Making the decision to retake year 12 can be a daunting one. You begin asking questions such as: Did I waste an entire year of my life? What’s the point? I know this because that was me nearly four years ago, been there done that. I learnt a lot from my extra year in sixth form, so I thought I’d offer some advice to those are worried or anxious about doing so.
In the context of my situation I stayed on at the same sixth form so fortunately most of my time in year 12 the second time, my core group of friends were there until they left. However, in terms of making friends with people in the year below one thing you come to realise is that you get a lot more respect from people than you anticipate. Obviously, people make jokes about it, but you get the feeling it comes from a place of respect. Play along with the jokes, see the funny side of it and that will help cement respect even more.
With the people in your classes, my advice would be to attempt strike up conversations with people early on. Sixth form is much different to secondary school in the sense that you can sit where you please (unless you get a very strict teacher), so don’t isolate yourself from everyone make sure you’re around people and try and strike up conversation with them. Don’t be afraid to say hello to people too.
It may seem sometimes that in an environment where you’re possibly on your own that people are always judging you, when the vast majority are not, saying a simple hello to someone you have spoken to before can go a long way. Additionally, in my experience I knew a few people from the year below. I used this to my advantaged and was able to help make friends with their friends. So, if you know people from the year below do talk to them and look to build relationships with their mates as well as building on the existing ones you have because it is most likely that their mates are fairly similar in terms of being easy to get along with.
In terms of the academic side, you need to look back and reflect on where you went wrong and why you didn’t do as well as you thought. Firstly, look at the subjects you took and ask yourself questions such as, was the workload too much? For me this was the case. In year 12 I studied History, Drama, English Literature and Philosophy and Ethics. So, when I retook the year, I changed from four subjects to three and went with History, Drama and Media. The workload was much more manageable, and I definitely preferred media much more than the two I dropped. Furthermore, really ask yourself did I revise enough? And ask were my revision methods effective? For me I will admit I didn’t revise as much as I should have. Don’t get me wrong I didn’t not revise, but I learnt the hard way that I needed to revise more. Through this I was able to achieve better grades second time round and get into a university I was proud to say I got a place in.
Remember there is nothing wrong with failure, everyone at some point in their lives has encountered it. For me that was the first major failure in my life, but I was able to take that slip up and then rectify it and learn from my mistakes. The key to retaking is identifying where you went wrong and then putting those wrongs into rights for the next academic year, whether it be the subjects chosen, revision methods or time spent on revision.
Mark Murphy Journalist 