Dos and Don'ts of St Brendan's

The DOs and DON’Ts of St Brendan’s

Hello year 11, you may recognise me as I was a student here last year. I know that you are all at that stage where you are looking around colleges and sixth forms and trying to decide where you think will be the best place for you to further your education for the next 2 years. As I have been studying at St Brendan’s for nearly a year now, I know pretty well what you should and shouldn’t do…

Firstly, think about this; person A is a boy who is very sporty, very good at maths and enjoys business studies. Whereas his best friend, person B, also enjoys sport, but likes English rather than maths and is good at sciences. Person B has chosen to take English, physics and chemistry and is just going to do sport as an enrichment activity. Person A cannot decide whether to choose his subjects based on what he enjoys and is good at, or choose the same subjects as what his friend is doing. What do you think? Raise your hand if you think person A would do better choosing what he enjoys… now raise your hand if you think that he’ll do better if he chooses subjects which his friend is doing. Exactly, it’s obvious that person A will benefit a lot more if he chooses subjects that he is actually good at rather than just copying his friend. You shouldn’t just choose your subjects based on what your best friend’s doing. At college you want to make all of the new friends you can. So try to be a bit independent in choosing your subjects, rather than just deciding based on what your friends are doing. Think about it like this… Even if you do take subjects which your friends are doing, just take into consideration the fact that you probably won’t end up in the same classes as them anyway. So just try to focus on what subjects you like and what subjects you are good at. St Brendan’s have a range of 73 different courses on offer, considering you can only choose to take 3 or 4 that could be a hard decision, couldn’t it? So make your decision wisely, you don’t want to end up regretting it a few months down the line.

Friends. Everyone wants to make friends and it’s really not hard. As long as you’re willing to talk to new people, you’ll easily find new people who you get on well with. You should make effort to be confident and outgoing. If you’re naturally a shy person, try your best to take yourself out of your comfort zone and just put yourself out there! How are you going to make any new friends if you aren’t willing to converse with any new people? It’ll be a struggle.

Now, I know it’s tempting having a McDonald’s literally opposite the college… but you’re going to have to be strong! It won’t get you very far if you’re eating in McDonald’s every day. (Literally, you’ll get so fat you won’t be able to move very far). Also, it’ll just simply cost you a lot of money to be buying a meal every day, if you do choose to get McDonald’s every day, you’ll get sick of it soon anyway. Just the thought of it will make you queasy once you’ve had it every day for a month! You could just bring in a sandwich or even save some of the leftovers from last night’s dinner and bring them in for your lunch.

You will soon realise the difference between GCSEs and A Levels. No matter how hard you may think GCSEs are at the minute, trust me, you’ll find A Levels a significant amount harder. But you will be fine, as long as you put the work in. So take advantage of your free periods! I would advise you against spending all your free time sitting around with your friends, instead just go to the library or somewhere where you can get some homework/extra work done. I bet I can guess what you’re all thinking… “How boring!” Right? But if you think about it, that way you’ll have a lot more free time at home to do what you want because you won’t have to do your homework as you’ll have already done it in college!

One of the main things I was worried about before starting college was what clothes I’d wear every day. It’s a daunting thing going from wearing a strict school uniform, to being able to wear your own clothes every day. I wanted to fit in, but didn’t want to be wearing exactly the same as everyone else. And I wanted to look good, but not be too overdressed… or underdressed for that matter. So I thought it was important to go on a shopping spree; I went out and bought lots of new outfits. But it did cost me a lot of money (well, it cost my Mum a lot of money!) Now I’ve realised, nobody really cares what you’re wearing. Everyone is in the same situation so what clothes you wear really isn’t as big a deal as I thought it was. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that nobody will pay any attention to what you’re wearing. You wouldn’t just want to turn up in your pyjamas! But it’s just nowhere near as important as you may think. So don’t do what I did and go out and spend a ridiculous amount of your parent’s money unnecessarily, yes you may want to buy a few essentials but other than that just wear what you feel comfortable in.

If you’re working already or planning on getting a job, just be careful to know what your priorities should be. I understand you may want to work as many hours as you can in order to make as much money as possible, but do try to keep into consideration that college work, for the moment, should be one of your main priorities. Obviously I’m not saying you should put your A-Levels before everything else, I know you all have your own lives, but don’t put everything else before your A-Levels either. If you can’t handle the college work amount due to the fact that you cannot find the time as you’re working the majority of the time – ask for fewer hours! Or you could even quit the job and find one that fits in better with college.

One mistake I am going to admit to making is wasting my free periods. A massive change, which I definitely noticed when I came from secondary school to college, is the freedom. At school, you have people checking up on you 24/7. At the time I found it annoying, it is impossible to get away with missing any of your lessons. But now I’ve realised how much the nagging of the teachers repeatedly saying ‘get to your lesson’ benefited me. Because at college, although you do have to go to all of your lessons, you don’t have anyone nagging you if you’re just hanging around the corridor or just sat in the café. I bet you’re all thinking that sounds great aren’t you? But it really isn’t. Everyone has a number of free periods timetabled around their subjects that they take, what I really would advise you to do is use that time wisely. Do not just hang about the corridor purely because you can, don’t just sit around and chat, make the most of it. It may sound boring, but the best thing to do in your free periods would be to just go to the library and get some work done. At least then you won’t have much work to do at home, as you’d have already done it in your frees, so you’ll have a lot more free time outside of college to do what you like.

College days can be very long. For me, they can be up to almost 12 hours. If I have a full day I have to get up at 6am to leave the house at 7.10, get to the bus stop for 7.20, get on the bus around 7.22, get off in town at about 8 and walk to the bus station, get on the second bus which goes from town to college at about 8.05 and be in college ready to start my lesson at 8.55. Then, when college finally ends at 4, I have to do the exact same in reverse. Though, this can take even longer as everyone from college is trying to get on the bus at 4 so sometimes you have to wait for a few full buses to drive past before you can actually get on. So I usually get on the bus about 4.30, get to town just after 5 then have to get on the bus to go home which I get off by my house, finally I have to walk home from the bus stop and I arrive home just after 6pm. So as you can tell, college days can be extremely long and tiring. So it really does pay off to get a good night’s sleep! I doubt many of you could do 5 12 hour days a week with minimal sleep. I know it sounds like I am just going on about getting enough sleep, as if you haven’t heard it enough, but you really should try to get a decent amount of sleep each night before college. Of course I am not saying you have to be in bed by 8pm every night, but just try not to stay up until the early hours of every morning just led in bed on your phone – you’ll regret it in the morning! (Trust me, I’ve been there).

Please feel free to ask me now if any of you have any questions which you’d like me to answer.

Thank you.