The Inkling Volume 1

Long Gone
By Georgina Melia
So long to regular Soham days; hello to early mornings,
“This train is for London King’s X calling at…”, grumpy
commuters, and the ability to go to Nando’s for lunch.
It’s only been a few weeks since I’ve started here and
I’m beginning to know which train goes from which
platform - and the fact I can refer to a train as my
‘normal’ one.
Despite all of the induction sessions, assemblies and
taster days you experience throughout Years 10 & 11,
you’ll never really be prepared for Sixth Form until you
have your first day and dive straight into the deep end.
We have no forms, no houses nor assemblies. I’ve
spent the last five years in an endless bi-weekly
assembly rota, so needless to say the transition to a
sudden world of morning independence has been a bit of a rude awakening for me. It’s strange -
there’s no doubt about that. But it’s all the small things that take the longest time to get use to: you
expect commuting by train to be a pretty big leap from getting on the school bus, so you’re ready
for that. What I wasn’t prepared for was the fact that we have no set break or lunch. Everyone’s
doing different things at different times and there’s no space on your timetable that says ‘lunch’. We
don't have 13:15-2:00 anymore, sometimes it’s 12:20-13:05, or on the train because your only
lesson is in the afternoon… there’s a twenty minute pause between first and second lesson so I’ll
often have a snack then.
It doesn’t take long for you to become a wise snacker at sixth form. Lessons at Long Road are an
hour and a half long, meaning if you make the fatal mistake (which I did on my first day) of not using
that 20 minute break to eat that cereal bar then you’ll have to enjoy the next hour and a half with a
rebelling stomach. But it’s surprising how much more you get done when your lessons are ninety
minutes long. It’s long enough to sometimes reward yourself with a five minute break to go on your
phone or take a walk. There’s another difference: the college actively encourages us to go on our
phones. There’s campus Wi-Fi (which isn’t the best but we all saw that coming) and teachers often
allow us to research things on our phones instead of the whole class going to all the computers.
These computers have no blocked websites...which astounds me still!
It is especially strange, however, to not belong to a house. Whether you are actively or grudgingly
part of your house, it’s still part of your school identity. The difference now is that ‘enrichment’
takes the place of our houses. It’s similar to belonging to a house because it’s a combination of
years (or rather, the two years) and you meet people that aren’t in your classes - rather than
grades, you get ‘enrichment credits’ which universities seem to like. I’m part of choir but my more
exotic enrichment choice was ‘Self Defence/Street Fighting’. I watched a lot of superhero
programmes over the summer, which is probably why I’ve found myself a part of it, but it’s a new
opportunity. That’s what Sixth Form has been for me so far: a whole host of new opportunities.