can hurt like a knife (like seeing her hold someone elseâs gaze or break from your own) and become so important, burned on your retina, that it can be unbearable (hence the pot, because weâre all so tortured, *sob*).
On a more general note however, this seemingly simultaneous speeding up and slowing down of time appears often to come hand in hand with being In School. My hypothesis (since I know youâre so interested) is that, in an education system largely based on end-of-year exam results, there ends up being little to do for the rest of the year. This is also given that if youâre smart or have a good teacher you tend to pass the exams, and if youâre not, and you donât, youâre fucked. Thus they pack the less important eleven months with pointless coursework that, although it does add to our final grade, basically offers no sense of fulfillment as we all know most of the tasks weâre set are utter crap, would never happen in the real world and are geared solely towards proving yourself to an instructor and a certain system of grading, and definitively not towards proving to the individual their own worth, intelligence or ability. This, my friends, is why every sixteen-year-old, though in particular the more able, just after receiving their results becomes puzzled and bewildered over one question. Why is it that during the GCSEs everything is a struggle and youâre up âtil four a.m. every night doing the work (I speak here for the people who actually do it; Iâll not shy away from the fact that although I am generally up until four a.m., I tend to be mainly wanking and/or watching Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps ), then in the exams, which you didnât revise for, youâre sat there worried youâre missing the point âcause the supposedly hard questions seem very ABC level, then on results day you get way better grades than you thought you were going to get? Well hold on to that curve youâre graded on because Iâm about to give you the Holy Grail of answers to this mother of questions. It is because (drum roll please) the level of knowledge and intelligence needed to pass a GCSE is very little, but theamount of work is mind-shatteringly overwhelming. And so, when people do not pass a GCSE it is not because they are thick (because they would have to be very thick to not realize that repeating the Very Simple Textbook Answer to all the Very Simple Textbook Questions asked will get you full marks), but it is because they have not put in the hours to revise for exams/complete all the coursework. Their work is incomplete more often than it is crap, and when it is crap, it is because it took very little time. And thus whether it is laziness, a misunderstanding of this most basic principle of the curriculum, or whether you are just that little bit too stoned to find what youâre reading (or what youâve written) coherent, the work piles up, you find yourself being chased down corridors by ancient cross-eyed women (Ms. White, who the fuck are you looking at ?) spitting on their cardigans with rage because you havenât handed in a piece of work they knew you werenât going to do. They threaten you with suspension because there are only five lunchtime detention slots in the week and youâve racked up sixteen and then you find yourself doing more work than you planned on doing, youâre working the man-hours, your hands are tied and suddenly two weeks of your life are dead and buried and youâll never get your misspent youth back again.
GCSE students, here is my advice: do the coursework, but donât do anything else. When exam time cometh, ask for a copy of the curriculum and revise from that (except for in English, where you will need either to be naturally smart or to make notes). It will make little difference to your life in the long run. If you want to do anything academic you will need a good degree, so work out
On a more general note however, this seemingly simultaneous speeding up and slowing down of time appears often to come hand in hand with being In School. My hypothesis (since I know youâre so interested) is that, in an education system largely based on end-of-year exam results, there ends up being little to do for the rest of the year. This is also given that if youâre smart or have a good teacher you tend to pass the exams, and if youâre not, and you donât, youâre fucked. Thus they pack the less important eleven months with pointless coursework that, although it does add to our final grade, basically offers no sense of fulfillment as we all know most of the tasks weâre set are utter crap, would never happen in the real world and are geared solely towards proving yourself to an instructor and a certain system of grading, and definitively not towards proving to the individual their own worth, intelligence or ability. This, my friends, is why every sixteen-year-old, though in particular the more able, just after receiving their results becomes puzzled and bewildered over one question. Why is it that during the GCSEs everything is a struggle and youâre up âtil four a.m. every night doing the work (I speak here for the people who actually do it; Iâll not shy away from the fact that although I am generally up until four a.m., I tend to be mainly wanking and/or watching Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps ), then in the exams, which you didnât revise for, youâre sat there worried youâre missing the point âcause the supposedly hard questions seem very ABC level, then on results day you get way better grades than you thought you were going to get? Well hold on to that curve youâre graded on because Iâm about to give you the Holy Grail of answers to this mother of questions. It is because (drum roll please) the level of knowledge and intelligence needed to pass a GCSE is very little, but theamount of work is mind-shatteringly overwhelming. And so, when people do not pass a GCSE it is not because they are thick (because they would have to be very thick to not realize that repeating the Very Simple Textbook Answer to all the Very Simple Textbook Questions asked will get you full marks), but it is because they have not put in the hours to revise for exams/complete all the coursework. Their work is incomplete more often than it is crap, and when it is crap, it is because it took very little time. And thus whether it is laziness, a misunderstanding of this most basic principle of the curriculum, or whether you are just that little bit too stoned to find what youâre reading (or what youâve written) coherent, the work piles up, you find yourself being chased down corridors by ancient cross-eyed women (Ms. White, who the fuck are you looking at ?) spitting on their cardigans with rage because you havenât handed in a piece of work they knew you werenât going to do. They threaten you with suspension because there are only five lunchtime detention slots in the week and youâve racked up sixteen and then you find yourself doing more work than you planned on doing, youâre working the man-hours, your hands are tied and suddenly two weeks of your life are dead and buried and youâll never get your misspent youth back again.
GCSE students, here is my advice: do the coursework, but donât do anything else. When exam time cometh, ask for a copy of the curriculum and revise from that (except for in English, where you will need either to be naturally smart or to make notes). It will make little difference to your life in the long run. If you want to do anything academic you will need a good degree, so work out
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