My Sixth Form Experience

 

7:30. “7:30!” I cried, as I frantically leapt out of my bed quickly realising that there was now a good chance that I would be late to school on the very first day. Nightmare start. My mother had warned me of this, “make a good first impression” she had stressed. I was pretty much on the way to doing the opposite of this and my sixth form journey had yet to even begin. So, I got on the bus and was plagued with traffic on the way. This was the 97 bus, a bus that would become an important part of my 2 years in sixth form. Every day it would typically take at least 30 minutes on this bus to get to school and at least 30 minutes on the way back home from school. I had to get into school by 8:25 but once I departed the 97 bus, the time was already 8:18. This bus also would drop me off in a slightly inconvenient location. I still had to cross a bridge and walk a short distance to get to school on time. So, at this point there was only one way to make it to school on time and this was of course to run. So, in a suit and shoes, definitely not designed for running, I sprinted across the bridge. It was during this rather chaotic first episode to my sixth form saga, that another layer was peeled off. While I was running, it seemed my movements were being simultaneously shadowed by a teenager to my right. I promptly stopped him and asked him “Are you also going to LAE?” to which he replied, “yeah I am”. “What’s your name?”. I replied “Elijah, it’s nice to meet you”. I told him we better start running again or else we would be late on the very first day. Truthfully, I knew he was going to the same sixth form as me. I saw him on the bus on the way to sixth form, I just figured I would introduce myself whilst we were running through the rain in a frantic attempt to make it on time. Much more dramatic right? I was never the most organised person. Never have been, maybe never will be.

 

This was a common theme throughout my 2 years in sixth form, but this first experience helped me initially feel a little less nervous about embarking on this daunting new challenge. I was going from a mixed state secondary school to a selective and heavily competitive sixth form full of incredibly bright and ambitious young people. I initially struggled to feel at home, or feel as though I truly belonged. This feeling was compounded when I first started lessons after a series of tests on the first few days. I remember initially walking into History with a fair amount of confidence. This very quickly dissipated into nerves and anxiousness. History was always a subject that I had excelled in. I felt my historical knowledge was good and I could just carry off where I left off in secondary school. Wrong. Rapidly I realised just how passionate, knowledgeable, and clever the people around me were. After my first double lesson of Tudor History, I felt out of my depth, and we had not even begun to really cover content yet. In my mind, I had also yet to meet anybody who seemed remotely normal in my lessons. Everybody just seemed to be on another planet. I caught myself staring outside the window on numerous occasions wondering how on earth I would navigate these next two years.

 

The feeling grew more jarring as I passed through my next few lessons. I had taken a slight leap of faith in picking Politics, a subject I had not studied before, as my 4th A level subject. The first few lessons seemed so fast paced and intense, and I pondered heavily on whether I would be able to acclimatise to this new school, this new world it seemed. I came home to my parents and vented about how difficult this new experience was proving to be. “I have made a few friends, but History seems so much more difficult and denser than it was at GCSE level and the lessons are so fast paced that I can barely keep up”. I remember my Dad told me that change can be difficult and unnerving but I need to allow myself to settle. He also told me that I have to believe in my abilities, as I was more than capable of doing really well at this sixth form as long as I remembered that I was just as smart as anybody else going to this sixth form. I allowed my attitude to become more relaxed and open, and started to express myself.

 

Around this time, I was also beginning to make friends that I really connected with, some of whom would actually go on to become my closest friends and people who are important parts of my life. I remember my first time walking into our form class. I had no idea what to expect. These were the people I would be spending a fair amount of time with over the next 2 years, and it was important that the dynamics were positive. The person I was assigned to sit next to in my form class proved to be a blessing. He proved to be a wonderful person, who was incredibly kind to me right from the first second he saw me. It was as if he had already decided that we would be friends even before he saw me. Today this is one of my closest friends. And I fortunately formed good/positive relationships with pretty everybody in my form class. My 2 years at sixth form allowed me to make the type of friends I had never made before, people whom I have formed bonds with and people who are, and will hopefully continue to be, big parts of my life. So, friendship is one the key and most beautiful things to come out of my sixth form experience.

 

The next few months were much steadier. I quickly came to grips with the pace of lessons and the rigorous nature of the A level Syllabus by simply working harder than I had ever worked before in my life. My work was paying off too, as I steadily progressed in my grades as time passed. My form tutor was very supportive of me and generally proved to be an amazing form tutor across my 2 years. My teachers were too, telling me that I was doing well and moving in a positive trajectory. There were peaks and troughs, but I was generally happy with my progress. I had also made some other great friends through playing table tennis (which I would do almost every day in year 12). In particular, three football obsessed Arsenal fans happened to become great friends of mine across those next 2 years. The main challenge I was battling was tiredness. I was drinking coffee late at night to keep myself working. This was not healthy and led to me crashing and having a really dire time in November. Me not looking after myself well enough was sadly a theme that would badly plague me later on in my sixth form life, and something that I had to learn to do so much more effectively.

 

Then we came around to lockdown. So as everybody knows the world was horrifically affected by a virus which quickly spread across the globe in 2020. As a result of this the UK Government announced a national lockdown in March 2020 and sixth form was curtailed for the time being. We initially believed this would be a matter of a few months. It turned out to be longer than this. And it would actually turn into the biggest nightmare of my 18 years in this life. At first, Lockdown actually proved to even be somewhat of a positive; sixth form had left me drained , and the extra rest was helpful. Whilst I was still working hard and well in online lessons, we just had so much more time in our day and did not have to commute to and from school. So short term this seemed great. In fact, if I weigh up the impact of this lockdown and the other lockdowns in year 13, I would actually say that academically they may have helped me. This was simply due to the organisation factor; online lessons did not require me to be as organised. I had more energy, more time to go further and deeper into exploring concepts I had learnt through my lessons. I even found time to play pro clubs with some of my mates. It seemed ok.

 

But over time the horrible effects of this lockdown started to manifest themselves. My Dad fell ill to the coronavirus. We very quickly realised that this was very serious. My dad had to be isolated in our main room and was suffering badly from this virus. We feared that we would lose him. He was hospitalised but thankfully the amazing NHS workers made sure he was ok. Then shortly after my mother fell ill and was also hospitalised. Thankfully she was also ok in the end. Stuck in this vacuum of bad news that seemed to become a barrage of bullets, we saw more family members falling ill and I was losing my mind. I tried to stay strong for my siblings and put on a brave face but was badly struggling with it all. For once my books could not save me. There was no sport to save me. I was isolated from my friends, and at this point from family too. I was all alone in my small room just… struggling. We would get to the summertime and things would just get worse. We lost our grandma during the summer. Seeing my dad just breakdown was something that would haunt me for a long, long time. The horrible thing at this point was that I just felt apathy. I was at the stage where I could not really process my emotions properly. Trying to bottle them all up and deal with them myself was hugely detrimental and damaging to my health. But I didn’t tell my parents. I put a brave face on and hoped nobody would notice. I had previously used online lessons as my escape, where I would venture to a different world and escape my inner world, but my brain had become swarmed with negative thoughts, and I was drowning.

 

Once my apathy stage was over, I cried a lot. The emotions just came flooding out. I remember the day before school started, I had been crying and wanted to hide it from my parents. I just did not know how I could go back to school in the state of mind that I was in. I realised that I could not run away from how I felt. On the first day I had an honest talk with my form tutor. It turned out to be the best decision I could have taken. Probably the only good decision I had taken during this period. Then I spoke to my head of year, who turned out to be an angel for me and helped me so much throughout my 2 years. My teachers were incredibly understanding. I don’t think I would have gotten through this period without the help of all of these people. I felt I was behind; my tumultuous summer had left me in a terrible spot. I perhaps rather foolishly at the time, remained adamant that I would still look to apply for Cambridge that year. But I don’t regret it, even though I was ultimately unsuccessful. At the time I looked at everything that was happening around me and felt that I would inevitably break down and fail. Now in retrospect, these experiences-while harrowing- led to me growing so much as a person. That hell as I described it, carried lessons and future guidance. I have so many people to truly thank for never giving up on me when I came so very, very close to giving up on myself. Never give up on yourself, you have so much to give and you have to remember that through the toughest of times.

 

I want to conclude on a positive note. If I’m honest, what I have written was incredibly difficult to do. I’m welling up writing about it right now, as it triggers memories that I just…. Don’t like to go back to but need to. And I had decided that it was time to truly be vulnerable. It is something I had struggled with all of my life up until now. My family and closest friends are amazing to me, but I just wouldn’t know how to truly speak to them about my feelings. The last few months of sixth form were a purging of beautiful memories, nostalgia and tiredness. I set my mind on doing the best I could at A levels, but I had really started to truly enjoy my life again, all areas of it. I felt content with who I was generally, and started to realise that we were in the home stretch of our time in sixth form. I found a new level of focus when it came to my final exams, pushed through the tiredness barrier and I performed the very best I could have in those final exams. No regrets. Everything leads you to a point you feel, and I could be here writing about a very different story or fate here. I may not even be here writing at all, but something deep inside me told me it was time. Raw and real, this is what I was aiming for in this. I’m going to have more troubling moments and difficulties in my life, but the sixth form experience had many beauties to it. The friends, the growth and learning to deal with my mental health in a more effective way. The memories and people I met along the way. Then there were the disappointments and failures. The heartbreak, frustrations. That’s why on the very last day of sixth form, I felt this weird indescribable feeling in my stomach. Summarised by the purging of emotions; the memories and the nostalgia. And don’t worry, I made it to school on time on that very first day.