Year Eleven Look Back| Ailish Elizabeth

July 16, 2017

Year Eleven Look Back| Ailish Elizabeth

As a lot of you might know, the other week I finished secondary school for good. Due to me finishing I thought I would share my experience of year eleven with all of you, for those who are in year 10 or in younger years or if you just want to see what I thought of year eleven.

Overall, year eleven was not what I expected, in many ways. I will go over that later on but firstly I just want to do a review of the year.

September

Obviously I started year eleven in the September of 2016.

I was very nervous for year eleven because I knew what was coming, GCSEs. However, the pressure of GCSEs was not there at that moment of time and I actually really enjoyed my first month of year eleven.

I also posted a what's in my school bag that month too.

During that month I had a french writing exam, which I hated so much but we had longer that we normally did to prepare and my little class was really good and made it fun. Also, in that month we went to see Blood Brothers which we studied for english literature and I feel because I was studying it I didn't really enjoy watching it and I didn't think it was as good as everyone who had already saw it told me it was, but obviously it did help me later on with my english exam as well my drama exam as I ended up writing about that production.

October

I can't really remember October fully, I can just remember bits.

I know that in September I started to stay behind a lot more for some subjects and in October I started to stay behind for some more subjects and that was to do bits of revision and also to do some course work, mainly geography as that was so annoying and never ending.

Something that did happen in October was I went to London on a school trip, which was very very fun, I have got a blog post so I will leave that linked at the end if you want to read about that. It was a really nice trip and it wasn't my last trip of year eleven or my last trip in that school but it was nice to have and I really enjoyed and if you get offered to go on a trip with school for one night or more just go because they are so fun, even if they aren't abroad they are still fun and a lot different to when you go with your parents. I went to Paris in year nine and now London in year eleven and I loved them post but they were both completely different.

Other than that on school work we had a week off and I did a lot of revision in that week off as we had a mock week when we came back which I will talk about in November.

November

This was my stressful month, the stress came this month but luckily it also left!

The reason I was stressed was because of mock week and I took this week too seriously. I got stressed as I had so many exams that week which obviously when it came to my GCSEs they would be spread out over a number of weeks and I wouldn't have to cram that much revision in that one week. At the end of mock week when I got my results back they were not the results I wanted, they were good but I had got better results before so it was really annoying and I was a bit upset with myself, but none of the teachers were worried as they weren't awful.

If I could go back I would worry less and anyone doing a mock week don't over stress because these aren't your exams they are just there to prepare you.

December

During this month I had a few controlled assessments, it was mainly history which was a really interesting course work subject but it was all essay based. I also had to finish my geography course work as I got told that the last day in December was that deadline, which was a complete lie as people were still doing it in like February. I was told it was the deadline for it to get marked and I would have it back with places to make improvements when I came back, which I didn't.

Also, in December I actually did go on my last school trip and that was to the Trafford Center for a Christmas shopping trip which was really fun and it was mainly just me and three of my friends going around with each other and I bought Niamh's Christmas presents and myself a PINK waterbottle and I think that was it. Then, on the last day as it was our last Christmas in school we wanted to dress up in a way, at first we were going to wear Christmas jumpers but half of us didn't own one so we changed a Liv bought herself and I head bands, mine had snow men on and then I brought in tinsel for our heads and it was really cute. The Friday before that we had our last Christmas pe lesson and we played dodge ball and we all wore tinsel around our heads and again it was cute and it just made it feel christmassy and enjoyable.

January

Back to school after a lovely two weeks off.

When we got back it was straight into work and as the teachers were all saying it was now the "the home run", we were leaving school this year.

For course work I had my final pieces, I finished my last last history essay, which was the only one I didn't get full marks in, but it was the hardest one and overall on the history course work I dropped one mark so it was 49/50, but there was a part of me that wanted full marks. I also started my chemistry course work which was a quicker experiment than both biology and physics which we did at the end of year ten and we actually finished the experiment within a lesson and with the other two experiments it normally takes few or a lot more lessons. The chemistry course work was very boring and the actual work took a lot longer than we all expected, we were suppose to be finished with it and back with our normal teacher by the end of January, we were still doing it in February and I was not happy with that.

Also, in January I got really sick, it was horrible, it was only a few days into the new term and I had around 1 hour of actual sleep and it was horrible the next day and it stayed with me for weeks, I had such a bad cough, it ached me to cough, I had body aches, my eyes always watered, I had head aches, I was always cold and it was just awful and one of the worst times to have it because it was just the worst way to start a new term.

On a good note, I had two college interviews that month and they were the only two I would actually go to, I did end up having one in March or April for another college but I was forced to go and didn't want to go. But the two I had in January were actually on the same day and I had booked one for around 4:45 (I think) and then I got a letter for the other college who were having their interviews in my school and my time was 4pm but when I got there it was pushed back to around 4:15 or 4:20 and I was panicking so much that I wouldn't get to my other interview as the later one was the one I wanted to go to. I made it to both though and they both were really good, the first one really sold the college to me and it made me feel bad at first because I knew that I probably wouldn't end up going there but I'm fine now and for those wondering I got into both, but I know which one I'm going to.

Also, I went to see the film Split and this was for "drama", it wasn't with school but the people in my drama group really wanted to see it as we thought it would help us with our production, as we thought it was about mental health and multiple personalities, which it was, but it was also very weird and didn't really help at all and we think it might be a sequel to a different film which none of us have seen so we are still a bit confused about that.

February

February was a month of revision as at the end of the month I had another mock week and the start of that month was a lot of revision in class for them papers.

In February you have a week off and I actually had an extra two days off, one the whole school had but the first one only year elevens had, this was because the Friday before our week off was our mock interviews. Mock interviews are literally what they say, they are just fake interviews to prepare you for applying to a job or anything and on the day of them you only came in for your little 20 ish minute interview. During in them they look over your CV and tell you what they think of it and then kind of interview you but they also fill out a little sheet which they rate you on, and I got full marks on all of it! You also have to dress smart and they judge you on that too, the woman who interviewed me said I was very smiley which made me realise how much I smile when I speak.

We got back our physics and biology course work back and then we had our mocks. These went a lot better than the others and I was happy with my results and I think most people were.

March

I can't really remember March too much, I probably did some revision but that was not the main part of March. The first thing I remember about March is that I went prom dress shopping and found and fell in love with a dress which then became my prom dress.

March was also the month of my final GCSE drama production, which I personally don't want to think about. It wasn't awful it just wasn't amazing and to be honest we had been doing drama for around 3 years and all of us really just wanted it to be over.

April

April is another month when not much happened.

I was off school for the majority of it and did some revision whilst off but I can't really remember truth be told. The revision now was mainly past papers and exam questions as it was only a month until the actual exams started.

Then when we got back I think we did start to realise that our exams were soon but none of us really got nervous or too stressed out and it was just like normal school.

May

The month the exams started!

Again I didn't really start to stress until the exams had started and I started to feel nervous on my fourth exam I think as it was biology and that was the first exam of a subject which I want to carry on. Although the exams started in May it wasn't and awful month to be in school, like when I go through my phone I have some pictures of me or my friends whilst we are in school and they are awful but they are funny to me and it shows how once you are out an exam you just forget about it.

Also, before the exams started I think maybe in May or it could have been in April or March we started to sit outside at lunch and that was really nice, especially when it was sunny and it got us out of the atrium filled with noisy year sevens.

One of my favourite days during May in school was the last day of that half term and we had our English lit exam maybe in the morning, which I was very worried about, but in the afternoon we had no other exams but we had to stay in school and it was a super warm day. I remember we had RE and the majority of the girls sat together and we just talked about stuff like High School Musical, and what we were like in year seven and eight and that and how some of us were obsessed with boy bands then and I also had someone do my hair for me. We then had french and I actually think it was my last ever french lesson, even though we had already done the exam and we persuaded the teacher to plat Kahoot and although it sounds boring it was really nice and probably one of the last normal days in school.

June

My final month in school.

This month was very exam based, especially as we went on study leave around the start of it, and after that the whole year was only ever in for exams and some would stay for the odd few lessons, but most people would never stay after lunch unless they had an afternoon exam.

As I mentioned we went on study leave and before that we had our leavers which I talked about in my End Of an Era post so I'm not going to talk about it again, if you want to know about it I will leave a link for it at the end.

Then, once exams ended on the 23rd for me, my science class had a paint fight which was very fun and I also talked about that in the End of an Era post.

Five days later it was...PROM!

Prom was amazing and I loved it, however I'm not going to speak about it as it has it's own blog post, so if you want to know about prom and how much I loved it read that post.

Overview

Over all I really liked year eleven, and it probably wasn't my favourite year in school, that being year nine or ten, but it was a really fun year and a lot better than I expected.

If you are in year ten now and you're worried about year eleven and the stress don't be, you will be fine and it will not be like what you thought it would be like and once exams start it becomes a normal routine for you, so don't be worried about the exams, especially so early on.

If you worried about the stress too, don't be. I personally didn't get that much stressed as I had enough time to do the majority of the things/revision I wanted to do in the end and I think in total I had two tiny break downs in school and maybe one at home, and that was it!

To end this, I just want to say I was sad to leave my school as I will miss a lot of people but I'm also happy to move on and I'm ready to move on and I've felt ready for a while now.

I hope you enjoyed this, and I'm sorry it is super long but I really wanted to share with you this for you to have a little in sight into my final year in secondary school.