Front Line

Front Line - Chapter 15 - Year 13

Front Line

Chapter Fifteen – Year 13

  With the exam season’s failure’s behind me, year 13, the alpha year, was knocking on the front door loud and clear. I was more than prepared for the first day, determined that I would make this year better than the last, and give it my all and ten times that again. After being dropped off and going through the same events as the previous year’s mornings, break time was the time to sink all in.

  I’d met up with a friend of mine, she had now joined me in the alpha years, and except this time she had brought a couple of people with her to meet me. I stood at the back of the library we went into, David no longer with us having decided to leave after Year 11 for him, I heard what sounded like an American accent. My friend introduced me to someone called Victoria and Aya, Victoria was short and had thick black curly hair and Aya, she was the ‘stereotypical’ Indian girl but she was beautiful and very shy much like me. I knew I would get on with Victoria straight away, she was also shy but she had a bubbly personality which I knew would bring me out of my shell, much like David when I first met him.

  Because I now had to study all over again for the 4 exams I had to retake, things were much busier than the previous year. I still volunteered to help the new Year 7’s read, as well as doing other things to put on my CV for when I would leave school. On days that I would normally have off, I would now be re-learning the spec that I had been taught the previous year. Ironing out mistakes and polishing up on the details that could have swung me up a point, now taking into account that the questions would be different to that of the previous year.

  What I had learned from the first couple weeks of school, Jamie wasn’t there. It was like he had vanished in thin air, I didn’t see him in any of the areas I did before, he wasn’t in my EPQ class, nor the Friday morning assembly. It broke my heart to learn that he had chosen to go do a college course, he never really knew how much I liked him, or what my true feelings were. There was so much that I wanted to say to him, I stood back watching too long and let him slip right through my fingers despite him being way out of my league. Just watching him every day, it brought me so much happiness, like whenever I saw him I smiled and dreamed of his lips touching mine, him holding me close and comforting me. But those days, those days would remain a fleeing memory, I would hold the times I saw him close to my heart. I regretted not doing anything whilst I had the chance.

  In a way with Jamie not being there, it allowed my mind to open up and free off a little, to focus on what I should have probably been beforehand, my education. I had submitted my EPQ for evaluation, glad to have gotten that out of the way finally, even after a year’s extension. My EPQ teacher, who was also my Ethics teacher this year, said it was one of the best he had read from this years’ candidates, weather that will translate into the EPQ review board’s good grades I don’t know. I wouldn’t know until I got my end of year results.

  Because I had taken the English exam in the January, when the day came that I had finished my coursework, it was like a weight off my shoulders. On the other hand, because RE was split into Philosophy and Ethics it was like I was taking three subjects rather than losing the English to make it only two. To add to that, because I had to re-sit both the previous years’ exams, it was double the workload for the harder year out of the two, I really had my hands full.

  Thankfully I had and still have parents that encouraged me to go on, not stressing me out but giving me enough drive to keep going. I was pulling in B’s, C’s and a few A’s with the essays my teachers gave me, from all my subjects I was left studying, this really made me feel confident and determined that when my final exams came around it would definitely turn out for the better this time.

  Around the time my exams were due, yet another blow struck both me and my family. We knew my nan and grandad were getting weaker because of a few falls from the past, they were both put in hospital and we weren’t told about it so when we found out it was already two weeks since they had both been admitted. Being so far away it was hard to find out what exactly was wrong, and because I care about them so much, most of my focus turned to them and worrying about whether they would make it out of hospital or not. Thankfully, they were both only in small amount of pain from what had happened to them, they would be out two weeks from when we made contact, by then, I had taken my exams and could finally relax no matter what the outcome.

  I took my results better than I had expected to, I had passed all my exams, but not with the grades I was expecting. I had achieved a B in English Literature, and an E in everything else. I was told that I was only a few marks away from a D in the subjects I got E’s in, but the E’s made me feel for a long time that it made me look like I wasn’t doing my best, and that I wasn’t trying. Only when I had met my teacher after my exams, she sat me down and told me what I had been saying all along. I did the work, I got the grades in essays like the ones from exams, and I’m just not at my best in exams. I’m just one of them people, unfortunately for me but that was that, some people excelled in exams and not in class, others like me were the opposite.

  For a while I let this get me down, I was blaming myself for my ‘bad grades’, everyone around me was telling me that I ‘did good’, and that I ‘did my best’, I did not think the same as them. I sat down, night after night, studying and for the result till this day I blame myself for failing on, I couldn’t have tried harder. Up till 1am most mornings, studying I still said I could have done better. But I had the one grade I needed, the one I was most proud of, my B in English Literature. I still think I could have done things differently, but I don’t let my failings get me down, I was looking forward to the long summer before starting to look for a job, the next chapter in my life.