My Education Story

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My Education Story

I have been studying A level Photography and A level Fashion and Textiles for the last two years now and have learnt and grown so much from doing these particular courses. Previous to these past two years I was schooled at a private Christian school just outside of where I live. This was an experience to say the least. My school wasn't on the “normal” curriculum for our country, it ran on a system called “ACE” http://www.aceministries.com/ which stands for Accelerated Christian Education, which is a worldwide curriculum for privately funded Christian schools. Just some background on my schooling experiences. I attended a state ran village primary school for until I was 11 years old, so completely changing my way of learning was a complete shock when I first started at my Christian school which my older brother was already attending two years before me, so naturally I had to also attend too. In primary school I was always very creative, with design and technology, art and also sports as I joined every after school sport and art clubs that were on. As well as the way of learning that shocked me about my Christian school, as we would have to learn by ourselves without any interactions of the class, I feel I had to almost ignore my love for art and being creative as art and also sport was not a subject in our school. I couldn’t explore the subjects that I wanted and so I couldn’t find anything remotely enjoyable to go and study for because I had to do the set syllabus to get any form of qualifications. The only time I could express my love for these subjects was at “ESC” European Student Convention. This was an event held in Millfeild School, Summerset, where Christian schools from Europe on the same syllabus would compete in various different subjects, from art, to spelling, to sport, basically anyone’s hobby or interest was most likely to have been on the list of events. This probably was the most enjoyable time of my school life as I could compete in the areas that I enjoyed and spent time socializing as well which I also enjoyed. Even though this was a great experience for me, it only happened once a year and even then I was doing most of my preparation in my home life anyway which didn’t make a difference for my schooling situation. I left my Christian school in June 2014 when I was 17 turning 18 in September which means in the normal education system I was a year behind when I should have been finishing my GCSE's. In this school system it was very easy to go days of not doing any work and just sitting around all day. This was so easy to get away with as we, the students, would control how much work to do a day and how we would get it done as we would work from set out books and work on our own. When we would complete a book we would take a test to see if we had successfully learnt the information given and if we got 80% or over we would move on to the next book, if under 80% even by one mark we would have to redo the whole book again and retake the test to move on.

When I first moved to the school my parents were in the middle a divorce and my older brother was going through a mental breakdown as he has mental issues already the family breakup indeed made this so much worse. So as you would imagine it wasn’t the best start of moving to a new school anyway then with all these other additional factors involved! Every book that we had to complete had a number in which you would work your way up so for example GCSE level was 85 to 108. And then 109 would start intermediate which is “half an A level” and then when intermediates finished you start advanced which is your full A level grade. When I started school at 11 I was on late 30's and most people my age who had been to this school their whole lives were way ahead of me, talking 60's. At this age I didn’t really care to much about the level I was on because I was just trying to get through all my home situations and school was just somewhere I had to go because my mum said I had to. When I was 14/15 I was going through a really bad time in my life personally. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life what I was even interested in or who I even was to be honest. I had a lot of things going on with my dad to do with my parent’s separation and I was diagnosed with depression which then lead to self-harm and body dysmorphia issues. I did no school work whatsoever that year I didn’t come in a lot and it was hard for me to even think about school work when I struggled even getting through the day without having some kind of breakdown. Because of this year of not doing anything, this put me back a year of finishing my GCSE's and I don’t regret that year because through struggles create strength and honestly wouldn’t have been who I am today because of it. And I’m so grateful that I was there at that time because I had the best and most supportive teacher, he might not have been the best teacher educationally but he was the best spiritually and helped me to get the help I needed through counselling, etc. after that had all pasted and I got on the right track I got my head down and promised myself that I was going to do and I was going to get me some damn qualifications and get myself doing what I wanted to do. I had a new teacher who I had had a few years previously, who helped me really get on with my work and get through my maths which was my lowest subject at the time. This was a real struggle for me but he encouraged me and helped me every step through it. Also he was really into fashion and photography like I am which also inspired me to do what I am doing now. I worked my absolute arse of in those final years just to be able to get into college a year late and that’s okay because I believe everything happens for a reason and if I wasn’t there when I was having a hard time and I wasn’t around the particular people I was around where would I have been now. Yes my A levels have been such a struggle for me because for one I have never even done coursework before or even taken an art subject ever! But that’s okay. I feel like I have benefited in different reasons and in different ways as I think I was in the right mind set to do my A levels and actually give 100% to them when I started college I think if I was any younger I don’t think I would have tried as much as I am now. I am thankful for every experience that I have had as any can be a blessing or a lesson. I’m just looking to the future and there is no point holding on to things that are now in the past.