What is it like at college?

Hey! Congratulations for going to college soon!

College like is a very exciting place, and the ways it works will differ greatly from one place to another. Where I study, we have to call the teacher by their first name (e.g. no more Miss/Sir, but Mary/Joe/Nate, etc.). There is a lot of independence given, you have to buy your supplies and books (in some cases teachers are very specific as to how they want your notes to be, so, for e.g. if you have to study 6 sections in your years of college for subject X, than the teacher may want you to have 6 separate binders. other teachers may not care at all about note taking, but they may want you to purchase XYZ book to revise from (or borrow from the library). If you study English Literature, than you will have to purchase all texts, but sometimes your college will offer them at a very small price (e.g. Hamlet was £1 for us).

Teachers do mark and check your work, and you should not be surprised if you will have huge amounts of individual work to do. A Levels and BTECs (even more so than A Levels) were designed for you to conduct most work outside class, thus, you may be expected to do lesson note taking and reading at home which will be just briefly than explained in class, you will have to write essays/coursework (usually 1500 words for big essays and 3500 for coursework). Still, don't feel scared by it, the work level happens gradually, you will not even realise when you went from a 1 page essay to being able to write 6 pages ones. Also, heavy work is really only felt in second year.

On an important note, do know that you have to do the majority of you university preparation in Year 12, so apply for work experience and university programmes until January (since many have January deadlines).

On another side note, you have little amounts of lesson time (only 4.5 hours/subject) which means that even with homeworks and stuff you still have a lot of times to attend clubs (debating/leadership/drama/etc) and still have free time. At my college we have a Starbucks, gym and a huge library, so there is always stuff that you can do if you don't want to go home (which you can do whenever you want (if out of lesson).

I hope I've helped you!

OMG thank you so much! Yes u have helped me a lot! And haha sounds fun! Nice! So now I can use my own notebooks haha. But do the teachers look through ur notes?

Nope, they only glance over to see if you took them if it was for homework. The may look at them if you had to do an exam timed question an they want to mark it. Otherwise, go wild with them. I like writing mine on paper, but some people like to type theirs on a laptop (just check with your teacher first if that's okay with them, our ones are pretty chill as long as you send them the work they need to mark on email or print it for them before you leave the class).

Have you decided what you wish to study?

OMG thank you so much! Yes u have helped me a lot! And haha sounds fun! Nice! So now I can use my own notebooks haha. But do the teachers look through ur notes?

It will vary between colleges. Yes, you do need to bring your own paper for notes. The teacher may occasionally check over notes, but generally the ethos is "your future, you do whatever you need to make it happen". A lot of our homework is self-marked - the teachers just check that it's all done. There's more independence and in some ways it's more informal, but if you don't put in the work, it's hard to get back on track.