School Section All of this is not to say the sixth year experience was in any way easy. Constantly looming deadlines combined with the relative lack of social interaction to which young people are used often resulted in significant stress. The kind of stress that causes you to freeze up and do nothing at all instead of chipping away at the mountain of work expected of you. I think for me personally, it was the fact that my house was both my school space and my rest space, and it was harder than expected to separate these two worlds in order to achieve any level of focus. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, we did return to school. Teachers eased us in with an introductory set of presentations, offering reassurance for the assessments that would inevitably decide our grades. Yes, while “exams” as we knew them were not to go ahead, the school offered a fair substitute. We would first have practice exams in class to understand our progress, then a week or two later, would return for an in-class assessment conducted under exam conditions. Fortunately for me, all my classes had finished the course while still in lockdown, meaning that all the remaining in-class time we had could be focused on revision. From what I understand, not every pupil was as lucky, with some still learning new information a matter of days before the crucial final assessment. In the end, however, the provisional results provided by the school seem to have pleasantly surprised a large number of pupils, and given them a sense of pride for the work they put in over this trying academic year. Overall, I am immensely proud to have been a part of Aberdeen Grammar School, and the challenges over lockdown have not changed that. Of course, there may be things that could have been handled differently, with the benefit of hindsight, but it was never in doubt that the school always acted in the best interests of safety, wellbeing and quality education. Frankly, I’m happy to have just survived these past 16 months. And so, reader, should you be.
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