Life at Sixth Form

Isn't is funny how all of a sudden your life can change so drastically? Before starting sixth form last September, I thought life was easy. Although GCSE's were a challenge, I found that even though I didn't revise as much as I should have done, I still managed to achieve A*-B grades in all 11 of the GCSE's that I took.
   My life literally changed on the first day of Sixth Form. I no longer had three lessons every day and instead found myself with five one hundred minute lessons called 'study periods.' I found that I as receiving more and more work from subject teachers, realised that most people I was surrounded by actually wanted to be there and that everyone was given a lot more independance.
   I made a number of mistakes during my first year at Sixth Form, and arguably my biggest one by far was to think that these 'study periods' could be used to socialise, with both friends and on sites such as twitter, and then not complete any of the work that had been set in my lessons. However, I soon realised the purpose of these lessons was not the above and then started to use them to be as productive as possible. Well, most of the time.
   Recently, I was asked to participate in the Sixth Form taster day, a day in which students from Year 11 spend the day finding out what Sixth Form is really like. I hadn't reflected much on the year until this point and found that as well as helping the Year 11's to make the correct decisions, this gave me the opportunity to consider my attitude, work ethic and success over the past year. I realised on this day that no matter how many Sixth Form students explain to you how much work there actually is, students will never realise the reality until they are experiencing it. It was exactly the same for both myself and everybody in our year and will most likely be the case for the Year 12's next year and in years to come.
  The most important thing I have learnt from the first year of sixth form is that I was wrong to think that life at Sixth Form would be easy. Is it difficult? Yes. Is it really a step up from GCSE'S? Yes, a massive one. However it is also important to stress that throughout the stressful and saddening moments, it has probably been one of the most rewarding and successful years of my life so far and I wouldn't change any of it. - Tammy