The School Saga: A-Levels

As I write this now it’s very almost 6pm on the 7th of June, the night before double exam day. I have watched hours of media focus videos and spent more hours on twitter than I care to admit. I have always known I wanted to record my experience of my A Levels and my getting into university, but I have never been one for YouTube videos, as talking to my phone in my bedroom is extremely embarrassing no matter who can or cannot hear you. So, we’re going to attempt this as a written journal thing and as fashionable of myself and half of the internet, yes, I forgot about it until just.

An introduction to me, I am studying A Levels in English Language, Media Studies and Psychology and I am already over halfway finished. I think it’s ironic that English was the first to be done, the one I have had no problems with over my two years, while I’ve still got a week and a half until I can finally forget about the methods of modifying addiction, which I promise you is not as interesting as it sounds.

Not to pass the blame, but as someone who has never been fazed by exams, these ones are getting to me. Not because I don’t think I don’t know the content, which if you ask me now with my research methods paper a mere 15 hours away I definitely do not, but because I haven’t been prepared. My year must have been one of the worst affected by the Covid pandemic, it hit in 2020 just before we were supposed to take our GCSEs so we never got the chance to experience that stress and trauma of last minute revision and the relief mixed dread that comes with walking out of the exam and realising you used a word in the entirely wrong context and wondering just how badly that will fuck you up (hegemonic is now my least favourite word fuck you). I think if I’d sat these exams, I would’ve learnt that I cannot go two years without looking at my notes outside of lessons and expect to learn the entirety of first year content in a week. Not without a few tears and a fortnight-long headache anyway. On top of that, we have never done real exams, AS Levels were yet again cancelled, and the 25 mark topic tests where you know the questions a week before surely cannot count as valid preparation. However, I am here now, having revised more than I have ever revised in my life despite not attending a single lesson for a month. Let’s hope my university offer truly doesn’t take in to consideration my attendance as I’m scared to even look at that now. (I have since looked at it, it’s still at 87%, nothing to worry about...)

To start off exam season, I had my first psychology paper, after having seen twitter uproar about exam boards not sticking to the advanced information it’s safe to say I was terrified. I had spent two weeks committing the advanced info to memory, and any other topic was but a distant memory and a jumble of words that didn’t make sense to my too-tired brain. The morning came, and sleep surpassed me (not as badly as I expected mind you) I woke up feeling like I was going to vom. Not in an I’m sick way more in an if this exam is hard, I’m going to sob so hard it hurts. Getting to college, the stomach was still churning. Meeting up with my friend Emily, she ran me through all of the revision she had done, and all of the content she knew that I did not. That didn’t help. I did not need to know that being left-handed affected the brain activity in Raine’s research Emily, but thanks for the stress. There was a quick flip and a friend’s breakdown that helped the nerves pass, because I was far more worried about her than I was about myself - the few advantages of not needing any special requirements in exams is that they cannot get them wrong. The paper in the end went well, not to jinx it, the questions were nice and straightforward, and I wrote until my hand was in a cramped claw that I couldn’t quite move. I remembered the five stages of Little Albert’s conditioning study for no reason at all. But all in all, it was a very very pleasant start to the four weeks of hell.

The day after, my first English paper came around, children’s language acquisition had always been a strength of mine so the feeling of throwing up wasn’t nearly as bad. My friends and I spent half an hour just spurting random knowledge at each other hoping that anything we’d miss would finally stick and then we walked into the exam hall yet again. There’s something odd about being sat behind your friends because while I was writing frantically about the nature and nurture debate in the effect on a child’s language, I was mutely aware of Daniel staring at his paper doing not much at all, well it didn’t look like it anyway. Considering children’s language gave us the easiest question known to man, AQA had successfully led me into a false sense of security. A false sense of security that was instantly and horrifically dashed by textual analysis. When you read ‘this section will be on a cooking text’ I think it’s safe, fair, and correct to assume you are likely to be faced with a recipe of some sort. I along with the entirety of the nation were frantically prepping for a Jamie Oliver guide to something or another, a recipe for his kids or something I don’t know, to be faced with an article about how to survive a student kitchen and a narrative piece from the opening to a 1960s cookbook about God knows what. I think it’s safe to assume if anything has bought my grade down for English language, it was that.

Friday the 27th bought my first media paper, missing an English lesson I would have much rather have been in, missing my two best friends for the final lesson we would’ve had together, I was suffering in another exam. With media comes the watching of an audio-visual product and therefore being in a separate room which apparently leads to nothing but shambles. In our case the product was the Up All Night music video by Beck, a song nobody in the room knew bar my friend Charlie who only recognised it from FIFA. Contemporary my arse Eduqas, we were all waiting in anticipation for Olivia Rodrigo. Analysing music videos has never been something I particularly struggled with, however that was when I could actually see the music video I was meant to be analysing and I wasn’t very aware of the 5 minutes we were supposed to spend watching this music video had turned into 25 because the invigilator was so fucking useless, time we lost out on writing by the way. I am not happy. Obviously not off to the best start I didn’t have high hopes for this exam, which was good because the entire thing was a travesty. I would explain but I might cry, let’s just say that easy A is a solid C and I can kiss my dreams of university goodbye.

Half term rolled around, and I had an entire week to revise for my next three. Did I? Funny you should ask. No, I didn’t, I sat at my desk watching The Big Bang Theory, I should have regrets, but I don’t, it was nice. I’ll let you know if that changes. A little bit of cramming on a Sunday after a summer holiday shopping trip and the Queen’s platinum jubilee, English Language paper 2 had quickly snuck up on me again. A positive start as Emily, Eleni and I walked into the exam hall still cry-laughing about inky crotches (don’t ask) and trying to spell Schloffer? Schodloff? Shodffer? I still don’t know. This exam must have been the peak of exam season because that was the nicest paper I’ve ever sat. If there’s one thing you learn about exams, it’s the topic that came up the year before is very unlikely to come up again. However, my entire class actively ignored this and still wishfully revised language and gender hoping AQA would be nice and give us the easy topic. They did. And thank fuck that they did. Discourse analysis wasn’t bad either, a mix of standards of English, occupational lexis and accent and dialect. Not as strong as language and gender, but not one I couldn't’ve messed up too badly. So, all in all, with my English course done and finished, I can say that I’m not too scared. A bit scared but not shitting bricks.

As I write the next couple of paragraphs it’s somewhere between the evening of the 8th of June and the afternoon I should hope of the 9th. Another two exams have passed, I am officially finished with Media and I have just over (as of 11:38 on the 8th) a week until my final paper for psychology and I am done with my A Levels for good. Today had been the day I had been dreading since the beginning, Psychology research methods in the morning and Media to follow the same afternoon. In my humble opinion, yes it should be illegal to sit two exams in one day because once you’ve done one the wrist ache and brain pain is too much to take 2 hours and 30 minutes’ worth of waffly essays on a French TV show you’ve only half-assed watched twice and a youtuber you haven’t watched or thought about since 2014. But it’s done, I did it and the exhaustion is another level. I say as I’m still writing and awake like I don’t have to get up at half 8 tomorrow morning for a driving lesson, Emma if I fall asleep at the wheel that’s not on me.

Upon reflection, psychology paper 2 could have been much worse. I only revised a very small section of the spec, having convinced myself that everything else was common sense and making up some strengths and weaknesses was a walk in the park. Something in my brain must be psychic because the very small number of topics I revised, was everything that came up on the exam. There were a few questions where wording caught me out and my bullshitting superpowers came into play yet again, like my attempt to justify the use of a directional hypothesis in a study rather than a non-directional hypothesis. Or my attempt to convince the examiner the line graph was used because it was a test of association when it tells me on the next page that it was in fact a test of difference. I didn’t go back and change it I thought writing something down was better than a load of scribbles and the written format of a mental breakdown. I did however finish with half an hour to spare in which I checked, checked and checked again that I read every question right (yes Dad I actually read the questions) but I still managed to come out of the exam having definitely lost two very easy marks, after writing it wrong, correcting it and then changing it back again. But hey that’s only two marks.

The media paper was another story, a very appropriate and consistant follow on from the hell on paper that was component 1, but that’s a story for tomorrow (it’s still the 8th!) while I try to avoid having to commit the social explanations of addiction to memory. For now, sleep must embrace me, so I don’t kill myself on the road and my brain doesn’t start leaking out of my eyes. Stressful evening to follow a stressful day, never try to plan a holiday with your friends it’s bound to end up in arguments especially when you’re used to being the one organising and you are not the one organising, sorry Elyes the control freak in me jumped out thick and fast…

Okay, it’s the 14th of June and realistically I don’t have time to write this at all. I’ve just worked the busiest weekend at work I think I’ve ever worked, Paul is yet again creeping me out, and I’m supposed to be memorising the NICE guidelines for Naltrexone. Instead, I’m drinking coffee from my basically broken coffee machine and listening to Hamilton, so I thought I’d run through how my media exam went very quickly. I always thought Media was going to be my easy A, I’d spent the last two years getting As and A*s and being praised to no end by my teacher (I love you Karen x) but Eduqas really took that and crushed it to dust. The first exam was traumatic, no time to finish, couldn’t see the screen for the music video, not enough space to write, no spare paper in the room, horrendous invigilator. Luckily, paper two was in the Sports Hall so the invigilator issue was better. It had been my only exam where I’d been sat right at the back. I could not see the clock. The clock is a vital piece of equipment when you need to time essay responses. Great start.

Yet again Eduqas decided to fuck us over, giving us a page and a half worth of space for a 30-mark question, and making the layout of the exam incredibly confusing. With media, the teachers get to pick which set texts to teach from a long list, all schools do different ones so at the start of each question you have a tick box to say which texts you are writing about. You then have the answer space for question 1, what I didn’t realise until after I’d spent 25 minutes writing about Humans, was that despite that being my first question, to the exam board Humans was question 2. There was a separate space for question 2. I had written a 15-mark essay in the wrong space. Obviously panicking, I asked what to do. I basically asterisks'd the booklet 4 times and now I’m hoping the examiner can figure out what goes where… so if I fail Media that is one of many reasons. I could sense my friend Abi practically laughing at me from behind, only for her 5 minutes later to realise she had done the exact same thing, as did half of twitter by the sounds of it. So, it’s definitely Eduqas’s fault not me being an idiot.

As for the questions, the exam boards’ claim they would make it easy for our year due to the pandemic definitely should’ve been taken with a pinch of salt. The Human’s question was to evaluate the fandom theory. The theory half of the country didn’t learn at all and the ones that did learnt it as an A* push. The theory very simply states that an audience interacts with a text nowadays by creating their own content relating to it, like fanfiction or fan edits and the like. It’s not a substantial enough theory to drag out into a 15 marker without repeating yourself until it hurts or ignoring the question entirely. The first of two 30 markers later on in the exam we found out was content taught in the third year of a media degree and wasn’t anything we were expected to know at A Level at all. So that was another 50 minutes of pure waffle and loose links to the question hoping if I dropped enough names and referenced enigma codes enough, I’d still get the marks. I’m not convinced. So, coming out of that exam and finally finishing my media course (thank the lord, I was promised interesting, I was highly disappointed. I also think I learnt more about my teacher’s take on football than the content itself but hey ho) I’m starting to think that easy A is practically impossible. Let’s just hope the grade boundaries are 6 feet underground and I can still scrape a B to get me into university. We shall see. For now, though, I really should return to psychology. Just two days to go and 10 topics I am still clueless about. I’ll update you Thursday evening when I am finally free, and newly stressed about making sure I have everything packed to go to Portugal the day after.

Thursday evening has arrived, my parents have both left the house shouting something I couldn’t hear, but something I’m sure I don’t actually want to know what it was. The temperature is uncomfortable, I have been sweating in the most ungodly places for hours, but I am free. Free from revision, free from Psychology, free from college. Forever. By forever I mean I’m done with revision for at least 4 months, bur the rest of it forever forever. Obviously, I’m beyond excited to be free from it all, but something in me is now a bit lost. So much time, so little to do now I don’t have anything to memorise. The exam this morning was a shambles, well not really, but it was the first time I’d walked into an exam hall and blanked. No names, no research, no content. Appropriately, everything in my mind went ‘shit!’. The questions were cruel, three methods of modifying, no characteristics and the ethical costs of research controversy. Just like Eduqas to fuck us over at the last second. I can’t complain though, I answered every question and my hand ached like hell by the end of it. I wrote a conclusion for every question that needed a conclusion, one of which cost me a very valuable five minutes I needed for the antipsychotics question. But I answered them, and I got in as much content as my melting mind could remember, even if I have jumbled up names, dates and what they did I should hope the examiner gives me marks for trying. It was the general consensus that component 3 of psychology had fucked us over, we all came out pulling faces and complaining to our teacher. We all are hoping we made up for what we lost in this one in the first two exams.

But this is it. My A Levels finished. I no longer study Media or Psychology. I am now technically an undergraduate studying English, or Publishing (we’ll see which university I actually get into) and I have three months ahead of me where I will be spending more money than I have. If you were wondering my plans for this summer: after Portugal, I’m going to see Dear Evan Hansen in the West End, and then between watching and rewatching movies, reading as much as I can, hopefully, maybe, I’ll start on writing a romance book that I’ve been planning for months. And I will do all this while I wait anxiously, always niggling in the back of my mind, for the dreaded Thursday that is August the 18th where my future will be decided for me. Where I’ll find out just how badly Eduqas has fucked me over, and if I’m officially a student of Lancaster University or another burnt out gifted kid scrambling for something to do when September rolls around. And that day is when I will write to you again, like I have now, in the style that I usually save for my notes about feelings I don’t usually have, to update you on that dreaded Thursday and share with you my fate.