I distinctly remember the white envelopes. It all boiled down to what was inside mine, 2 years of work and now an envelope. The closer you are to the beginning of the alphabet the better!
My Psychology A-Level was probably the reason I fully committed to going into education and teacher training. The course included a whole block on child psychology and I was gripped. It led me to better appreciate what I wanted to do. I remember going into a local primary school and seeing myself making a career out of working with learning.
But was I really an “A” grade student?
by da.mas
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You might say that I flunked my psychology course work modules throughout my second year, they contributed in part to my final result but I struggled and was getting C’s and D’s. It wasn’t going well. I enjoyed the subject but found it hard to pull together the course work.
I went into the final exam leave feeling quite deflated but I had the chance to put it right – I had an intense 3-4 weeks of revision, which went really well. I almost enjoyed the exams because I just felt ready.
I wrote what they wanted to hear.
So when I opened the white envelope on that sun scorched lawn weeks later I had managed to pull it together and score one of the highest marks the Psychology department had seen on a final exam. Well done Tom you got an A.
At the time this was incredibly exciting – the whole campus was on a grade knife edge – nothing but talk for months and months of grades to get into universities. What did you get? How did you get on? Did you get what you wanted?
We were all wading knee deep in grades and exam results.
2 years of our education boiled down to that hot day with the envelopes and as those seals were torn we were in fact seeing a path being laid out before us. For some of us more education and those grades were the key.
On reflection I see the whole thing for what it really was including my own part in the merry-go-round of college and university.
Although I got an “A” grade for my course I think, at best, I was just good at taking the exam. I was an “A” grade psychology exam taker (on that day)! Could I do it again? Probably not without the intense cramming revision. Einstein referred to it all as coercion of the mind:
One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not.
The most valuable thing that came from my experiences at college was not the grades but realising that primary teaching was something I wanted to pursue. However at the time the cultural swirl around results was the environment I was in and grades seemed the key to everything in my future. How very wrong I was.