unrealistic expectations at GCSE

does anyone else feel like there are so many unrealistic expectations at gcse? how are we supposed to manage hobbies, social life, revision, family, sleep, and maybe even a job, all at once? how do some people manage to get all 9s - whether through hard work of revising for HOURS at a time every day (props to you who do that, it’s insane, keep up the good work) or simply having a blessed brain where you just sit the exam with little-to-none revision done. i know someone who never revises at all and got a grade 8 in one of their subjects. how do people do this? not to mention the amount of people on this website which are predicted/have achieved ‚all 9s’. maybe its a bit of jealousy and burnout speaking but i genuinely need to know- how is this done? also i feel like GCSEs are very much pay to win or the other option is giving up all your time and good mental health for high numbers on a sheet of paper. i dont know, all the quality ready-made resources now are behind paywalls and as a yr11 i really do not have the time to create resources right now. Ive been told by multiple people that GCSEs are stressed about WAY too much and that they aren’t that big of a deal and I honestly was fine with sitting mock exams in yr9 and 10 but now, in my half term, im sobbing and thinking im a failure for not doing as much revision as i feel like i should be doing. sorry about the rant!

Reply 1

WHO????

Original post

by Anonymous

It gets better as you go through the year. It does seem like a lot at first but you need to just revise topic by topic and towards the end you will realise you begin to know more and more and hence, revision becomes easier and more manageable. Tbh, I know people who got high grades and don't do that much revision, its more about revising what you need and don't know rather than everything at once.
Once you have revised most of the content just look through past papers, I mean with GCSEs the questions are similar each years and for some subjects just familiarise yourself with the mark scheme and what words it wants, so sometimes even if you don't really understand the content but you have seen the question and the answers enough times to be able to write what is required to gain the marks ( e.g. for the sciences, you pretty much know what comes up every year).
Some of my GCSEs required coursework which as long as you work properly on you should get a good mark that relieves the stress for the written sections. You need to remember GCSEs are not the end all, as long as you get to college you need its fine, you can definitely get good grades without giving up all your time and stress too much (provided you didn't take art, if you did like I did, then yeah that's most of your free time gone.).