In the light of results day being less than two weeks away I thought why not post my experience of GCSEs. Hope you enjoy, sorry in advance for the lone post :)
I am 16 and I study in England which means I had to go through the month-long exams called GCSEs. If you don’t know what that is, your lucky. They are basically about 26 exams of 11 different subjects that are spread across a month; these exams are the first government exams you do in a British curriculum school and everyone in year11 has to do them. I had only 26 exams (sounds weird saying only 26 but if you study in England you know 26 exams is the best thing you could ask for) which was amazing because it meant that I had days where I would have no exams. I did my language exam in year10 before they changed the exam spec which meant I had an easier set of exams, for my language I did Mandarin. Doing this saved me from doing 4 extra exams this year, one of the best decisions I made since it gave me one less subject to worry about.
Everyone says you that you should start revising in year 10 and even then you might be prepared, that is very true. I personally got a decent amount of time during the exam period to revise since we got study leave for that month, which meant we didn’t have to go to class. But that was only during that month, study’s leave didn’t start until the day our exams started which meant that until then we were still getting school work, still had to go to lessons and my school day would only finish at 6 pm which meant that I was extremely tired by the end of the day so trying to revise was hard; it was harder for me because I was in a room with four of my friends so when we got bored we would get distracted very quickly. It did help when we had exams for the same subjects. But honestly speaking you should keep the notes you make during your end of years in year10, they will help you out so much. I noticed that for the subjects I already had notes written it made the revising a lot easier since then I just had not read over those notes and then do practice questions. That is the best way to revise, write your notes as the year goes and then when it comes to the time do practice questions, it will prepare you the best, especially for science subjects because for those subjects you have to use the keywords and the more practice questions you do the more you learn about what the mark scheme wants. You should finish your subjects at least two weeks before the exams start so it should give you time during those two weeks to go in your lessons and ask for help. Unlucky for me, my class didn’t finish our physics syllabus till our last lesson where we had to a required practical that was missed in year9; my year group was very unlucky with the physics teachers we had had during year 9 and 10, I was lucky to get the good teacher for my class in year 10 and 11. He hands down saved my grades in year11 (well him and the endless amount of tuitions I had to bring that grade up). So not finishing our syllabus didn’t help that much but thankfully there was one holiday where my dad told me too write notes on the whole CGP guide for physics, even if I hadn’t done the topics yet. This sounded bad at the time but when it came to my exams it saved me so much since all I had to do was read over those notes and do practice questions; it also made understanding the things in class a lot easier since it was basically revision for me and I already knew the things I didn’t understand so I could ask for help outside of class before we got to that topic. Did I do that - no - but it was nice to have the option. But on the other hand, they were subjects like maths where we had finished the syllabus by Feb. So your subjects will all finish at different times but don’t let that stop you from making notes. What I did for physics was the same that I had done for english and a few other subjects and honestly it helped me so much when the time came because it stopped me from having to stress about getting those notes. Now I am not saying it helped in every case, for example, my drama exam we finished all our practicals about a month and a half before exams (maybe two) so from then till exams we were just practicing essays and I thought I was prepared but during that exam I had a mini anxiety attack and I started crying, thankfully it was close to the end of the exam so I kept myself together but after that exam finished I ran up to my room and was balling my eyes out because that exam went so bad like I can’t even explain how bad it was and not what I was expecting at all. The same happened with Bio paper 1, I had an anxiety attack (thankfully no tears) just because the paper was the complete opposite of what it was expecting and the questions were worded in such a strange way that even the stuff I knew like the back of my hand I wasn’t able to get it right.
Schools tell you that it is going to be a lot of revision and tell you how to prepare you for that. What they don’t tell you is how draining exams are going to be. Those breakdowns I had was all in the first week, I’m not saying that I wasn’t stressed or anxious the rest of the weeks but the first week is a lot different to what you expect. The first day I had RS and it was an afternoon exam. After it, I went back to my room and had about a 2-hour nap because I was so drained, that it was only from one exam a day. There were three days where I had two exams and those three days were back to back which meant that there was a lot of revising happening whenever I was ‘free’. These exams drain you so much because it’s not only the exam you are doing but it’s all the revision that you are doing before and after the exams. As a border we had compulsory study every night and had to go to the morning study sessions in the dining hall unless we had an exam, I would also study in my room or the kitchen when I was in the house after every exam, on top of that I would be riding my horse or going for a run because that’s the only time I would get fresh air and it was the only thing I could do apart from study. This meant that by the time it was time to study in the afternoon I would be too drained to do anything, but I still had to because I had an exam the next day. I am still recovering from the sleep I lost during that exam period while revising and its month later, but you don’t only get tried during that exam period, the whole year is very tiring because during holidays you still have to study.
GCSEs are a lot but if someone told me you got a chance to re-do it what would you change and obviously I would say revise more and stuff like that but sitting here and thinking back on it I realize that I did as much as I possibly could and I put in as much effort and I could. On top of these exams, I was also really struggling with my mental health and I was moving schools which meant that I was going through a lot emotionally as well as having to sit and do 26 exams. This definitely didn’t make things any easier at all but I did my best and I can just pray that my results show that because my grades are written in stone now and there isn’t much else I can do.
So all I am saying is that these exams are nothing like what people tell you. They are tough, exhausting, and very draining but one thing people don’t even underrate is the summer after. It is almost three months long and you don’t have any work to do and it’s honestly the best and if you are going through these exams then just rememberer your best because that’s all you can do and when your don’t you have 2 1/2 months of doing absolutely nothing.
Sorry, this was such a long post but I had a lot to write. So this was my experience during my exams, I still have more to write and rant about but that can be another blog.
Till my next post my lovelies x