Making the Right Choice

This time last year I had a pretty difficult decision to make, I could knuckle down with my studies and try to get the grades required to participate in some of this year's Year 13 classes, or the other option would be to retake the whole of Year 12. I knew that from February, I'd have another 2 months outside of school due to my second batch of intensive treatment at the very least. At the time I was only attending school purely for the social element. After spending so long in hospital away from everyone, I wanted to catch up on everything that I had missed out on and immerse myself in the everyday dramas and dilemmas. My school was incredibly tolerant, but there came a point when I decided that I must decide on what I wanted to achieve by the end of the year, instead of simply relaxing each day among friends.

One side of me wanted to spend each day enjoying myself, doing the things I loved, but I could recognise that I was effectively keeping myself further and further behind everyone else. Therefore, I decided, with my parents and teachers, to structure a plan of what I should be aiming to achieve by the end of the year. I could see that the ramifications of me not working hard would be that all my friends would be in their final year of school, while I was left back in my first year of Sixth Form. This would have been very difficult for me to deal with, so my aim was to attain the right grades in at least one subject, to be able to stay with my friends in one class for this academic year.

Over the course of the year I massively struggled to stay motivated. Almost daily I would consider giving up and I would question the whole point of carrying on if I wasn't enjoying it. However, I persevered. My mum used to tell my sister and I, that the key to almost everything is "Perseverance and Persistence". It would be a complete lie to say that I just thought of those words and gritted my teeth. I just don't work like that. I needed a lot of pushing and shoving by teachers, friends and family alike to get me over the finish line with my English work, but by God am I grateful for it now!

I managed to obtain the result that I needed for me to continue with English for this year and am now so relieved that I made that choice all those months ago. Sadly, I cannot say that nowadays I strive to do the absolute best in all pieces of work that I hand in and that sometimes I don't doubt myself and the need to work hard. There is still that question in my mind of what the point to it all really is, who knows where I will be in a years time. However, what I am sure of is that when I got my result for my English exam, it was the absolute highlight of my year.