Question About Story Revamps + Talk About Social Anxiety - Comments

I did Seamus Heaney as my main poet and Owen Sheers as my partner poet for AS. I didn't like them much, compared to Rossetti and Donne in A2. "Just be confident" is a phrase by people who have no idea what it's like to want to be confident but are unable to be. It's not like we can just buy some confidence from somewhere, y'know. My English AS exam was okay because we had the text in with us, but my A2 exam was horrible because we had no text in with us and had to remember countless poems, as well as a lot of Hamlet and The Revenger's Tragedy quotes. Where quotes are needed, I found that I couldn't bullshit my way through it at all. GCSE year, sure, I could, but A2 year? Absolutely not.

Some teachers are there like "well you need to be able to talk in front of people in real life, once you've left, so you have to do this" and it's like, umm, actually no I won't have to talk in front of a bunch of kids my age and a teacher again about something I have no idea about.

@ castiel's vessel
We did Rossetti at AS - I quite liked her poems, even if they weren't exactly cheery. I get you, though, the most frustrating thing ever is to be told "just be confident!" because the whole point is that you literally cannot. My AS exams finished a couple of weeks ago, the English one was okay? It's about four texts, half is about one of them (you choose) and the other half is about the other three which you didn't write about in the first one. The good thing about English is that if you're not sure, you can kind of bullshit your way through it - whereas with other subjects like History or whatever, if you haven't got loads of facts down, you're in trouble. Good luck with your exams, though! I know some exam boards are tougher than others - I heard OCR is a nightmare for some.

I never regret skipping stuff because of anxiety either. I'd rather be comfortable than force myself through something that isn't gonna benefit me. Some teachers just don't seem to consider this stuff, and I mean, it's not something you can really go to them about either, because of it. I always end up worrying that they'd think I was just making up excuses or think I was just being awkward or whatever.

My school did that. We had study leave for our exams, but then we had to return to school and continue with our four AS subjects to get ahead in our A-Level course. But with the six week summer holidays between what we had started of the course and when we officially returned in September for our new year, we had to start everything again. See, I was on the WJEC exam board which for year 13 gave us the coursework of a 3000 word essay about a theme of our choosing, and the text we had were Christina Rossetti's poems and Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. They were our main text, while we had a partner text that we needed to incorporate in order to illuminate our idea.

Yeah, I get the support bit of it but even with the support, I couldn't do it. I don't regret dodging the class because all people suggest is that I "get some confidence" when it comes to me not being able to do things like that. We had to stand when collecting our essays (which I never gave many in for my last year) and it was always quiet so everyone could hear if you messed up.

I'm current in the middle of my A-Level exams. I don't know how different yours will be as you're on AQA but I absolutely dreaded my English one that I had on Friday.

@ castiel's vessel
My college does things a bit oddly,sorry, I forgot others don't do it the way mine does - instead of letting us have a long summer now that exams are over, we start our next year a half term early, so this is kind of the beginning of a new school year for me, we continue on as though everybody has got the required grades in the AS exams and then we actually get to drop a subject in September. They like to call it "gained time". I'm on the AQA exam board, one half of the course work is a comparitive essay between two plays (with one teacher) and with the other teacher we choose a book to write either a feminist or marxist perspective essay on. Presentations aren't a part of our grades, they're just something he's getting us to do to pass the time, to be honest, which I get, but I just can't handle it.

I wouldn't mind as much if I had a friend to do it with, I'd still dread it but there'd be someone else there for support, y'know? But yeah, it is horrible - I'm the same, when one of the teachers returns essays we have to go and get it from him and sit while he explains his critiques and I just usually sit staring at the desk whilst nodding occasionally. It's awesome you got out of it! He said he wants them in for next lesson, I'm missing the next one and a double after that just to be safe and then the next time I'd have him is like, the week after that and he sometimes forgets to turn up to lessons so I doubt he'll remember. Wow, sorry for the long reply!

@ jwilliams2
I know exactly how you feel - it's truly horrible. If you want to try to get off of meds, talking therapies have helped me quite a bit - it's not something that ever goes away fully, unfortunately, but they can teach you some coping techniques to help! You can also feel free to message me if it ever gets bad and you need somebody to talk to!

By "this year" do you mean this year still going or the school year that's going to officially start in September? And what exam board are you on? My coursework was only a 3000 word essay for my second year.

But I understand about the whole not wanting to do a presentation thing. I had two English teachers for my A-Level, and the one we did the plays with wanted us to do a presentation on context for Hamlet, so basically Shakespearean times. And she wouldn't let us get out of it. I was paired with my friend and I knew what day we were due to present it...so I didn't go in. And as it was the last week before we broke up for summer (as she didn't want to start teaching the play until the September, mostly because we didn't have the text) I got out of not doing it. It wasn't because I didn't want to do it (but I didn't), but it was because I couldn't get up there, in front of the class and my teacher, and talk. I could barely stand up and go and collect work from her. Luckily, she never asked for a presentation again.

I am right there with you. I don't know really if mine is actually social anxiety. It can hit me when I am just sitting at home doing nothing but watching TV. But I can also have an attack or episode when we are planning on going somewhere, or when we are somewhere. I had a very bad one on my honeymoon in Mexico. So....I very much understand ur feelings on hating it. I just want to be mentally healthy.....not have to be medicated to try to be ok.