Back-to-school post from Brins


The new year begins. So, what can I say? It's funny how quickly you slide back into the old routine (wake up, go to school, come back home), but of course, as many should know, the longer the holiday, the sooner you start to concern yourself with going back to school during the holiday - and then, as the holiday progresses further, you look back on when you were thinking you didn't have much time left before school, wishing you had that much time left again. It's a vicious mobius, which continues right up 'til the holiday ends.

Don't worry if your train of thought was on a different schedule to mine there, because now we move onto the first official weekend of the year. It's at this point when you start to think "Hey, yeah, I've just done a week of this. Now I've just got to do the same thing again several tens of times and I've got it sussed". Though the way it's put there might make it sound a bit derogatory, it's actually quite a satisfying feeling.

It is indeed interesting having my curriculum chronicled in the form of this compendium (my life as it comes), though it tends to concentrate more, I feel, on helping other people (if there are any here) through things I've learned and mistakes I've made in my life - the Teacher Shock system, for example (which is in the archives somewhere. Read it if you're anywhere below S5 in the schooling system) - and now we come to yet another of these fine life lessons. It regards S6:

The final school year. It's what you're all waiting for. In standard grade, they tell you to work hard so you can relax in fifth year. In fifth year, they tell you to work hard and this time promise you that you can relax in sixth year ("Really! We mean it this time!"). While I cannot say they're lying outright this time, since the pressure is off somewhat if you have satisfactory results, I can direct your attention to another gaping flaw in their truth-telling hard drive, and that is priviledges.

To this day, I still remember moving from P6 to P7, where my teacher told us about all the exciting priviledges, benefits, advantages we'd have now we were in the 'big year'. The only one I remember her saying was that we'd get control of the football tarmac for MORE THAN ONE DAY A WEEK (even though that made no difference to me, I hated football). The reason I remember this alone is because it's the only one that had a slight amount of truth to it. Well, the 'big year' in secondary follows a similar principle. Now, I'm not trying to depress people who are slaving away in fifth year with the reassurance that they'll get their reward in sixth year. By all means, doing your best and achieving good grades in the exams warrants a lot of relief and freedom from burden in S6. But those meddlesome teachers are going to throw a whole load of lies at you in the process to make you work harder, and I'm going to pierce through them one by one, to save you from finding out the hard way when you finish the year that it was all false.

Falsitude 1: THE COMMON ROOM

Ah, yes. The common room. This is a room in the school reserved exclusively for sixth years, where they can 'meet up, chat, and have fun together' Maybe it's only our school that has this, but if so there still might be someone reading this which it pertains to. I recall back when I was in earlier years, sitting outside the common room to eat my lunch (I liked sitting in that particular spot, no reason in particular), gazing in curiosity at the legendary room, shuddering at the thought that I might get in there one day. Let me sum it up: a small room whose body count NEVER goes below 8 during the day. 'meet up'? They sit there. 'Chat'? They play the radio and sit there. 'have fun together'? They play the radio, sit there, and stare at the wall. I'm not joking, that's what it's usually like. If nothing else, it certainly isn't the best place to go to 'chat and have fun together'. More just to kill time. I don't go in there, and I can't recommend that you do either, unless you like it.

Falsitude 2: YOU GET RESPECT

Hah, a classic. I don't care what anyone says, small people DON'T look up to big people. At all. At least, they don't with me . If you expect to have the S1s and 2s 'admiring and respecting' you, you'll notice that they don't. And to be honest, I like it that way. Why do you want them to respect you, anyway? What good is it to either of you? I didn't care about bigger people when I was in S1, none of us did (I think...). We kept ourselves to ourselves, and they kept themselves to themselves. Don't forget, you were them several years ago. Did you respect the big people? As in, admire them? I'll leave you to answer that question yourself (after all, maybe you did. I might be wrong with this section, but I doubt it).

Falsitude 3: FREE PERIODS

Don't leap back in horror: you do get free periods. About 2 per day. But the falsitude here is in the eating. The fact is, 'free periods' isn't the most apt name. 'Classless periods', maybe, but 'free' gives out the wrong impression. Like all things in life, if something's too good to be true, it probably is. Don't expect to have all your free periods to lounge around and relax. You'll end up involved in some kind of program or activity, whether you like it or not. It might be class monitoring, or perhaps taking the role of a janitor, or helping out in the office, or indeed revising or doing homework. But you can't expect to do that in the common room. It's packed, remember? Don't be the one who throws out the deck-chair right before the rain comes on.

My top tip for combatting all of these, and indeed other falsitudes placed for you to work towards as donkey to the carrot, is - quite simply - to never expect more than you find reasonable. You've passed your exams. That's reward enough. Now just accept anything else as an unexpected bonus. Of course, if you failed your exams, then don't worry. You'll find it easier to do well in sixth year, seeing as how you have less classes, and if you're repeating subjects, you've done it all before anyway. By no means do I say that there are no priviledges to being in the top year. There are, it's just that some of them tend to be exaggerated or twisted by teachers to seem far better than they actually turn out to be. The common room, for example, would be quite a gift if the teachers didn't tease you with it all the time. All I wish is to lay a cushion out for those who might follow my classmates' footsteps into disillusionment, since I consider that to be the deeper purpose for this website now. What's the point in having a curricular compendium if people can't learn from it? And find it considerably interesting?

Well, that's it. If you're the casual blog reader, you may have realised by now that this one isn't the kind where you can brush through the entries on a rainy day. It's for those who are genuinely interested in the things I say; for those who can relate to the things I say; and, above all, for those who can learn from the things I say...

...well, some of it is, anyway. At least two entries of it...

So thank you for joining me through what is surely the longest entry I've ever written, and perhaps the longest anyone's written (okay, that's stretching it).

Alright, class dismissed -- Brins
  ¶ 6:38 pm