Take a deep breath... (Choosing A-Levels in general)

Member Name: spacelamb

Product:	Choosing A-Levels in general
Date:	12/03/01 (145 review reads)
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When you start university, there is generally some kind of disco laid on in the first week to allow all the newies to mingle. During the course of this event you will be asked four questions without cease:

What's your name?
Where are you from?
Which course are you doing?
What A-levels did you take?

Nobody is remotely interested in your answer by the way, and will have forgotten the names of all but the most fanciable and eccentric characters by the following morning. There was a point somewhere here related to choosing A-levels...ah yes.

This is one of only TWO situations where your A-level choices will actually matter. The first situation is if you are training for a very specific job - for example if you plan to become a doctor, a science background may prove more useful than most other things. The second situation is the aforementioned knees-up. You will sound a lot more interesting if you have A-levels in Lion Taming, Helicopter Studies and Gold Digging than say, English, French and History. Sorry, but it's true.

I'm (partially) joking of course. I remember fretting for weeks over my subject choices only to realise, as soon as I started in the sixth form, that they don't really matter much (unless as I said you have very definite ideas about your career path).

If you achieve good grades at the end of your two years, a university or employer will be suitably impressed. It shows sustained commitment and an ability to produce results. That's what important.

A-levels are the first academic level at which students are not forced to study by tutors. They will guide you obviously, but at seventeen you are not obliged to be in school. In theory at least, you are there because you want to be. By that logic, the best subjects to study are those that you enjoy and are good at. You will have to do quite a lot of work off your own back, so you really need to relish the task of four hours
of research into an obscure Spanish artist (or whatever), or you'll end up resenting the time you're 'wasting' on work when you could be out doing something fun.

The other thing to remember is that you generally have up to two months to change your mind. Tutors are sympathetic to your needs and are generally accommodating. Although the prospect of catching up on the missed work can be daunting, it is much better in the long run to drop a subject that doesn’t feel right and suffer a couple of weeks of extra note-making, than have to endure two years (it’s a long time!) of a subject you hate.

This might sound really obvious (and possibly patronising - sorry), but the worst thing you can do is choose a subject because your friends are doing it. Often this doesn't even happen consciously. During your compulsory school years you have the security of being in a defined 'form' where all the pupils know each other - at A-level you will be in different study groups, so may even be separated from friends who are taking exactly the same subjects as you. My A-level years were some of the best of my life for finding out who I was, and for meeting loads of new people - you'll probably find that you branch away from old mates anyway - and I mean that in a good way, not that you're going to have a netball court duel or anything.

I’m not trying to trivialise A-level choices – they do need a good deal of consideration. But it’s not the end of the world if you choose wrongly and they are certainly not worth losing sleep over. And finally: for your first-year uni shindig try the following alternative questions to get you remembered:

EastEnders or Coronation Street?
Do you want to see my lizard collection? (Careful with this one, you can come off as a bit strange)
Is that your real hair?

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