Being a 6th former

The ' easy ' option. - The 6th form, and without having to make any new friends and without having to fill heaps of forms this was the option for me. My memories as a Year 7 seeing 6th formers swan around as if l they owned the place had soon vanished and the bundles of free time that I dreamt of sitting in the renowned common room playing cards/pool/darts and drinking coffee had gone. I like a huge percentage of my year were in for a shock.

The free time turned out to be less than a few hours a week, and the Pool table and dartboard were none existent. I had been surprised - but not pleasantly! However, I gritted my teeth together and got on with life as a six former. The workload, which I thought, would be laid back and straightforward was more complicated and was very hard. A huge step up from GCSE. I thought the new A/S levels were have supposed to have bridged the gap between GCSE & A-Level? - They had not! Instead the

Subjects which were fun/easy and all together a good laugh @ GCSE were now boring/tedious/and hard. I know I had made the wrong decision. I still know it to this day. Nevertheless, what could I do? About five people could not hack the workload dropped out, and choose a get away before the first half term. I questioned my reason for stopping on at the sixth form and none of them was work related. My reasons for stopping on were simple. I did not want to start all over again, in that college would mean making new friends, and adjusting to another system. I did not want that. Life in the sixth form was not as I thought, and I new it! However, as time went by I realized that the 6th form had some advantages some of these advantages would work out quite nicely if you played the system correctly!

Having an older brother that was a 6th former at the same school, I should have learnt a lot, but I did not. My Brother and me are not very close and perhaps if I have asked him I would have had a different viewpoint on my post 16 education. I cannot blame my brother, I cannot blame myself, and you cannot blame anybody for the un-expected.