This week I decided in my normal fashion, which is think about it for 5 min then decide sod it just do it, that I would go back to being a teenager again. Now I don’t mean sneaking out and getting drunk or trying to pretend that I was 18 to get into the local night club, “The North Gate” aaahhh good memories. No no no to bring back my youth I decided to ……. redo my GCSE English, how exciting is that !!!
So why have I decided to do it? mainly because if I do a PGCE after getting my degree I need A-C in Maths and English GCSE, the maths I have but in english I got a “D”. So if I wanted to do teaching, I needed to get it and taking it now was the best time for a few reasons.
Firstly, I would rather take it while doing the level 1 and 2′s than while im doing level 3 courses, mainly because the degree classification is heavily weighted on the level 3 courses so I want to do the best I can on those. If I had to do the GCSE at the same time it may be to much of a distraction and effect my result.
Secondly, I have 60 pts planned this year, well 70 in you include the short 10 pointer im about to start. This means it’s not to busy so I should be able to add in the extra hours for the GCSE without too much trouble.
Thirdly, it started that week so I was able to get cracking on with it, unlike my Open University courses where I have had to wait 3 months to get started on them again.
So I called up on Monday to see if there were any spaces and was told yes for all dates. So I drove up, the college is only 5 min drive away so very handy, I filled in the form and registered for it there and then. I picked a Wednesday night and went to my first class last week. I had been expecting it to be a lot of mature student due to it being the night course as NRC also offer it during the day, but when I got there and everyone had arrived I was one of the oldies !!! now being 33 I wouldn’t class myself as old but I was certainly old in that class.
The 3 hours went in quickly and was made up of intros, a bit about the course and what we plan to study, when the exam will be (29th May) and what other forms of assessment we have to do. It turns out that there is an oral part where we have to make a presentation or something along those lines, most people are nervous about that but it should be fun to do.
Over all it shouldnt be to hard but going through the course timetable its plain to see that english has changed a good bit since my day. When I did it in 94 it was all about how to write, paragraphs and punctuation etc, now, it looks to be more like English Literature. Now that isn’t something I have an interest in but should be a little change from all the science stuff recently. Ohh and I have to read, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet so that should be easy for someone who’s Dyslexic!!!
So studying has started for another 9 months and im sure there will be a few times when im under pressure but as they say if it was easy everyone would do it.
