I messed up my AS levels.

Hey I'm Chris, 17 years old.
I've always tried to view myself as having a reasonable degree of intelligence. In GCSE's I attained -alright- grades and managed 2A*s and 10As. This allowed me to move from my local comprehensive into a prestigious grammar school.
This year, however I have been nothing short of a lazy procrastinator. Despite this, I was still hugely surprised by my grades and attained BCDE. I took Music, Politics, History and Biology.

Music was the subject which truly surprised me the most. I was told by my teacher that I had attained 'in the 50s/60s' for my performance coursework, had a very good harmony composition and that I should expect an A if the exam went well. The exam did go well, I got a high A in it, but I got C and D for both coursework pieces which drug me down to a B.

Politics, I'd been doing well in all year, A's all around with the occasional B even without revision in all landmarks. However I got a wapping D in the first module, and then a B, a couple of marks off of an A in the second. In that first modular exam I do remember that my time management was really poor.

History (OCR), similarly I was confident with. I'd been on the A/B borderline for the entire year. Again fort the first module I messed up, got an E. However I was expecting this. The exam went terribly. My time management was off, I was in sweats and the sources hit me pretty hard. The second exam I got the same UMS as in the second politics, just a couple off an A.

And then Biology...
I've been struggling with it all year as it hasn't really been my thing. Having to work extra hours and poor all my independent money on tutoring clearly didn't help either. This was potentially my problem, that I contributed far too much time to a subject which was indeed a lost cause for me. A mistake to have chosen. Had I dedicated my time that little bit more to the other three subjects that I am truly good at, maybe a reasonable AAA-U/E could have occurred and I would have left results day feeling that little bit better.

My school is keeping me, however I am going to be 'monitored'. I am taking a GAP year and retaking the poorer modules next summer as well as getting the slightly better ones remarked. If there is anybody who could offer me any advise, wisdom or experience into how I can attain at the very least AAB next year, I would be truly grateful. I have the energy and the motivation now to welcome results day 2016 with open arms, knowing I did everything I could to get the grades I need to. I just need to begin the journey to that, and begin it quickly.

I got AABE myself - politics, law, history and chemistry.

Politics I was on edexcel and history I was on OCR.
The best advice I can give:
- Time management is something definitely worth practising and keeping to. Do past paper questions
- Look at what the examiner wants. Write your answer then go through the markscheme. It's great that you're getting high grades in one unit, but it's even better to average out or do better in both, of course
- When did you start revising and how much did you revise?
- Find a method of revision that works for you. For me, it's rewriting and condensing my notes as a PowerPoint. I then print it off and highlight and annotate
- If you know you particularly struggle with one part of the exam, such as sources, make sure you practise these with your tutor and get them to mark them and explain where you could improve. Maybe even request your paper back and see where you went wrong if you were confident before

Sorry I couldn't be more useful - but hope some of this helps. Message me if you want!

Good luck for next year (:

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Hey Alice! Thanks for your really quick response!
Congrats on the grades!
I was on Edexcel for Politics as well, alongside OCR history.

Thanks so much for your advise. I love the powerpoint idea, I did that for a number of GCSEs and I remember that really helping.
Revision was definitely a problem for me, the entire mental state of mind to take in information and have long periods of time studying was borderline -excruciatingly- difficult for me. To this point, I'm not sure why - I've never had that problem before. So yeah, revision was inconsistent for me from the start.
I'm going to start revising from the very beginning this year. Everyday a little bit and ramp it up as the year progresses, especially as I have to do AS alongside A2. Something no school student would ever would ever want to begin to think about doing in their whole academic career. I will definitely message you!