Essay on challenges in this school Year

IGCSE is a completely new course program using specific styles of teaching and studying that I
have never experienced before. It helps prepare students for further studies in A & AS levels in
the future and university studies if needed. It is a difficult course to take, especially when I
choose 1st Language English instead of 2nd Language English and Triple Science instead of
Coordinated Science. Some subjects in the iGCSE course are more challenging than others but
all of them still require much care and hard work to be put into. Throughout this course, there are
many types and aspects of challenges such as time, motivation, intelligence and etc. but I think
time is going to be the most dominant main difficulty I will be facing throughout this whole year.

In year 8 International, Business Studies and Triple Science were non-existent, the only time I
heard if these two subjects were from the times I overheard iGCSE students talking about it.
Now, I have to adapt and work extra-hard on these two subjects as they are new. It doesn’t
matter how intelligent or hard working you are, you need to adapt to the new subjects to be able
to gain good progress in them. Of course, being intelligent and hardworking would help or
contribute to you achieving your best in subjects. Adapting to the new course is going to take
some time for me to be able to settle in. On the journey of settling in, I have to put more effort
and focus on studying so I can get myself into the habit of it, games and football will be kept
aside in the adapting process to ensure that I can fully get used to what it is like to be in iGCSE.
Chemistry in Triple Science is the hardest in all the sciences as it will take me a lot of time to
figure out chemical formulae and I have a hard time remembering them. The reason it is called
Triple Science is because it is a higher level of Science going in depth in the details of the
subject; to be able to do so, it needs to be divided into three main subjects: Biology, Chemistry
and Physics. Because of all the subject division in science, the classwork and coursework has
tripled. Business being a completely new subject that I have not prepare for at all. My first
impression of it was lots of new vocabulary and terminology that I need to study and take pop
quizzes on.

The next main issue I have for the year is time. “Time is free but it is priceless. You can’t own it,
but you can use it. You can’t keep it but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get
it back.” A quote by Harvey Mackay. When Harvey Mackay wrote this quote, his message to
anyone reading it is very clear: Time cannot be wasted, you need to use every bit of it as
efficiently as possible. This year I need to manage my time and schedule carefully to
accommodate these new changes that will also impact my daily life. A mountain of homework
every weekend will obviously mean I would have to cancel movie sessions, football training and
other random stupid typical teenager waste of time. School work takes priority above all other
things, I have to change my schedule and way of life so that I will be able to fit enough time to
prioritize schoolwork and slip in some other activities to keep up parts of “Stephen’s traditional
daily life”. Global perspectives is one of those subjects that requires in depth thinking and careful
explanations. It has lots of new vocabulary for me to learn and trains me to have wholistic
thinking.
Presentations and speeches to express new ideas and discussing events happening around the
world along with essay writing to show and solve debates on many particular issues. Forming
and debating arguments is a crucial part in studying this subject. The homework and classwork
of global perspectives is going to take a really long time to complete, since you will do many
steps such as researching, processing the information found and actually form arguments when
you understand it is in a whole, creating a debate of positive and negative sides of the subject.
The understanding of instructions is really very important as part of studying and completing
coursework, the assignments are hard work and takes a long time to finish, so if I do the work
really well but it doesn’t follow the instructions, even though I did it well, a big duck egg shape
will be on the top of my assignment because it is not what the instructions asked for.

Memorizing by heart is one of my hated things ever and ICT does have theory units to be learnt
by heart, this is going to pose a real challenge to me as I am utterly horrible at this style of
learning, it would take quite a while for me to form such a solid foundation on theory and start
doing practical work. Practical work can be described as a great escape for me after the theory
sufferings because I feel that I learn much more efficiently from doing practical work. Having
said that, theory is still greatly important as it is the base I stand on to do practical work and so
without it, it would not be such an escape after all.

Moving onto some less challenging subjects this year such as Physical Education, Maths,
Foundation English-A, Art and more are a few good examples. Physical Education lessons have
been reduced from two periods a week to one period a week; the fitness test in this is much more
relaxed in my opinion, I get through Maths fairly quickly, it has got easier compared to Maths in
year 8 and now it is like reinforcing my Maths knowledge from last year, I see that it would get
more difficult in iGCSE 2 but for this year then I will not have to worry as much. FE-A is an
easy going English class when I arrive at it, it feels like a relief from 1st language English, which
brings us to a point that there is a lot of writing involved in this subject. One of the ways to
improve writing skills is to practice and also expand vocabulary through reading a lot.
Surprisingly, this year’s art does not have drawing prompts for semester one, and I hope for
semester two as well. I never really liked Art especially when I have to draw things I hate.

Extra-curricular activities are fun and healthy to do. This December and April, our school are
going to host a Singaporean School and Australian School respectively, Mr. Josh and our whole
class is responsible for hosting these two schools, marking the first time our school has hosted
another school. There is an Outward Bound trip coming up for us iGCSE to participate, this is a
one-week trip out to the woods to learn and spend time with friends. In my free time, I have
slowly reduce football to spend more time to do reading and doing extra science work to keep up
with school work. I think that the more vocabulary you have, the better thinking you will do. Mr.
Josh speaks English very fast, it helps improve skills in listening. After school activities are
offered each term throughout the year, I might not be partaking in any paid activities since I have
a lot of work to do for school, but I still play Teachers football game every Fridays from 16:15 to
17:00. Teachers are not so good at playing football.
Lots of my time will be devoted on studying for the next two years, as I have a lot of
schoolwork, homework, assignments and projects to work on. If I do get behind of the work, two
weeks of it could be enough to screw me up for the end of course examinations from Cambridge,
so I will be trying my very best to study and succeed. Overcoming all these challenges is itself a
challenge, but when I finish, I would be well-prepared for my future. Although iGCSE is going
to be very hard to keep up with, with many challenges lying ahead of me in traps waiting for me
to make a mistake and fail things, I will be trying my best to achieve the highest grades in all
subjects.