THE SCHOOL SURVIVAL GUIDE: Why College was the worst 2 years of my life.

Hiya guys and welcome back to another blog post and another post in the school survival guide series.

As you can tell by the title, I am extremely dramatic.

You can also tell by the title that I hated college. In fact, hated is an understatement, I loathed college. I still loathe college. But before I get into the why of my hatred, let me just explain what college is in the UK.

I think I’ve explained this before so this will be brief. Basically, students in college or 6th form are between the ages of 16-18 usually. It is before university and is now compulsory in the UK (however not compulsory to do A Levels).

I think A-Levels are possibly the hardest thing I have ever done. They caused me nothing but stress and heartache for 2 years. FOR 2 FLIPPING YEARS.

But, let’s start at the beginning…

Pre-college me was a happy sweet child, I’d just finished GCSE’s, did quite well, was feeling quite confident and was like A-Levels bring it on, bite me (that was so cringy and I seriously apologise).

September comes, after a nice long summer, I was relaxed and then started college.

This is where I made my first mistake.

I decided that I wanted to make new friends and be cool and all that jazz… MISTAKE #1. 

I spent so much time trying to get to know people and just talk to people and put myself out there, that I forgot what was important. AKA, A-LEVELS.

This is a tip for you guys who are starting college or anything else that is a short critical time period, prioritise your work, please. Don’t use free periods for just chatting in the canteen (guilty), don’t leave your work till the night before (guilty), and just be yourself (also… guilty – I’m a naturally chatty person).

Anyways, the first year of college passes by… I did ok. It’s probably because I sweated at the last moment that I got the grades, I did.

Second-year comes around.

The work just increases 100x. 

I’m not even lying to you. I was working all day every day on college work for 11 months straight. No joke. Bearing in mind, I had to go over everything from the first year because I didn’t understand the majority of it. It was a stressful year. Holidays – I don’t think so. Breaks – what are they. I don’t know how I got through the year without breaking down to be perfectly honest with you.

This is when mistake two happened, my revision was not as effective for the first three months of “revising”, which meant that I wasted a lot of time and effort “learning” things that did not stay in my brain at all… MISTAKE 2#.

On the upside, the year went quickly. Kind of. I remember telling myself, oh don’t worry you have 9 months till your exams. 6 days later. First exams tomorrow (It literally felt like that…)

Now I’m in the long wait period. I’m waiting for results day. I’m literally just praying to God that my work this year paid off.

However, so far this post has been pretty negative. So here’s a bit of positive advice:

1. do make friends – don’t misunderstand me, it is not a problem to talk to new people and make new friends, just make sure you have your priorities straight. don’t do what I did and just spend all your time trying to make new friends and no time studying. it’s all about balance.
2. take breaks – cannot stress enough, when studying you need to have some downtime and enjoy yourself. put your own physical and mental health first.
3. work hard, play hard – put your education first, but when it’s time to relax… relax hard people.

Overall, I guess my college experience wasn’t as awful as I made it sound (it was pretty awful though), but I definitely wouldn’t do it again. That is for sure.

Comment below any college experiences, or school experiences that you have absolutely hated!

And have a good week!

Peace out,

Love Anita x

p.s. goodluck to all those getting results this summer!!

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