On the Importance of Being in Sixth Form

So, the main point of this post is to tell the World just how busy both Lady R and I are. Seriously.

That meant the lack of time and energy to write anything substantial – besides having copious amounts of effort needed to type something out. However, I am determined not to let work overtake my life. So I’m going to just have to link school-life with… whatever this is…

In my school, sixth form is something different altogether. I’m not sure if Lady R is going to write a post about her school, but in all honestly, my school is much more structured and strict than hers. Our dress code, is what you would wear to an office, suits and heels (not for me, since I need to do lots of legwork – more about this later).

This new territory meant more freedom – however, in other fields. For example, I was now allowed nail polish, jewellery and my hair down. It’s a complete 360 degrees change from being in secondary school. Also, the way teachers now treated us as a whole. An example would be the hilarious Chemistry lesson I had just this Friday afternoon. All 10 (ish) of my classmates had arrived in the lab, expecting to see our teacher there. Only to find that she wasn’t, and moreover, after waiting for over 5 minutes. She was nowhere to be found. At this point, my friend pointed out how she had seen Mrs B going out for tea with some other teachers in our school. Had she forgotten about us?

Oh we wish. In a moment of complete idiocy, no one in the class had thought to look on the whiteboard for a sign of a message. Turns out. Mrs B left one. Work to do for the lesson, and a note telling us about a baseline assessment test in Chemistry next Monday. Followed by an ironically placed smiley face. Oh joy.

This hilarious (on our behalf for being so oblivious) but alarming incident made me think. Does being in sixth form really mean more independence and trust? Perhaps? Or even more work upon work and teachers caring less about us.

Legwork! Oh my goodness. I’m a book person. Not active till I need to be. My school has this newfound sadistic system of making sixth form students and teachers run from our main school building, to another one down the road. It’s a considerable distance if you include a 5 minute limit to travelling between lessons, and the signing in and out of all buildings slows this process down a lot. A lot, a lot. I was panicking all the time about being in time for all those lessons, and spent most of my lessons wondering about getting to the next one. Think again, school.

On another note, the décor in the new building is nice. We even have chandeliers in each room. And I’m not even joking. However, the tables are less than apt for subjects (all of them) which require us to lay out our notebooks, textbooks and notes in front of us. Lecture style tables are a no-no. I mean, we can’t even lay the tables straight! Proof? I put my pen down on it and it rolls off.

Classes are a little better now that I’ve settled in more. I think I will need to get used to the ‘wider reading’ part of my studies though. I like reading, but mostly leisure, so we’ll see how this goes. On the bright side, I get an excuse to buy lots of Classics and poetry collections – however, I may find I don’t like Rossetti or Wilde as much now. Pfft. Who am I kidding? I love them even more now!

Rant over, let’s just say this is a whole new experience for me. Despite this being the same school I’ve been to since Year 6, it’s a whole different world when teachers trust you alone in labs filled with various lab tech and equipment. Do you know I once put my finger in a Bunsen burner? There’s a trick, of course, to avoid getting burnt (ironically, taught to me by Mrs B) but still.

I am now going to do work. Like, homework. *sighs* But I shall finish my book first. I forgot how awesome I was, finishing a sizeable book in a day. (Yes, that’s my definition of awesome, unless you think it’s something like defeating Titans.)

~ Persephone

P.S. No, I won’t reveal this Bunsen burner trick on the Internet. Who knows what will happen. (For a reasonable brib- *coughs* No, no.)

I have many passions in life

Ok, so obviously I want to be a writer, and that’s not going to change, I’ve always loved reading, I think it’s an incredibly personal experience that no other media can even begin to rival, it can make you feel so intense – next to real life, in my opinion, and it’s the best form of life experience. We all know that going through things makes us who we are, especially hard things.

Reading has saved my life on many an occasion, I owe my life to people who are alive, making stupid vlogs, and to people who died many hundreds of years ago. Hell, I owe my life to people who don’t even speak the same language as me.  I’m going to dedicate my life to making sure that reading what I’ve written saves people, even if it’s just one person, one solitary person reads my book and thinks ‘you know what, I think I’ll wait around a little bit longer’.  I don’t care if a million people pick up my book and say ‘well this is a bit shit’, because like I said, I just want one person to read my words and stick around for the end of their story.

Let me get back to the original point of this post, which is that, as much as I love reading and I love writing, I also love film.  I’ve made, and been involved in making, several short films about various things over my short life, and the idea of capturing an emotion and literally showing it to other people has always seemed like another level of magic to me.

To conclude, I am going to spend the next few weeks, maybe months, we’ll see how it goes, filming the vast majority of my life, and trying to make some kind of sense of it.  If I get anything decent, I’d love for you to do the soundtrack (Sephy, that’s you), I’ll even sing for it, with my horribly untrained and low voice, but I reckon’ I sound alright, I’ve got a lot of enthusiasm anyway, and that’s what counts.  Anyway, I’ll keep you updated on my project, and we’ll see if it ever gets good enough to go up on our blog! (Edit by Sephy: I’m not really composing material, but for you, I’d try *whispers* we may need a Mac though – and a keyboard.)

I guess I’m just trying to figure out what I want to do, because, as my Mum said the other day, ‘You’re not the kind of person to sit back and let things happen, and there aren’t many people like you, you’re going to do great things’.