I feel like this is something I want to talk about, as even though it is only February, a lot of people will already be considering their next step in education. In many cases, they will be heading to a new school or a new college or maybe even university. The latter is something that I can’t discuss in too much detail as I never went to university, but I experienced school and college just like everybody else.
Starting secondary school can be one of the scariest things at the time, but looking back, you will realize that you made a mountain out of a molehill. It may consist of some of the worst days of your life but it will also provide you with some of the best memories and give you one thing that is taken for granted in this country - an education.
Too many people moan about not wanting to go to school for pointless reasons. It’s ‘too tiring’ or ‘too much work’. I never realized it when I was in school either but the work and tiredness you experience during those secondary years will be nothing compared to the hard work you have to endure later on in life. There are so many countries where children would do absolutely anything for an education but simply cannot afford it, meanwhile British children throw their education away by not paying attention or skipping classes.
Don’t get me wrong, that was something I did too. I never went to certain lessons. Why? Because I didn’t want to. Back then, I thought it was a valid reason to truant but looking back, it wasn’t. If you run away from everything you don’t want to do in life then you’ll never be successful. The older you get, the more things you’ll be forced to do that you really don’t want to - you just have to suck it up and get on with it. You may as well get used to it while you’re younger so it’s less of a shock to the system in later life.
Of course, the majority of people go through some bad experiences during secondary school and those who don’t should consider themselves very lucky. Bullying is one of the main ones, followed by peer pressure. I’ll go more into detail with these in different blog posts another time but I shall leave you with something very simple and very obvious - bullies tend to pick on you because of their own insecurities and you should never let anyone make you do anything that you don’t want to do.
You leave school and you head off to sixth form or college. You like to think that everything is going to change, that people are going to have grown up and matured - but they haven’t. I did things a little different. I went to sixth form straight from year eleven and studied there for two years before moving onto college to start my higher education (equivalent to the first year of university). I was nearly 19 by the time I went to college and the course was for 18+ so naturally, I thought that people would be much more mature, civilized and willing to work together. However, this was not the case.
Going to college was the biggest mistake of my life. It cost me money that I may as well have set on fire and watched it burn. College gave me a tiny amount of good experiences and a lot of bad ones. The long and short of it was, I quit before my course was over. Luckily, I still got my qualification because of the amount of work I’d put in during the months that I was there, but it was such a waste of my life that I could have spent more productively. Don’t let that put you off going to college. Many people have fantastic experiences at college, including a lot of my friends, but it just wasn’t for me.
During education, you can have some of the hardest and lowest points of your life. You will sometimes feel like you can’t wait to get out of it or that you wish you didn’t have to go but you’ll benefit from it in the long run. I’m not going to say the cliche that school is the best days of your life because I personally would disagree with that. I don’t miss school / college at all but I have realized that I took it for granted whilst I was there.
Concentrate on getting qualifications if nothing else. They help you to get better, higher paid jobs and they’re something to be proud of. If you don’t do as well as you’d hoped, don’t let it get you down. People still get to high places with few qualifications, or in some cases, none at all. At the end of the day, the most important thing to remember is to enjoy your education while you’re getting it - laugh lots and make memories to tell your children about - and as long as you’ve tried your hardest, nobody can knock you down for it.
Clare
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