GCSE/A Level and future concerns.

Due to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression I was absent from the last two or so years of secondary school. I didn't sit my GCSE exams and I am currently in a pretty terrible position and have essentially fallen through the cracks of education. I have seen a local authority educational support worker person, numerous times, and visited various places including my local college. She hasn't exactly detailed to me specific routes on what I can do to fix my future. She continuously mentions a lot of functional skills and vocational-related routes, of which I am not interested in and not suited for. In school I was fairly academic and worked my hardest until I stopped attending school and subsequently had my education and my future destroyed, by my own fault, and by the fault of my mental health. I had hoped to one day attend university and be the first in my family to do so, writing this I am seventeen years old, other people my age have completed their first year of A-Levels and are half way through their second year, and have applied for universities. People with their futures planned and understood makes my mental healthy extremely worse and my unknown future fills me with dread, and worry. I would like to have been with these people too, but a lot of things hold me back.

I visited my local college, and was considering a course for video game design, despite my heart generally not being in it. My college doesn't hold a lot of courses that I could do or be interested in, a lot of it is vocational and industry related. However I visited late in the year and the students were sitting their exams. By the time I may go to college in september of this year, everyone I know will be off to university, and I'll be alone in a college of people I don't know, assuming I even go of course, and I don't know if that is good or bad. But even with people I recognise there, it's still an extremely large building and terrifies me beyond comprehension, due to the amount of people there. And it does not bode well for my severe anxiety. I'm worried about the future, and always wanted to achieve, but now with no qualifications, and mental health issues, I don't know what I am going to do.

Reply 1

fxlloutboyy

You don't need a physical college to do what you want to do.
Take this year and sit GCSES (Maths, English and Science as a minimum) by self teaching and finding a centre that will allow you to sit the exams. You could sit them in 2017 if you felt like you could learn the content that quickly or be safe and sit them in 2018.
You could learn 3 subjects of AS Content alongside your gcses to sit the exam (if required) in 2018. Since most a levels now are linear you may not have to. You could then join a sixth form college into the second year, or first year if you wanted to go over the AS content. You'd do the classes for A2 and apply for university with everyone else :smile: