A-LEVEL RESULTS & How I Revised __ 2016

Hello everyone! Little bit of a spontaneous, impromptu video from me this Monday. So last week, on the 18th of August, I got my A-Level results. I thought today I would sit down, explain my results, explain why I got them, how I got them, how you can get them if you want to get them, and I have so much paperwork that I thought, you know what, I'm just going to sit on my bedroom floor because it's so much easier. You lovely lot have also said you would really like me to do an education-based Q&A, so I'll be doing that this time next week, so leave down in the comments below, do you have any questions on secondary school, sixth form, A-Levels, BTECs, universities, what to do if you're not going to university, all that jazz, ask me anything, I might try and get a friend in the video with me who is going to university so you have like my view and their view, but that's all something for another day. Today I'm talking about my results, so let's go. I keep in my bedroom this little red folder, it has all my results in it, my GCSE results, my AS results, my A-Level results, it has any type of qualification I've got, it's got all my certificates, any kind of award that I've got past year 11, so during sixth form, I keep in this folder. I was really glad I kept this because I think if I was going for a job interview, this folder would be something that's really handy to take, it's a bit of a conversation starter, it's got all your results, everything like that in one place, so that would definitely be a tip of mine when you're starting sixth form or A-Levels or whatever, keep all your certificates and qualifications in one folder so that you can easily take it to a job interview, here you go sir. So first of all I will start off way back in year 11 with my GCSE grades, just so you can see what subjects I carried on at A-Level, what subjects I started from new. So at GCSE I got the following results, in English Language I got an A, English Literature I got a B, Maths I got a B, the first year of Science I got an A star, the second year of Science I got an A, in Media Studies I got an A and in Textiles I got an A star. So overall 2 A stars, 3 A's and 3 B's. And then when I moved up to sixth form I carried on 2 subjects, so I carried on Media Studies and English, kind of. I took Creative Writing, kind of confusing if you've not heard of it before, it's not English Literature, it's not English Language, it is instead of analysing other people's writing you use their techniques and write your own, so it's more writing than reading and analysing than any other English. So like I said I carried on a form of English and Media Studies and then I took 2 new options, because if you are not aware, when you do A levels usually you choose 4 subjects. So my 4 subjects at the beginning of Year 12 were Creative Writing, Media Studies, Business Studies and Psychology, those were my 2 new ones. I thought I'd go for something slightly more academic so I'd have a bit of variety in my options however a couple of months after I took Psychology I decided it was not for me, you need a great memory for that, you need to be very intelligent for that and I'm not saying I'm not clever but I have to work for my grades, it doesn't come naturally to me. So I dropped Psychology after a couple of months and I went down to doing just 3 subjects in the first year of 6th form whereas most people were doing 4 and then obviously at the end of Year 12 usually you would drop a subject then, however I only had my 3 subjects so I just carried on doing those 3. I am so glad I did that because it allowed me to spend a lot more time on my subjects, Psychology was taking up all of my time, I was doing less well in my other subjects, I wasn't enjoying Psychology and once I dropped that subject that hour of lesson was replaced with another study period so it meant I had 2 study periods a day instead of 1 which is what generally happens in Year 13 anyway and I found that once I had got rid of that one then my grades in my other 3 subjects went up a significant amount. So if you take 4 subjects and you're not feeling one of them I'd say try and speak to someone who's quite high up in your schooling system or whatever, explain the situation and explain that you feel you know what's best for you which is what I did and I didn't regret dropping Psychology at all. So my predicted grades for my AS level were as follows, in Creative Writing my realistic exam grade was a B slash A so it was more likely I was going to get a B than an A, in Media Studies my realistic exam grade was an A and my realistic exam grade for Business was A slash B and then if we compare my predicted grades to my actual AS grades they look like this. So in English I actually got an A rather than the B slash A I was predicted, in Media Studies I got an A which was my predicted grade and in Business Studies I got a B so it was my lower end of my predicted grade however I was really happy with a B, I was aiming for at least a C, I'm quite doubtful of myself and I really struggled with Business Studies, it was by far my most academic subject, it was what I needed a good memory for and like I said my memory is shockingly bad. So I was really happy with 2 As and a B at AS level, it was kind of swings and roundabouts when it came to hitting my predicted grades and also when I was doing my AS exams I remember revising so hard, I mean I've always found English a really difficult subject to revise for because I kind of feel like if you know the techniques, you kind of have an idea what you're going to write about, you are good to go. Obviously the same can't be said for English Literature because you can revise over the books and things like that but English Language and Creative Writing I feel you can't really revise for them, you kind of just have to have that skill. So I was pleased with my grades at the end of my first year of A levels and if you're not aware your AS grades along with your A2 grades which is the second year of A levels join together and make your final A level result. So moving on to my second year of A levels, for this year my predicted grades were as follows so English was an A slash A star, Media Studies was A star slash A and Business was B slash A and these are the results that I picked up on Thursday. So in Creative Writing I got an A, in Media Studies I got an A and in Business Studies I got a B. So I hit my predicted grade for my Business Studies and I hit my predicted grade for my Creative Writing. Media Studies I got the lower end of my predicted grade which I am fine with to be honest, I've always struggled with media exams. Creative Writing was a subject that I was really hoping for an A star in and I know that a lot of people get annoyed when someone gets good results and then they complain that they didn't get higher. My opinion on that personally is if you're aiming for a B and you get a C you're going to be disappointed. If you're aiming for an A star and you get an A, why should that person not be allowed to feel disappointed as well? I mean don't get me wrong, I wasn't distraught that I got an A in Creative Writing, honestly I just worked really hard at that subject so I feel like I would have felt really content and satisfied had I had an A star but I'm good with an A, I mean I'm not going to use my results for anything. Maybe if I was going to university to do Creative Writing then that would have bothered me a lot more but university is a subject that I will get onto in a minute. So, Revision. In the first year of sixth form I was revision freak. In year 12 we were told that AS exams were so important and don't get me wrong, they are really important because they contribute to your final A level grade but I stressed myself out over my end of year 12 exams but in year 13 I'm not sure why but I felt a lot less stressed. I think it's because I had my fairly good grades from year 12 so I knew that I could fall back a little bit if I wanted to, I didn't have to stress myself out. Things with YouTube started really picking up and it was really getting exciting. I just had better things going on in my life and I know that sounds awful and I'm not saying that you should stop working hard because I definitely didn't. When I was in the classroom I worked so hard all the time, I'll put an overlay in here but as you can see, 1 is putting in the most effort and 4 is putting in the least effort for all of my subjects. During the class time I was at all 1's, I'm really proud of that I'm not going to lie, because my family have always been the type of people to think as long as you're putting in the effort it doesn't matter what grades you get. Obviously not everyone's the same but that's our personal opinion on it, if you tried your best you tried your best. But when it came to working outside of sixth form, I didn't do that at all. I used my two study periods a day really effectively, sometimes I would sit around and chat with my friends, I'm not saying I never did that, but the majority of the time I was keeping up with my work. I never seemed to fall behind, I did my work when it was set and this isn't me bragging like oh look what an amazing student I was, not at all, I just think if you work hard in your study periods it allows more free time after sixth form which is definitely what I found because I rarely did work after sixth form. I mean I think the whole of year 13 I could count on one hand the amount of hours I spent working outside of sixth form hours, which was obviously really nice for me, it meant I could do my YouTube and that was the main reason why I worked so hard in my studies and I was really glad that I did. So, revising for my media exam, I made myself this little pack, it has all the topics that could come up in the exam and then inside it has information about the regulation of the industry, the marketing of the industry, it only really makes sense to you if you take media studies, it has information about the audience. So this little pack that I made was basically like a summary of my media course and this was really helpful to me, like I said I made this in my studies, I didn't do this outside of school hours. Another thing that I did was look at past papers and saw what kind of questions could come up, I mean you could do this for any subject, but because the media exam was an essay based exam, I planned what I would have written for many essay questions, I have one here about film, TV, newspapers, I have loads of these, purely just what I would have written. There was one particular question that I felt I have no idea how to answer that, I'd focus on that one, get that under my belt and I felt like I did pretty well with that. Creative writing, like I said I don't really feel you can revise for English, I just had all of my things that I've written in this folder, we completed a lot of past papers in our class. That exam was my longest one, it was three hours long, it was a very very long one. My media exam was two and a half hours long and each of my business studies exams were an hour and a half. If you are thinking of taking creative writing, I would 100% recommend that. I've noticed that when I'm writing professional emails, my creative writing has helped me so much. And then business studies was my most academic subject, like I said, so this was the one that I actually revised for. I started revision really late, I looked through multiple past papers to make sure that I could answer the majority of the questions and I also made mind maps. I made so many of these little mind maps with all the information I needed on, honestly the entire business course is in this folder. And I also have this big folder full of notes that I made in my lessons, so I would go through the notes from my lessons and make the mind maps out of those, so that everything I had been taught was what was in the mind maps. And I definitely wouldn't have got a B in business studies if I hadn't have done that. So the next steps are university. I have never been one that's wanted to go to university, I've never had it in the back of my mind that I might possibly go, I've just kind of always known that university is not for me. I'm a very homey person, obviously I'm not trying to put anyone off university, I just think that not enough people are told that it's alright to not go to uni. Personally I don't feel like I'm passionately enough about anything to do it at university. I 100% understand, if you want to be a teacher and you know you want to be a teacher, you know the degree you need to get to do that occupation, 100% go for it if university is for you. The majority of my year at SIGFORM are going to university, there is just a small group of us who have decided it's not for us, and we were never told about other options. So I might cover this instead in my Q&A next week, but if you would like to know more about what else you can do other than going to uni, ask me whatever questions you'd like to know about that down in the comments below and I'll be sure to answer it next week. But for now, that is all, those were my grades, those were how I got them. I'm really happy with my grades, but it kind of feels, in a way, unsatisfying that I'm not going to do anything with them, I'm not going to lie, but should any hurdles be thrown in my path, I've got my A levels to fall back on. So that is all, I hope you enjoyed hearing about my SIGFORM A level experience. If you have any questions about any phase of education, leave it down in the comments below and I will be sure to answer it in next week's video. But for this week, thank you for watching and I'll see you on Thursday. Bye!