• Question: did you find your a-level choices difficult to pass?

    Asked by anon-326072 to David on 17 May 2022.
    • Photo: David MacLean

      David MacLean answered on 17 May 2022:

      Hi Macey!

      I find that I’m quite good at science so they weren’t too bad, although I did need to revise a hell of a lot for them. I am terrible at English, so that one was a real tough one. I don’t know how your grading system works (in Scotland we have different names and different scales) but I got a C in English and that’s the lowest pass you can get. I was genuinely over the moon with my pass in English and that pass made me happier than any of my A’s in other subjects. So really, it’s all about how your brain is wired and what you are good at. I’m good a maths and horrible at a lot of other subjects!

      Physics is a tough subject for a lot of people but it might be “easy” for some students. Art is impossible for me (I was actually told by my teacher I wasn’t allowed to take it into A-levels because I was that bad), but for some other students, it was easy. Your subjects at school are really just letting you try a range of topics and find which ones you enjoy or are best at.

      Thanks a lot for the question Macey 🙂

Comments

  • Photo: Emer

    Emer commented on :

    Funnily enough given that my PhD focuses on Medical Physics the A-level I struggled most with out of Maths, Biology, Physics and English was Physics; I found it hard to stay engaged when going over mechanics etc because it just wasn’t what I was interested in.

    The great thing about science as a career is that the further along you go the more specialised you can become, and while background knowledge is always useful you can gradually work more and more on the things you like and don’t have to sweat the stuff you’re not into anymore. So definitely don’t get disheartened if there are parts of your course that you or anyone else reading this don’t enjoy, and don’t let it put you off considering taking it onto University or a career if there are other parts that you love.

  • Photo: Karin

    Karin commented on :

    I found my A Levels really stressful and hard. I studied maths, biology, german and chemistry. In the end, I think it was the pressure to get the grades to match my offer that made it seem difficult, and I was at a school where only a few people applied for medicine which meant it was difficult to get help for that. My classes were all quite big so it meant having to find your own way to learn a lot of the time. My teachers did show us different ways to learn though, and that has been useful to this day. If your teachers do any study skills sessions, definitely go along! The most useful ones in my school were from my history department, even though I didn’t study history at A Level, so it doesn’t even have to be in your subjects.
    In the end, it was actually really useful to learn early on ‘how’ to learn, because I realised at university that no matter how hard or easy people found school exams, we were all in the same boat at university, all learning new stuff together.