A Levels. Quantity: one (1). Thankfully.

Do you have a passion for dying inside? Is your goal in life to overwhelm yourself with unmanageably large amounts of work? Do you hate getting eight healthy hours of sleep? Well, look no further! We have just the thing for you: an A Level degree. Who needs professional help anyway?

As soon as you enter this dystopia, you realise that quite a few things have changed: both socially and academically. Firstly, your social circle may completely change. People you didn’t talk to may become your closest friends. The crowd may be completely different from what you have witnessed prior in O-levels. And that’s okay, because it’s almost like a new beginning! Your classes seriously impact who you will be hanging out with, but are not going to be a friendship ending problem. Well, they mostly aren’t.

Secondly, (and this one applies to all those keen students who want to be office bearers), there will be a lot of extracurricular activities, and you will have to take part in most of them. There is. No. Escape. Now, this may prove to be a bit overwhelming, and is not for the faint of heart but there is a little hack – join LACAS debate. It will do you wonders. A word which here means ‘help you learn more about your people-preferences better than before’. Trust me.

Thirdly and lastly, academics. Now this should be your main focus in the two years of A-levels you have, and if it not it should be, or else you will be standing outside the headmaster’s office quite frequently. And for all of you ‘A*’ students heading over from O-levels, just know that those grades do not matter once you choose your subjects in A-levels, because it’s going to be totally different from anything you have ever experienced before. We speak from experience. Really read your books, Umar. You can’t make up Shakespeare. We tried.

Apart from all the hard times you will face, it really is an opportunity to grow and flourish into the field of work you have always wanted to go into.

But I would still rate it a 4/10 —

would not A-levels again.

by Zaman Faraz
Managing Editor