe. I’m genuinely scared of a complete burnout or mental breakdown coming my way. I know the subjects that I have chosen to take, math, further math, physics and history, will amount to a very heavy workload, but these are subjects I genuinely looked forward to the most during my IGCSE years. Of course, I’m afraid of being exposed to newer concepts that I’d have no idea how to grasp and would need to spend ages consolidating my knowledge, but I also believe that when I do master these ideas, the sense of accomplishment is like none other. After only starting school for a mere few days, I’ve now learned to balance between rest and work to a better degree and kept my emotions more stable rather than projecting more of my exhaustion on those around me (most of the time being my family & I end up regretting my words). Also, I’ve now started going to bed by 12:30am (or earlier if I’m too tired for the day, instead of fighting through my fatigue to scroll on my phone) and arranging my studies in a way where I have breaks in between, whether that’d be my lunchtime or just a 15-minute break.
“Do it until you can never get it wrong again”
This was something I heard from my math teacher in our first ever lesson, and further math being a subject that is supposedly significantly harder than IGCSE further math, this stuck with me more than I thought it would. For the past few days as I pre-study a few math concepts on my own, I spent more time asking myself why I’m taking each step as I solve a question in order to realize the purpose, rather than following a set structure like a robot. This was something I learned from a senior (one I respected deeply) who had graduated this year, as I asked her for advice to surviving in Sixth Form. The combination of the advice to understand why in each step and practicing until you can solve a question intuitively has motivated me to face further math head on, rather than spending so much time memorizing a method to solve a question robotically. I understand that I have such a long way to go until I’m able to master the craft of nonstop practicing and deriving purpose in mathematical steps, but this is something I’m going to remind myself of as the year goes on.
“This too shall pass”
Upon sitting for 2 hours in a row in a lecture hall with my head of Sixth Form, you would expect dozens of students dozing off and yawning out of boredom. However, as my head of Sixth Form repeated a quote from King Solomon “This too, shall pass”, my perspective on everything I do has suddenly changed, and I think for the better. This quote, though extremely simple and have probably been spoken many times, holds a much deeper meaning that I’ve failed to realize before. It’s a quote that is able to motivate me when times are low, and a quote makes me sad when times are high. When I look at the two years filled with projects, exams and events, I’m comforted and saddened at the same time. I cannot imagine how my life would look like when I open the decision letters to the universities I want to attend, when I receive my first university offer, and when I graduate.
I remember vividly feeling the same as I approached my IGCSE exams, thinking life would be so much different when I’m done with the exams. In reality, it was only a year that passed by like a flash and I feel no different to the person I was a year ago, right when I was starting Year 11. Indeed, I’ve undergone so much personal growth in the past year, and it’s genuinely been incredible, but I didn’t feel the euphoria I expected myself to feel in the beginning. Perhaps this is how I’m going to be like looking back in two years, but then again, I’m incredibly anxious and have no idea what to expect when I receive my university decisions and when I finish A-levels. I’ve watched incredibly wholesome college decision reaction videos since I was in Year 7, and will I be making my own video? Absolutely. Stay tuned!!
I think that’s enough sentimental thinking for today… And for a while since life will start getting hectic again. But like always, we’ll just have to face each day head on and know that there’ll always be good days and bad days. I promise to try and update this website as often as I can so please stay tuned for more!
Thanks for reading, and see you all in a bit.
-Winnie 08/09/2024
