A Quick Explanation
I'm in Year 12, which is the penultimate year of high school/the first year of college or sixth form. I think it's the equivalent of Junior Year in the USA, or en première in France. I'm studying my A-Levels, which are 3 or 4 very intense academic courses in a subject that will determine whether or not I get into University. Most people do 3, but right now I'm still doing 4 because I haven't decided what subject to drop yet.
My A-Levels are in English Lit, History, French and Maths. I picked this day to write about because I have one lesson in each subject on a Thursday ever other week, and two free periods. I think in America students have the same lessons every day, but in my college we have a two week rotating timetable, so my schedule is different every day for two weeks. I have two different teachers for each subject, and we study different modules with each teacher. For example, I have Pure Maths with one teacher, and Stats and Mechanics with the other.
We're supposed to use our free periods for extra work, because as if A-Levels weren't hard enough, you also have to do a ton of extra stuff to get into Uni, or get the top grades. We only study two books for one of my English Lit papers, but if I want to get good marks, I ideally should talk about more than these two, which means I have to give up a lot of free time to try and study other books on the syllabus. So far, it's not going great.
Most colleges aren't doing Zoom lessons, but mine is, so most of my lessons are spent still seeing my class onscreen. Since it's coming to the end of the term, they've laid off a little, but not enough for me to be calm. Especially because I do three essay subjects with intense coursework, I'll still be studying over summer.
I forgot to mention, because it might not be relevant to my day, but I'm also studying for the EPQ - the Extended Project Qualification, which is a 5000 word essay about anything I choose. I'm writing about love and forgiveness in Khaled Hosseini's novels, but I have friends doing all sorts - one is writing about feline kidney disease, one is doing Japanese architecture, someone else is studying ancient philosophy - so it works for everything. It doesn't sound too difficult, but the planning looks like it'll be the hardest; most of my marks come from the planning and researching process, so it's a lot more complicated than just writing an essay.
I think that's all the exposition I need to give, so without further ado, let's jump into my day!
The Morning
On a usual school day, I'd get up at 7am and leave the house at around 7:50. But because of lockdown, I don't have to register until 8:50, so I get up at 8:30 and have breakfast while watching something on Netflix, usually Brooklyn 99.
There's a form we all have to fill in every day saying whether or not we'll be attending lessons, and as well as that, we have to register over Zoom in our forms and have a brief chat with our form tutor she gives us any news. Usually there's nothing much, something about year group assemblies or Uni, and today is no different - she tells us our second drafts of our personal statements are due tomorrow. I'm panicked by this, since I've not started working on it yet.
Our forms are mixed between Year 12 and Year 13, and we have 5 students from each year group. However, because the Year 13s have already left school, it's just the five of us, which is pretty awkward since none of us have much to say. Our form tutor is leaving at the end of this term after spending 34 years at this job, which is obviously quite emotional, but it's hard to show sympathy or support over the Internet with our cameras off.
9:15-10:05
My first lesson of the day is English Lit, which I usually love except it's been very stressful lately. We're studying Sense and Sensibility, but we've had to do it entirely alone and we're not even halfway through because the teacher doesn't pace things well. She's one of the nicest people in the world, but that's a bit of a problem because she never sets any homework, so we move way too slowly. There are only 3 other people in the class and they take advantage of this, telling her they're too stressed to do the work, but it just means we'll be set it for the summer.
Anyway, rant aside, for this period I make notes on Chapter 37 and 38 of Sense and Sensibility, particularly the presentation of women. I usually find this sort of thing quite boring, especially when there's no discussion, but recently I've found myself getting really emotional about the treatment of Lucy Steele as a character. Watch out for a blog post about that, because I have lots to say about her.
10:05-10:55
My second lesson is history, and this particular side of the course is my favourite. We've just started the coursework, and I've chosen to research the European Witch Craze which I'm finding really interesting, and this teacher is easily my favourite.
We talk on Zoom at the start of the lesson; not about work or anything, she just wants to check in and make sure we're all ok. Sometimes her kids join in and have a chat, which is always adorable. Today she shows us the flowers she's been crocheting for her daughter's hair.
Once she's left us to our own devices, we have to research. I've done all the basic background research I need to do, so I understand my topic, and have to fill in the proposal form. This is pretty basic, except for the part where I have to list all the sources I plan to consult. It's difficult with my college closed, because they have loads of material in the library I could get hold of, but now I'm limited to what's free online. I'm definitely not buying any books - they're all £30 or upwards, and I don't care about my subject that much.
It takes most of the lesson to come up with that list of sources, knowing fully that I probably won't read most of them, and it's a little disheartening to know I've wasted so much time that I'll have to make up in the holidays.
10:55-12:10
On my timetable, I have break until 11:20 and then a free period. I wish I could say I dedicated this time to working and being productive, maybe even working on my personal statement, but that would be a lie. I take a shower, and then doss around for the rest of the time.
We can't all be perfect.
12:10-1:00
I can confidently say this is the worst part of the day. It's French.
I once read somewhere that modern foreign languages are the hardest A-Levels, and I'm sure anyone doing them would agree. It's an essay subject, so it's already tons of work, but to make it worse the essays are in a language I'm not comfortable with.
On this side of the course, we have to analyse a film from the syllabus. Our teacher chose Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles and honestly, I wish he'd chosen literally anything else. I know Audrey Tautou is a national treasure, but I despise this film. It's so convoluted and confusing, nothing makes logical sense, and it's a waste of my life trying to analyse it. There are loads of characters who all look the same because it's set in WW1 and they're all soldiers, and I'm awful at remembering characters at the best of times.
If I didn't hate this film just from watching it, I definitely hate it after analysing it. In this lesson, the teacher talks about digital superimpositions and how that specific technique is effective - I always wanted to do film studies A-Level, and I've never been more glad that I didn't.
1:00-2:20
This is my favourite time of day - lunch!
I don't do anything special, mainly just more dossing around, but after the horrific French lesson it's a huge step up.
2:20-3:10
I have another of my favourite lessons now: Pure Maths. It's easily my favourite side of the course because, in general, I understand it far better than Stats and Mechanics. This is the Maths I signed up for, not all the 'Applied' stuff they don't tell you about when you're choosing A-Levels.
The stuff we're doing at the moment is pretty simple. It's composite functions and transformations of graphs, which we already covered lower down in the school, so it's a break from all the complicated stuff. Maths has been really chill recently because exams were cancelled, and we've managed to get a big head-start on next year's course, so my teacher isn't setting us buckets of work anymore.
The Evening
My day would normally finish at 4, but I have another free period last so I get off early. After more - you guessed it - dossing around, I decide to do more work on Sense and Sensibility because I know we won't finish it by the end of term, and mainly because it's a way to procrastinate doing my personal statement.
For those of you who don't know, the dreaded 'personal statement' is something every student needs in their application to Uni, and most people would argue it's the most important part. It's the document where you explain all your achievements, your passion for the course, and essentially try to convince them to give you a place.
The worst bit about the personal statement is (apart from the character limit - it has to be very short) the fact that you can't just list your achievements. I've done a lot to get into Uni, but I can't figure out how to word it and expand on it. Most of my feedback from the first draft was that I structured it wrong, and I should do more expanding and explaining than listing. I wish I knew what that meant.
It's not ideal, but at 10pm I finally crack on with it, and bash it out a lot quicker than I thought I would. I can't even read over it because it makes me cringe too much - I hate the bragging, but trying to make it sound like I'm not super arrogant. Obviously I can't include a picture of it for plagiarism reasons (not that I think anyone would want to copy it), but also because it's too embarrassing.
My day ends when I realise that actually, it's not possible for me to send it off because my form tutor hasn't created a group for it, so the panic was for nothing and I could've left it longer. Good old student life.
To Conclude
I know I've been lucky, being able to Zoom for all my lessons and having the Internet access that means my learning hasn't been too interrupted. There are many pupils across the UK that haven't had that privilege, and I really hope the exam boards will do something to accommodate that.
I also know we've been doing it differently to a lot of colleges. My friend at a different college says their lessons haven't been over Zoom, but the teachers record the lessons every day and the students watch them like lectures. I don't think my experience with online school has been typical of most college students.
But anyway, I hope that this has been interesting, or at least it will be for me at some point in the future. I'll probably look at this when I'm in Uni and think "what did she mean this was a lot of work??!" but right now, I'm stressed.
Let me know in the comments whether this has been different to your 'working from home' experience!
For those of you who don't know, the dreaded 'personal statement' is something every student needs in their application to Uni, and most people would argue it's the most important part. It's the document where you explain all your achievements, your passion for the course, and essentially try to convince them to give you a place.
The worst bit about the personal statement is (apart from the character limit - it has to be very short) the fact that you can't just list your achievements. I've done a lot to get into Uni, but I can't figure out how to word it and expand on it. Most of my feedback from the first draft was that I structured it wrong, and I should do more expanding and explaining than listing. I wish I knew what that meant.
It's not ideal, but at 10pm I finally crack on with it, and bash it out a lot quicker than I thought I would. I can't even read over it because it makes me cringe too much - I hate the bragging, but trying to make it sound like I'm not super arrogant. Obviously I can't include a picture of it for plagiarism reasons (not that I think anyone would want to copy it), but also because it's too embarrassing.
My day ends when I realise that actually, it's not possible for me to send it off because my form tutor hasn't created a group for it, so the panic was for nothing and I could've left it longer. Good old student life.
To Conclude
I know I've been lucky, being able to Zoom for all my lessons and having the Internet access that means my learning hasn't been too interrupted. There are many pupils across the UK that haven't had that privilege, and I really hope the exam boards will do something to accommodate that.
I also know we've been doing it differently to a lot of colleges. My friend at a different college says their lessons haven't been over Zoom, but the teachers record the lessons every day and the students watch them like lectures. I don't think my experience with online school has been typical of most college students.
But anyway, I hope that this has been interesting, or at least it will be for me at some point in the future. I'll probably look at this when I'm in Uni and think "what did she mean this was a lot of work??!" but right now, I'm stressed.
Let me know in the comments whether this has been different to your 'working from home' experience!
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