This is a long one, and I apologise but please bear with me
I've just started the second year of my GCSEs. I'm doing 11.5 GCSEs currently, 10.5 if I were to drop History. I love learning the content in history, but honestly there's no way I could remember the vast majority of it for an exam, and just thinking about it stresses me out. I'm terrible at exams where I have to write a lot of information quickly. Terrible. (though coursework always pulls me up). When it comes to revising it, it's a massive amount of revision for one grade and I'm just not sure the stress will be worth it. I took the maximum number of GCSEs available to me, and my mum thinks I'm fully capable of doing them all and getting good grades. And I do get good grades, but at what cost? Currently I'm paying with having hardly any time to myself to do things I really enjoy, and being constantly tired from having so much homework. It's too much, but my mum thinks I can do everything (I can't, and I'm totally okay with that.), and I hate how she has an automatic expectation for me to do well.
But I have a few side questions:
Is 10.5 GCSEs enough? I'm sure it is, but still...
Also, is History a bad one to drop? I'm worried employers might see it as being a good one to have, and also without it I haven't really got much in terms of, whatdya call it, "arty"/not science-y subjects. And being able to analyse sources and all that. I feel like it sounds a good thing to have.
In the end, it's just too much work. I can't do this. And how do I help make my mum understand this? We barely talk so I don't know how to explain it to her with all the details of a declining mental state, properly without getting angry / overly emotional, and she thinks I'm amazing at everything. I'm not, mum, I just work hard enough to make it look that way. I've been getting so little sleep recently due to all the homework from different subjects, but my mum says I can't drop it until at least mid-October. I don't think I can make it till then.