How stressful is year 10?

I've finished year 9 and I feel like I haven't prepared myself enough to go into year 10. I get nervous just thinking about year 10 and the mocks that will come. Is my anxiety about entering year 10 valid or am I overthinking it?

Reply 1

MindMax2000

Universities Forum Helper

21

Original post by RedForestSprite

I've finished year 9 and I feel like I haven't prepared myself enough to go into year 10. I get nervous just thinking about year 10 and the mocks that will come. Is my anxiety about entering year 10 valid or am I overthinking it?

Well I would rather be a little worried than being complacent.

My Year 10 was a bit of a step up from Year 9, but then again I was studying a lot of the time, so there wasn't that much difference. What kind of stressed me out a bit was that I wanted certain grades and I wished I spent more time preparing than just letting it slide a bit and just working hard.

In practice though, most people got through things fine. If you want to get straight 9s though, you're right to be a little worried.

What I wished that I had done when I was going through Year 10 is adopting the right study strategies to get the grades that I wanted, as well as picking some subjects over others. If you have the right study strategies that work for you, you should be fine in most cases.
If you want a list of videos on advice on getting the right study strategies, let me know (although you could easily search on Google or YouTube for these).

You would be required to do pieces of coursework in the Autumn term that would count towards your final grade in the subjects. If you want to prepare for that, then by all means.

What I strongly recommend you do is to look at the entry requirements for the subjects you want to do A Levels or IB in at the specific college that you want to go to. These entry requirements are arbitrarily set by the colleges (they are not required by the exam boards - don't ask), but they do matter if you intend to apply to those colleges. I would also pay attention to the GCSE requirements for the specific degrees that you want to do, especially if the degrees are at top end universities (most care about English Language and Maths, but some course do look at your other subjects or the whole range as well - competitive courses and they use GCSEs as indication of what your A Level grades will be; relevant for subjects like medicine, dentistry, or vetinary science).

If the above doesn't apply that much, I would take a bit of a breather.

Reply 2

username6317368

11

Original post by RedForestSprite

I've finished year 9 and I feel like I haven't prepared myself enough to go into year 10. I get nervous just thinking about year 10 and the mocks that will come. Is my anxiety about entering year 10 valid or am I overthinking it?

You’re overthinking it. I’ve just finished Year 10, state school, and the atmosphere wasn’t any different; there was no additional stress and there were no additional demands.

However, I would recommend looking into HOW to revise, simply to get ahead.

(edited 8 months ago)

Reply 3

RedForestSprite

OP

4

Original post by MindMax2000

Well I would rather be a little worried than being complacent.

My Year 10 was a bit of a step up from Year 9, but then again I was studying a lot of the time, so there wasn't that much difference. What kind of stressed me out a bit was that I wanted certain grades and I wished I spent more time preparing than just letting it slide a bit and just working hard.

In practice though, most people got through things fine. If you want to get straight 9s though, you're right to be a little worried.

What I wished that I had done when I was going through Year 10 is adopting the right study strategies to get the grades that I wanted, as well as picking some subjects over others. If you have the right study strategies that work for you, you should be fine in most cases.
If you want a list of videos on advice on getting the right study strategies, let me know (although you could easily search on Google or YouTube for these).

You would be required to do pieces of coursework in the Autumn term that would count towards your final grade in the subjects. If you want to prepare for that, then by all means.

What I strongly recommend you do is to look at the entry requirements for the subjects you want to do A Levels or IB in at the specific college that you want to go to. These entry requirements are arbitrarily set by the colleges (they are not required by the exam boards - don't ask), but they do matter if you intend to apply to those colleges. I would also pay attention to the GCSE requirements for the specific degrees that you want to do, especially if the degrees are at top end universities (most care about English Language and Maths, but some course do look at your other subjects or the whole range as well - competitive courses and they use GCSEs as indication of what your A Level grades will be; relevant for subjects like medicine, dentistry, or vetinary science).

If the above doesn't apply that much, I would take a bit of a breather.

Thank you so much for the advice! I'm in year ten now but I still can't wrap my head around how to revise 😕. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Reply 4

*LifeHappens*

12

Original post by RedForestSprite

Thank you so much for the advice! I'm in year ten now but I still can't wrap my head around how to revise 😕. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hi, I'm in year 10 now and I understand where you're coming from
Here are some general tips for revision:
- If you're going through a topic in a lesson and can't understand it even with the teacher's help, afterschool you could watch a video explanation/flip through a revision guide and maybe make a note of what you were able to understand from it
- If you feel disorganised with your revision notes/flashcards, you can sort them into folders or put them with the relevant revision guide for that subject
- If you don't know where to start for revising for a test, start by watching a video on that topic (like freesciencelessons), look at any revision guide if you have one for that subject and have a look at the specification for that topic too so you can see exactly what you need to know - you can make any notes based on that (but don't go over one/two pages, because the notes must be summarised); you can then go through practice questions like on PMT or MME revise and see which bits you understood and applied well and which bits you didn't
- If you're revising for multiple subjects, you could make a to-do list of everything you intend to get done and you can make a timetable including that
- For science in particular, I found that freesciencelessons and cognito really helped me - as well as PMT and MME revise for exam-style/past paper questions; don't forget to revise practicals and equations as those nearly always come up
- For maths in particular, gcse maths tutor really helped me as well as maths genie and past papers; if there are any equations you need to learn for that topic, make sure you learn them!
- For english in particular, if you're struggling to write an essay, don't forget to mention context (what was happening during the time the text/poem was written), themes (main ideas), language techniques (+ your inference/effect on the reader), structure/form (the main layout) + if you mention a quote don't forget to zoom in on one word and discuss your inferences/effects on the reader for that

Please don't stress yourself out too much, because you will be given plenty of help and advice over the next couple of years, meaning that you'll be prepared by the time the exams come. If you're feeling overwhelmed at any point, take a break and come back to the topic later once you're ready for it.

Good luck! :smile: