Over on Facebook I’m part of a blogging group. On the Wednesdays of each month we have a group prompt that we’re all going to answer. This weeks’ prompt is…
What You Learned From a Big Disappointment
Roll the clock back to June 2002, I’d got my GCSE results and was heading back from Revive@Soul Survivor and was so excited Sixth Form was round the corner and I wouldn’t have to wear a school uniform lol.
Move on a year, I’ve been in the Sixth Form and it’s seriously hard work. I spend most weekends doing Italian homework and I’m struggling – I can’t keep up even though I was at a B level for GCSE. Music Tech and Drama are both shooting down the pan too. I’m working my socks off but not going anywhere. It gets to results day and it’s bad, I’ve got Es and Us and if anything I should have been kicked out of the Sixth Form. My Mum stands with me in the dining room at her house and I cry and I cry some more. I have no idea what’s going to happen next. I go into school and see the Head of Sixth Form, he’s not convinced either and I’m sent off to see my teachers, I manage to find my Music Teacher but can’t find the Drama Team.
We hatch a plan, I drop Italian and pick up Music AS that way I can make up the numbers.
On the first day of term I go and see the Drama Team too. Thankfully the Drama and Music teams were really close and often worked together. I spoke to my two drama teachers (one of which was head of department too). They chatted to my Music teacher too and a bit more of a plan was hatched. I had two choices, 1) start the A2 courses although I wouldn’t necessarily pass with anything higher than a C or D. 2) restart Year 12 and resit all my course (or resit Music and Drama and pick up others to make up the numbers). I had an option 3 too which was to start a new course elsewhere. I even went to look round at the College and did a taster session (it would later turn out that I’d meet a bunch of students who would later be on the same course as me!)
I choose to carry on although it wouldn’t be that great in the end. I worked my socks off and even though I knew when I got that envelope on results day it wasn’t going to be great, I knew that I did what I could and maybe I just wasn’t cut out for those styles of courses. Again we stood in Mum’s dining room and I rang Clearing, they took a bunch of information and said they’d call me back once they’d spoken to the department staff.
I was really blessed that the Dad of one of the families I babysat for was Head of Department at DMU which is where I was looking to go to after my A Levels. He was able to sit with me and go through my UCAS application and give me some tips of what to change and what to add and things like that. He was also able to advise me on to apply for the Foundation Degree option (then taking a top-up year) instead of trying to get on a BA course outright (given that my predicted grades weren’t great).
Move forward to September, I had a place on the course and I was going to university.
This was when I learnt from my disappointment I guess. I met three of the bestest friends a girl could ask for. I wasn’t sure about the rules around parking cars so I took the bus from Polhill Campus to Lansdowne Campus. I got on the bus and a PE student sat next to me, we had that awkward nervous first conversation about which courses we were doing and who we were. As I was getting off the bus, the PE student shouted at me, it turned out the girl next to her was probably on the same course as me so it made sense for us to stick together. It turned out she was called Hannah as well and she’d become my best friend.
So from my greatest disappointment I discovered a group of best friends, I discovered that I wasn’t great but I was okay at Performing Arts (I finished with a 2.2 that’s better than a fail lol) and got a qualification.
It’s August and I’m joining a few of my blogger friends to blog every day this month, at least around here you’ll be able to find all my posts under BEDIA. Be sure to check out their blogs too.
Ashley | Beth | Brittney | Hannah | Karen | Michelle | Shelby
