College Update #1

Hey!

Extra post this week, lucky you! Today I just wanted to share my experience of the first two months college with you because I feel as if it isn’t this most typical of experiences and also I haven’t done anything really personal (except my birthday post) for a while.

My whole college thing started wayyyy back somewhere in Year 11, before my exams when (after I applied) I had my interview with one of the staff from the college. I had to go and talk about  my subject choices and any support requirements. Most people had roughly a 20 minute interview, but mine was a lot longer. To put this into perspective, it started part way through my physics lesson, ran over the 20 minute break time and then part way into my business lesson! I went in with my FOUR subject choices, English Lang and Lit, Photography, Sociology and Creative Digital Media Production (Basically BTEC media). I was told immediately that they recommended three subjects for my program, which is standard for most students (4 is for those with As and A*s in all their subjects, my average was a B). I dropped sociology as it wasn’t anything I was particularly interested in.

The next time I went into college was the end of August, the week before the official ‘Welcome Day’, to familiarise myself with the college a bit. A week after was ‘Welcome Day’ where I had to go in for subject tasters and finalise my choices. I went to the Media taster, the English taster, the Photography taster and I WAS going to go to the Psychology taster but I then found out I could Health and Social Care as a BTEC which I was happy about because it was relevant to my potential future career. My final three choices were English, Photography and Health and Social Care. I also had my photo taken for my lanyard on this day!

The next time I had to go in was roughly a week after Results Day where I had to take in a copy of my results so that they could see that I still matched the grade requirements of each of the subjects. I also had to have another interview thing explaining about why I chose the subjects I did, discuss any further support needs and work out my GCSE average grade. Most students had their interview with their Enrolment Tutor (who they met on Welcome Day) but I had mine somewhere else.

The final time I had to go in before officially starting was ‘Ready to Learn’ Day on the 6th or 7th of September. We had to meet our enrolment tutor, have some assembly thing about the college, do a quiz on the computers in the library and I even had to do a scavenger hunt where we went around the site and took selfies at the places they wanted us to find. I also had to do a mandatory screening test and I got my ID and lanyard!

So the day before I was officially due to start , I decided I didn’t want to do English anymore (because I’m awkward like that) because I found it too hard. I decided I wanted to take up Psychology instead. The first day was run on normal timetables (which I got online a few days before) except that the first lesson was spent with your enrolment tutor going through some final things. I spoke to her after about my decision regarding English (aka my awkwardness) and she told me to come back at the end of the day. So I went to my normal lessons which (then) was Tutorial (although on the first day the timetables were a bit wrong and I accidentally had two tutorials within two hours of each other, I’m only meant to have one once a week!) and English. When I went back at the end of the day I went to go and speak to someone else about it and they agreed to move me to Psychology, but said it would take a while for the change to fully implement. I still go to English until I was taken off the register.

A couple of weeks later I was still on the English register so I was still attending the lessons, but I got an email from the head of psychology asking me to start attending Psychology so I didn’t get tooooo far behind (I was already behind because of starting two or three weeks later). I was given a class and teacher and I started to attend Psychology even though I wasn’t on their register. I was now juggling 4 subjects and that was hard!

I finally came off the English register about a week later and I was officially on the Psychology register, I got given a new timetable. Now you’d think that everything would start to calm down now but NOPE. I started getting loads and loads of hospital appointments I couldn’t avoid (if you saw me on a train a lot on my Instagram story, I was going to the hospital EVERY TIME). This tarnished my attendance and I was now down to 79%. I was falling behind in all three subjects, especially Health and Social Care because as it is a BTEC it is assessment after assessment after assessment and I was missing too much.

Last week I had my first term report and on Thursday (my birthday) I had to go in and speak to my tutor about my grades etc. The head of Study Support (essentially SEN) came too, expressing some of her concerns she had about my attendance and other things she has heard from my teachers. My mum came and it was agreed that I would benefit from being on a reduced programme of study and so it was agreed that I drop Health and Social Care so that I can catch up and improve in my two remaining subjects, Photography and Psychology. Unlike before, I don’t need to wait until it changes on the timetable/register, I was told not to go from then on (I’m meant to be in Health and Social Care right now as I write this…). It was also agreed that if I felt up to it I could take up an additional subject as an AS level and do an EPQ (which is some project thing idk…) to bring me back up to the equivalent of three A Levels.

Right now, I’m waiting for the change on my timetable and the registers to be implemented. My timetable is looking a bit ‘naked’ right now, but I’ll probably get used to that. My timetable will look like this now:

Monday:

• Free
• Free
• Free
• TUTORIAL
• Study Period
• PSYCHOLOGY

Tuesday:

• PHOTOGRAPHY
• Free (was Health and Social Care)
• Free (was Health and Social Care)
• PSYCHOLOGY
• PSYCHOLOGY
• Study Period

Wednesday:

• Free (was Health and Social Care)
• Study Period
• Study Period
• PHOTOGRAPHY
• PHOTOGRAPHY
• (The day ends early- Staff Meeting)

Thursday:

• Free
• Free
• Free
• Free (was Health and Social Care)
• Free
• PHOTOGRAPHY

Friday:

• PSYCHOLOGY
• WEEKLY 1-2-1
• Free
• Enrichment (Clubs etc.)
• Free
• Free

Okay, I know it looks like I have loads of free time but I don’t because I have a lot of work to do. Also for reference, the study periods are actually the same as frees and vice versa but the ones labelled ‘study period’ are on my timetable. FUN FACT: When I was juggling 4 subjects English was where ‘study period’ is now (Tuesday and Wednesday were painful).

I’m sorry if this post was really boring, I just wanted to write something like this because I felt it was important to let you know that it’s okay not to have the smoothest of experiences at school and college.

HOPEFULLY there will be a new post on Friday, I’ve still got to film the video for it. Maybe I could do it tomorrow in one of my frees? 🙂

Until then…