When people think of school, learning springs to mind. If it doesn’t, you should probably worry.
But there’s a lot more to it than that. You’ll make some amazing friends and hopefully enjoy it. As well as this, you’ll finally be able to develop communication and people skills – arguably just as important as the hallowed grades you’ll be working for!
GCSE
It all starts when you hit GCSE level. Now that you’re taking some subjects that you chose, you’ll likely be with different people than you’re used to (pro tip: it’s obvious, but don’t do something because someone else is. That’s a wasted qualification). They might not be your friends and you might not even like them. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with them for the next two years. So it’s time to make friends, or at least be “frenemies”.
Sixth form
Needless to say, this only intensifies at sixth form level: now every subject is a choice. At this point, you’ll likely start to develop a much better rapport with teachers as well – after all, they’re going to assume you like the subject, or you wouldn’t be there. Try to get along with them: this is really important in coursework-based subjects, where they can choose to be more or less helpful. I know they’re teachers, but if you act like you don’t want to learn, why should they help you?
Outside the classroom
And that’s just in the classroom. Roles like prefect, house captain and head boy or girl can help develop your communication skills massively – I realise the latter two are for a finite amount of people, but even running for the position can boost your confidence. Not to mention that there’s a house captain for just about every category and the team surrounding the head boy and girl is pretty big.
Even if you’ve never thought about doing something like this before, you should. It’ll help set you up for office work – should you ever lead a team in any context, you’ll be working with them as well as your superiors and other team leaders. The parallels between school and work are actually much more numerous than most people realise, so take advantage of it!
School can and is so much more than a simple learning exercise. You might leave loathing everyone, or you might wish you never had to leave. But either way, try to leave with more than grades. You might even end up looking back on it with love, regardless of how you felt about it at the time. You never know how you’ll impress someone, and house music captain or head boy could be it!
Do you think school is about more than just grades? Let us know in the comments below.
Photo: alamosbasement / Flickr
Warwick Editor for Career Camels and Deputy Comment Editor for The Boar.
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