Studying through grief
Idk if this is the right place to post so kindly advice me if not.
My cousin died yesterday. It was unexpected and under pretty horrendous circumstances, needless to say my whole family is STRUGGLING. Including me, who is in the middle of my A2 exams. I’ve done three already but I have 5 more within the next couple of weeks and I don’t know what to do. A lot of my learning comes from the week or two before the exams, that’s how i’ve always been and it always works for me. But now I’m stuck in a void and whenever I try to study my mind just wonders and I break down into tears. I just can’t focus. My next exam is in 5 days, so I don’t have time to “ease back into it” like everyone says online to grieving students.
I’m predicted A*, A, A but I have an offer for a Uni at B, B, C, and I wouldn’t be that upset to take it over my higher offer. But I know that I can do so much better than that and I want to so badly. Everyone says as long as you’ve done your best, well I KNOW my best is A’s at least, so I will be devastated if my work thus far doesn’t pay off.
I know repeating them next year is always an option but that seems pointless if i get into uni with the lower grades anyway, it’s just my own disappointment with myself.
Unless I totally fail of course.
How do I get over this, how am I supposed to just return to working like nothing happened, study without imagining the accident and how much my family is suffering.
What do I do.
My cousin died yesterday. It was unexpected and under pretty horrendous circumstances, needless to say my whole family is STRUGGLING. Including me, who is in the middle of my A2 exams. I’ve done three already but I have 5 more within the next couple of weeks and I don’t know what to do. A lot of my learning comes from the week or two before the exams, that’s how i’ve always been and it always works for me. But now I’m stuck in a void and whenever I try to study my mind just wonders and I break down into tears. I just can’t focus. My next exam is in 5 days, so I don’t have time to “ease back into it” like everyone says online to grieving students.
I’m predicted A*, A, A but I have an offer for a Uni at B, B, C, and I wouldn’t be that upset to take it over my higher offer. But I know that I can do so much better than that and I want to so badly. Everyone says as long as you’ve done your best, well I KNOW my best is A’s at least, so I will be devastated if my work thus far doesn’t pay off.
I know repeating them next year is always an option but that seems pointless if i get into uni with the lower grades anyway, it’s just my own disappointment with myself.
Unless I totally fail of course.
How do I get over this, how am I supposed to just return to working like nothing happened, study without imagining the accident and how much my family is suffering.
What do I do.
Original post by Rhiiann
Idk if this is the right place to post so kindly advice me if not.
My cousin died yesterday. It was unexpected and under pretty horrendous circumstances, needless to say my whole family is STRUGGLING. Including me, who is in the middle of my A2 exams. I’ve done three already but I have 5 more within the next couple of weeks and I don’t know what to do. A lot of my learning comes from the week or two before the exams, that’s how i’ve always been and it always works for me. But now I’m stuck in a void and whenever I try to study my mind just wonders and I break down into tears. I just can’t focus. My next exam is in 5 days, so I don’t have time to “ease back into it” like everyone says online to grieving students.
I’m predicted A*, A, A but I have an offer for a Uni at B, B, C, and I wouldn’t be that upset to take it over my higher offer. But I know that I can do so much better than that and I want to so badly. Everyone says as long as you’ve done your best, well I KNOW my best is A’s at least, so I will be devastated if my work thus far doesn’t pay off.
I know repeating them next year is always an option but that seems pointless if i get into uni with the lower grades anyway, it’s just my own disappointment with myself.
Unless I totally fail of course.
How do I get over this, how am I supposed to just return to working like nothing happened, study without imagining the accident and how much my family is suffering.
What do I do.
My cousin died yesterday. It was unexpected and under pretty horrendous circumstances, needless to say my whole family is STRUGGLING. Including me, who is in the middle of my A2 exams. I’ve done three already but I have 5 more within the next couple of weeks and I don’t know what to do. A lot of my learning comes from the week or two before the exams, that’s how i’ve always been and it always works for me. But now I’m stuck in a void and whenever I try to study my mind just wonders and I break down into tears. I just can’t focus. My next exam is in 5 days, so I don’t have time to “ease back into it” like everyone says online to grieving students.
I’m predicted A*, A, A but I have an offer for a Uni at B, B, C, and I wouldn’t be that upset to take it over my higher offer. But I know that I can do so much better than that and I want to so badly. Everyone says as long as you’ve done your best, well I KNOW my best is A’s at least, so I will be devastated if my work thus far doesn’t pay off.
I know repeating them next year is always an option but that seems pointless if i get into uni with the lower grades anyway, it’s just my own disappointment with myself.
Unless I totally fail of course.
How do I get over this, how am I supposed to just return to working like nothing happened, study without imagining the accident and how much my family is suffering.
What do I do.
You absolutely need to tell your school / college what happened and have them request "special consideration" from your exam board.
As explained here, "Special consideration is given to a candidate who has temporarily experienced illness, injury or some other event outside of their control at the time of the assessment. It is applied when the issue or event has had, or is reasonably likely to have had, a material effect on a candidate’s ability to take an assessment or demonstrate his or her normal level of attainment in an assessment."
This clearly applies to you. The special consideration process can make minor adjustments to the mark you are awarded in an attempt offset the impact your cousin's death will have on your exam performance. (Note that revision is not covered - it's trying to mitigate how your performance on the day might be impacted.)
There are guidelines within the document linked to above. The most applicable would seem to be, "very recent death of member of extended family", where "very recent" is defined as "within one month of the examination(s) taking place". The suggested adjustment for that scenario is 4%. That might not sound like much, but it could be enough to push you up a grade.
What has just happened is awful - you need to do everything you can to ensure it doesn't derail things for you.
(edited 11 months ago)
Original post by DataVenia
You absolutely need to tell your school / college what happened and have them request "special consideration" from your exam board.
As explained here, "Special consideration is given to a candidate who has temporarily experienced illness, injury or some other event outside of their control at the time of the assessment. It is applied when the issue or event has had, or is reasonably likely to have had, a material effect on a candidate’s ability to take an assessment or demonstrate his or her normal level of attainment in an assessment."
This clearly applies to you. The special consideration process can make minor adjustments to the mark you are awarded in an attempt offset the impact your cousin's death will have on your exam performance. (Note that revision is not covered - it's trying to mitigate how your performance on the day might be impacted.)
There are guidelines within the document linked to above. The most applicable would seem to be, "very recent death of member of extended family", where "very recent" is defined as "within one month of the examination(s) taking place". The suggested adjustment for that scenario is 4%. That might not sound like much, but it could be enough to push you up a grade.
What has just happened is awful - you need to do everything you can to ensure it doesn't derail things for you.
As explained here, "Special consideration is given to a candidate who has temporarily experienced illness, injury or some other event outside of their control at the time of the assessment. It is applied when the issue or event has had, or is reasonably likely to have had, a material effect on a candidate’s ability to take an assessment or demonstrate his or her normal level of attainment in an assessment."
This clearly applies to you. The special consideration process can make minor adjustments to the mark you are awarded in an attempt offset the impact your cousin's death will have on your exam performance. (Note that revision is not covered - it's trying to mitigate how your performance on the day might be impacted.)
There are guidelines within the document linked to above. The most applicable would seem to be, "very recent death of member of extended family", where "very recent" is defined as "within one month of the examination(s) taking place". The suggested adjustment for that scenario is 4%. That might not sound like much, but it could be enough to push you up a grade.
What has just happened is awful - you need to do everything you can to ensure it doesn't derail things for you.
Thank you, I will definitely do that
Hi. Firstly how are you? That sounds stressful and your going through a lot. Dealing with death, then that too being unexpected is hard with your exams makes this more difficult. It's therefore natural your feeling the way you are.
Definitely agree with the above - mention it to your school, they can apply for the special consideration for you and may also be able to support with the undertaking exam procedure ie maybe give you breaks. I went through a death very close to my ALevel exams, again maybe came sooner then expected.
In terms of studying grades. You can only do your best given your circumstances. Yes, your best may be A but if you don't achieve this then don't be too hard on yourself because you were going through a rough time ie let's say someone's best revision is doing 5 hours meaningful revision a day you can't then almost expect them to be able to do 5 hours meaningful revision if they were in your same situation.
Try and take things slowly as in don't be too to hard on yourself. Maybe reduce the study time slightly make it in shorter bursts. Accurately plan out what you want to achieve IE : in this half an hour i want to revise / look over Respiration as a topic out of random , take a break, then in the next half an hour I'm going to do exam questions related to respiration. So essentially you have a clear target of what you want to achieve but it's shorter time which mat help. Ensure your plan tine in the day maybe more then once especially at the moment to have "me time " where if you need to cry then cry do whatever to help you deal with the loss.
Keep talking!
Definitely agree with the above - mention it to your school, they can apply for the special consideration for you and may also be able to support with the undertaking exam procedure ie maybe give you breaks. I went through a death very close to my ALevel exams, again maybe came sooner then expected.
In terms of studying grades. You can only do your best given your circumstances. Yes, your best may be A but if you don't achieve this then don't be too hard on yourself because you were going through a rough time ie let's say someone's best revision is doing 5 hours meaningful revision a day you can't then almost expect them to be able to do 5 hours meaningful revision if they were in your same situation.
Try and take things slowly as in don't be too to hard on yourself. Maybe reduce the study time slightly make it in shorter bursts. Accurately plan out what you want to achieve IE : in this half an hour i want to revise / look over Respiration as a topic out of random , take a break, then in the next half an hour I'm going to do exam questions related to respiration. So essentially you have a clear target of what you want to achieve but it's shorter time which mat help. Ensure your plan tine in the day maybe more then once especially at the moment to have "me time " where if you need to cry then cry do whatever to help you deal with the loss.
Keep talking!
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