What to do during your year 11, summer 1, please relax. Make this the best summer yet. There’s no point in you worrying about your results today because put it bluntly, you can’t do anything about it. So please relax. Do not look at the grid boundaries. Do not look at the predicted Mark schemes or think about your performance. There’s no point worrying about it. Please have fun because when I hit 6,1, the next summer that you’re gonna have fun in is the year 11 summer. Year 12 summer is going to be hectic. So please use this summer to relax.
Second piece of advice is to get a job. Now, this might contradict my first point, but the reason why you should get a job is because 1, if you don’t get work experience now, it’s going to be a lot harder for you to get a job. Lace it down in the line. 2, you need to get money. Most success that I found personally is applying straight on the company website whenever I apply to. Indeed, for some reason, just never worked. If you know family members who also can give you a job, whether that be a small house cleaning role, walking the dog, babysitting, that’s still work experience and that is still income and money into your pocket. Now, in terms of actually writing your CV, if you haven’t had any work experience before, think about things you’ve done in school, whether that be you’re part of the school council to you being a member of a club or you just even looking after your siblings or baking cakes for family occasions. Anything can work and anything can sound very professional if you make it that way.
Third piece of advice is get into the habit of managing your time. Because when you come to sixth form, you’re gonna realize that there’s a lot of independence that you are going to get all of a sudden. And if you aren’t ready to organize your time, you’re going to find it very difficult to cope with the pressure in year 12. Cuz let me tell you for free, cramming for your exams in 6 form is not the same as cramming for your GCSEs. You would have worked to get a grade 8, grade 9 the night before, but you cannot do that same thing in a levels.
I personally loved using Google Calendar and I still use it to this day. All I do is section out my time. So if I’m gonna go out with my friends on this particular week, I’m gonna go out with them on that particular week. If I’m working this shift, when and where I’m gonna put it on my calendar. Literally, my calendar is my whole life.
My fourth piece of advice is to look into what you want to do in the future because that will relate to what you wanna do in university. I will relate to what a level subjects you want to do. What I will say, however, is in my case, I chose to study philosophy and I want to enter finance or technology when I finish university. Philosophy isn’t necessarily directly related to both of those fields, but the reason why I chose to do it is because 1, I have a plan to how I am going to enter those fields, even without having done a more relevant course. 2, I enjoy philosophy and I realize that throughout my time at 6 form, philosophy was the course that I would flourish the most in. If I were to go to university. I will be making a, how to choose your a level subjects video after because I think it’s very important that you do it correctly or at least know what you’re getting yourself into.
Fifth piece of advice is make sure that you have enough time to prepare for 6 form, especially when it comes to uniform. All of your sizes might just go like this if you do not prepare in advance. And if you don’t use the student discounts and the uniform sales and the stationary sales and the technology sales to your advantage in terms of doing actual work. If you want to read in advance and do work in advance, it is always going to be good for you to do that. But it isn’t necessary for you to do that in terms of induction work. More often than not, they won’t check it. So don’t pressurize yourself into thinking that you need to do all of that induction work because you don’t. In the end, you all come in as a blank slate anyway and you all work from the same level up. So don’t feel pressurized to do more work than you need to. What I will say is that some people do subjects at GCSEs, and you may not have done it, but don’t worry, you will catch up eventually.
Sixth piece of advice is about results day. Do not think about it. Do not think about results day. You cannot change the past and you can only wait. Okay? There’s no point in you worrying about it. And don’t let it consume your mind during the summer.
Whatever happens on results day, guys, please go out and get the free food. Go out, celebrate with your friends. And also do not forget to enroll at 6 forms. Look at their policy like a week before results day so that you know, okay, cool. I’m enrolling at the 6 form the day after, not on the day of results day. For example, the 61 that you wanna go to enrolls the day after results day. Please make sure that if you are uncertain about you getting into the sixth form or getting the subjects that you want to in the sixth form based on your GCSE results, enroll at another 6 form that you are happy to attend on the day of results day. If they also do that, because if you do manage to get into your first choice 6 form the day after results day, you can always email the school that you enrolled in on Resorts Day to say that you are no longer attending the school. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense because you just never know what’s gonna happen. So you just wanna make sure that you are secure in knowing that you are going to go to a school in Year 12.
Now my overarching piece of advice for year elevens going into Year 12 is to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Now the reason why I say that, you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable is because opportunities are not going to come your way if you don’t ask for them now. You gain a new level of independence that will be foreign to you, or at least foreign to many people. And if you do not grab opportunities by the hand when they present themselves, or if you do not gain the confidence to speak to people and to build your network and to also talk to adults, people in the workplace when you go to work, experience placements, you are going to lose out on so many potential opportunities. It is crazy from personal experience, having one conversation with the right person at the right time can be transformative. And you won’t know when is the right time or who is the right person until you speak to people if there are work experience opportunities in particular areas that you haven’t found online, go out of your way to email people in the company to ask to shadow someone or to ask to speak to someone who works in a particular department because more often than not, people are more willing to help you than you think. Literally, don’t let fear get in the way of you developing yourself during 6 formal college. Because yes, it can be academically demanding, but you need to know that these are two pivotal years of your life where you learn a lot about yourself and you develop these skills through work experience, through having to manage tight deadlines and embrace it all with open arms and with a growth mindset. Otherwise, I hope this was helpful and do let me know if you have any other questions.