You sit on a stool in the corner of the sports hall and try not to fall asleep. That’s the job of an A-Level exam invigilator.

I had a brief stint during my masters where I was a sort of college counsellor / cheermeister for some students who were reportedly similar to how I had been as a student at that college several years earlier. It was my job to meet a couple times a week with some students who were struggling to tap into the intrinsic motivation they needed to find in order to persist and give their best as they approached the end of the two year festival of memorisation we call ‘sixth form college’.

A couple of the students reminded me quite vividly of myself, they knew they were smart, they just didn’t want to have to show it. They were likely afraid too - as I was - afraid to really try because so long as they didn’t, their story about themselves wouldn’t be damaged.

But one student* wasn’t like that, and her experience left me saddened by the way we measure our young people and inspired by her diligence and strength of character.

I went into our first meeting ready to take the same tack I took with most of the students;
- What do you enjoy outside of college?
- What are your favourite movies?
- What bands are you into?
Maybe in the next session I figured we’d get into why she’d picked her subjects and try to uncover what it was about her way of viewing the world that made her choose whatever subject it was she was now struggling with.

But my new friend, evidently discouraged, wanted to get straight to business;
“I am really trying, I’m studying as much as I can when I am not at my part-time job or looking after my other responsibilities, but I am projected to fail from my mock exam results. What can I do?”

Full disclosure: I didn’t know. I reckoned I could help a young person who wasn’t yet trying to start trying. I didn’t know how to help a young person who was already trying to be able to succeed.

To the drawing board.

I spoke to one of her teachers that week for the subject she was having the hardest time with. We looked at her mock exams, there were some questions where she had just not written very much, just scratching the surface.

We met again,
“Why are you writing so little for some of the big questions?” I asked.
“I’m not sure that what I am writing is right” she replied.

A-Levels today require a young person to demonstrate a set of skills in a way that is entirely removed from any skills you would need in the real world and is set up for those for whom their entire life for two years can be centred entirely around preparation to regurgitate information. I hadn’t realised before I started the role that a students final A-Level exams determine the majority of the students final grade and cover everything from the past two years of study, everything.

For individuals like the young person in front of me, the imminent approach of the finish line of this two year race had left her with one resounding thought screaming in her head as she attempted each and every line - is this the right answer? It’s a scary thought when you see your entire future opening or closing based on that coin flip.

Together we opted for a simple strategy:
WRITE!
We talked about picturing herself needing to put her hand in a bowl of ice at the end of the exam because she had written so much her hand was bruised.

She chose to use the two years of learning as an opportunity to write what she thought. She found a way to reframe what she had been taught from an unscalable wall of information blocking her path to instead being a foundation that afforded her the opportunity to say what she thought about the subjects, thereby not doing a disservice to the great preparation she had done so diligently. Naturally, these weren’t subjects where the answers were ‘71,196’, ‘Louis XVI’ or ‘the limbic system’.

She had tried recalling and bringing forth the right answer from the post-it notes likely plastered around her house. It hadn’t worked because each note that she brought forth in her mind was considered and returned, leaving little on the page.

The day came for the exam she was most worried about and I was one of the invigilators. I stood in my spot and watched as hundreds of students tried to write the answer. I hoped my friend was writing what she thought.

With twenty five minutes remaining of the exam she raised her hand, its for one of two things; the toilet or more sheets of paper because she’d used up the full answer book. I made my way to her seat. She looked up at me beaming an excellent smile, surely excited to put her hand in that bowl of ice.

“More paper please.”

I would commend her to any future employer when she graduates from her first choice university that she of course got into. She was one of many students that it was my great privilege to give the slightest support to for those few months.

*Post was shared with permission from this student.