Moving from a secondary school to a college environment can be very daunting. There are new challenges you will have to face, such as making new friends, starting new subjects and moving to a new school if you do not continue with sixth form at your old school.
I stayed at my school, which removed the anxiety of finding my way around a new building. However, staying at my school did not mean I was not anxious about doing my A Levels.
The advantages of sixth form
Sixth form tends to be a lot smaller than a college, which meant I was able to make friends with many of the people in my class and did not feel alone. Another advantage of going to a sixth form is that the subjects are ones I am very interested in, which made me motivated to learn the new content and revise for my exams, unlike GCSEs where I had eight subjects to learn. Now I only have three!
The disadvantages of sixth form
I was not prepared for the workload that A Levels come with. I thought that as I only had three subjects, I would not feel as stressed. However, the work for A Levels is more in-depth than GCSEs, which means there is more content for each subject. This is something people going through to the next step of their education should be prepared for as many teachers will not go over all parts of the curriculum.
Next steps
I would suggest making sure you know what way you learn best as much of college and sixth form is independent and it is important to make sure study effectively. For example, this could be visual learning.
College and sixth form can be very stressful, so everyone needs to have things that they do in between studying to relax. Some ideas are:
- spending time with friends
- self care
- taking a walk
- listening to music
This blog was written by our work experience student, and we love it!
Category: CYA
