Year 11: Remaining calm, collected and caught up

Year 11. The big year. At least that's what all the teachers say and have been saying for the past 5 years of our lives, and are they correct in some aspects? Yes, but truly GCSEs aren’t everything and if there was one thing I could have convinced myself of when I started year 11 it was that it’s the little things that count not only to your final grades but also to your sanity when it comes to the actual exams, and googling ‘is my English language GCSE important’ the night before your exam is most definitely not the position you want to be in (trust me). However as new Year 11s GCSEs seem like something so unbelievably overwhelming yet somehow so far away they don’t even seem real at the start of the year, and whilst it is incredibly tempting to fall back into old routines of simply doing homework and revising when the teachers tell you to it is absolutely vital to force yourself to become more active in any way you can. I realise this sounds awful and to be completely honest you wouldn’t have caught me dead doing EXTRA revision at the start of year 11 because well, who wants to do extra revision when I could just do the minimum and be done with it? Not many people. Although I found that when I got to my mocks in December I began to regret simply doing nothing the whole year until two weeks before the exams. So by following my advice in this article hopefully you can get a little more of a head start than I got! 

1.Make flashcards or revision materials EARLY

This might seem like something you don’t really need to be doing until October or (if you’re a bit more like me) February half term. DON’T LEAVE IT. Seriously I know that procrastinating and leaving it until the metaphorical tomorrow is a whole lot easier than just sitting down after school and making revision material for an hour but i promise you it's something you won’t regret even if you don’t use all of it, because it’s much better to have the materials and end up not needing them rather than needing them two weeks before your exam and having to make them in a rush. 

Here are some methods I recommend:

• Flashcards (the golden one) = one of the best ways to actively recall your memory and also something you can make immediately, whether its key terms, definitions or facts flashcards are the way to go and they only take a few minutes to make 

• Fact sheets to put around your room = having things you need to know in your line of sight all the time is the best way to get things to stick inside your head and these also take a short time to make per fact sheet 

• Find past papers early = having collections of either printed or saved past papers or question sheets is genuinely one of the best things you can do for yourself because later on in the year you know exactly where they are and can dive into practice without having to search for papers right before your exam 

2.Make sure you save time for exercise and leisure 

Even though Year 11 is a year of hard work and dedication, not allowing yourself to relax or overworking yourself especially at the start of the year is completely the wrong way to go. Keeping yourself in a good place mentally throughout the year is one of the best things you can do for yourself because maintaining a good headspace leads to overall higher motivation and peace. Having a scheduled movie night with friends or family or even just letting yourself watch an episode of your favourite show after studying can seriously help you to relax and expel all the emotions and negative energy that often stems from studying. I definitely overworked myself during the first two terms of Year 11 and unfortunately this led to intense burnout over Christmas and in January, so i would really recommend taking it easy and as much as mocks matter, they are not everything and at the end of the day what’s the point in overworking yourself for the mocks when in reality the thing that matters most is the final stretch in May and June. 

3. Don’t overthink your mock exams

Mocks are insanely daunting and can seriously seem like the end of the world if you don’t get the grades you wanted but I promise you they’re not everything. In fact your mock exams don’t make a single difference to your final grade. Their sole purpose is to expose the gaps in your knowledge so you can simply fill them before your actual exams. I definitely thought mock exams were something I had to work myself to death for but in reality having two weeks of exams with multiple exams a day is something that will only happen during your mocks and during the real thing you have so much more time than you think to study. The fatal flaw in the design of mock exams is that they are all squashed into a few short weeks before Christmas and forcing yourself to give 110% during that time will inevitably lead to burnout. Absolutely try your hardest during this time because it is the only time you will have exam conditions before the real thing but seriously don’t take it too much to heart because you have so much time to improve and you will get better before you take your final exams. 

Granted, Year 11 is a difficult time and I won’t try to convince you otherwise, it takes a toll. But, something I hope I have convinced you of is that there are so many ways to relieve the pressure on yourself throughout the year which can not only protect your mental health during exams but on the whole improve your performance whilst maintaining a healthy school life balance. 

Best of luck for all of you and remember mocks are always much harder than the real thing so don’t stress yourself to insanity about them! 

You’re all going to do brilliantly!

By Izabela Dhinoja