I am very grateful that I got to experience exams in the environment I did and I hope you find this insight interesting.
If you are unaware of my educational experience, I will give you a brief rundown. I was home educated until the age of 17 when I went to sixth form college to study for my A levels, meaning the majority of my education was based at home. During my time at home, I studied various subjects and when I was around the age of Year 10 I worked towards my GCSEs. The best option for me was to take International GCSEs as that is what the local centre offered. I only took 4 subjects because of limited resources available meaning I only had to take 8 exams.
Because I had never done anything close to sitting an exam before I asked if I was able to have a look in the hall at the centre where the exams were to take place beforehand. Thankfully the centre agreed and I was able to have a tour. The main reason for this was to remove at least one foreign part of the whole process, so when I went into the hall for my exams I knew what to expect because I had been there before - minus the other students, invigilators and exam papers.
I am very grateful for the fact that, being outside of mainstream education, I was able to enjoy the whole exam experience. I think exams are generally labelled with stress and anxiety. However, I was able to approach them with excitement and curiosity. Actually taking the exams was quite enjoyable. This isn't to say that I didn't feel nervous about any of the process because, of course, it is inevitable that anyone would. However, I didn't have any outside pressure from either peers or teachers. Yes, I had the ambition to do as best as I could but I didn't feel worried about the grades. I was able to go into the exam and think about using it as an opportunity to show what I had learned. At the time I didn't focus much on the thought of results, I just focused on each exam in turn. In fact, I must have been quite relaxed because at one point we didn't have WiFi (meaning internet resources were off limit) so I didn't worry too much about cramming in lots of revision. I just did what I could with the time and resources to hand.
Standing outside the exam hall for the first exam was very unusual to me because I was one of the only ones (there were some other private candidates as well), without a uniform on. It was really interesting that once I got inside the exam hall I felt rather relaxed. As I went on with the exams I got used to standing there as one of the 'odd-ones-out'. On one of the days of my exams, it was really hot so I decided to take in a water bottle that I had frozen previously. This proved a problem when the ice started to melt and all the condensation on the outside of the bottle dripped all over my desk!
I hope this post gives some insight into how exams work for home educated students and how I perceived the experience to be. Even if you aren't taught at home I would encourage you to enjoy exams as much as possible because it does take the pressure and stress away and helps you relax.
How do you perceive exams?
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