Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash
I spent my upper sixth year – now known as Year 13 – studying for my A levels at home. No school, just a correspondence course. It was 1978/9 and I was at home with my parents in Kuala Lumpur. My correspondence tutors were in England and I sent them my essays by air mail. They marked them and posted them back to me. This post is about how I managed that year and what happened in the end. Read on to find out!
- I really liked my subjects. I’d been at boarding school in England for a year and had been studying English, French and History. I hated the school and was so unhappy I begged to leave. My mother found a correspondence college that would send my coursework to me and assign tutors. We decided I would drop history and just work on English and French. That took a bit of the pressure off.
- I had a quiet space of my own. I was given a huge, glass topped desk in my bedroom and I had plenty of space for storing books and papers. In fact, a lot more space than I have now in my home office! No-one interrupted me when they knew I was working. There were no screens. In fact, in those days the only screen in the entire house was the TV in our living room.
- I took time out. If you are working alone at home, you can get a lot more done in a few hours than you would in a whole day at school or college. This meant that I could study from about 8am to about 4pm, with a break for lunch, and then stop and do something completely different. I was able to leave the house and go to see friends or ride my horse – often both – and think about something else.
- I exercised every day. See above.
- I didn’t think much about what would happen after the exams. I had wanted to leave school so much that I was just grateful to be at home. I had thought of a secretarial course (typing and shorthand) but because I had no idea what my grades would be I decided to wait and decide once I had the results.
- There were no mock exams. This is partly why I had no idea what my grades might be. I just worked and worked, knowing that the more I studied, the better chance I had of good grades. I read the set texts over and over, worked as hard as I could at my essays and took note of all the feedback from my tutors. I planned my schedule meticulously, building in revision time and gradually increasing my daily study hours in the run up to the exams, while ensuring I still took time off.
- I had hardly any face to face teaching. I had never met either of my tutors and never spoke to them on the phone. International phone calls were a big deal in those days. Eventually, when I returned to England, I went to visit my English tutor but never met the French tutor. I did have a little help locally. My former English teacher from school gave me some advice and a French friend of my parents helped me to practise my spoken French. I can’t imagine how much easier it would have been if I’d had access to online resources and digital communications.
- Sometimes it was lonely and frustrating. I won’t pretend it was an easy year or that I was always blissfully happy. I worried a lot about my studies and the exams. But I got through it and afterwards I was incredibly proud of my self discipline and determination.
The results
So what happened? I took the exams and went to the UK for the summer. In those days, A levels were graded A-B-C-D-E, which were all passes. I had thought I might get a D and an E and perhaps would look at applying to a polytechnic to read English.
Eventually the results came through. Unbelievably, I had achieved an A in both subjects. This was beyond my wildest dreams. As I had planned, I sat down and thought about what I would like to do next. I decided to apply to a number of universities with Cambridge as my first choice. After three months studying for and taking the rigorous entrance exams for Cambridge, and attending an interview at Newnham College, I was awarded a place at Newnham. There weren’t many students at Cambridge with only two A levels, but they must have been impressed by my solitary studying and that probably tipped the balance for me.
If you are studying at home for A levels or anything else, perhaps my experience will help and encourage you. It is amazing what we can achieve when we are forced into a challenging situation. Be kind to yourself; take breaks; do things that take your mind off your studies. Remember that if you rise to a challenge, respond to adversity with determination and discipline, you are building skills and qualities that will help you for the rest of your life.
Good luck!
