The Impossible Act of Revision

I cannot study. Simple as. It's just something I don't seem to be able to do and that is not a good trait to have as an A-Level student hoping to progress into further education. But who can blame me? Revision's dull.

I cannot study. Simple as. It's just something I don't seem to be able to do and that is not a good trait to have as an A-Level student hoping to progress into further education. But who can blame me? Revision's dull. Not many people will disagree with this and those who do I don't think I'd like very much. I mean there are so many better things we can do instead, well I say 'better', I mean 'more entertaining' or 'less mind-numbingly boring'. There's a teacher in my school who once told me that during her own time as a student she would not read her specification-dictated works of Shakespeare but would rather read a different piece of Shakespeare. That, to me, is the biggest commitment to not studying that I've ever heard in my life and I once spent a RE class writing "Spoiler Alert" on the first page of the Book of Revelations on every Bible I could reach.

Now don't get me wrong; it's not that I hate learning. I love learning, but by some weird mental defect I am only capable of learning facts that will, in no way, help me later on in life. A good example of this is that fact that I know that it is anatomically impossible for a pig to look up at the sky. Now I will never need this fact in everyday life, the only time this fact will ever be useful is if the pigs rise up against us and we need to decide on the best plan of attack. This is, however, is very unlikely to occur so this fact, like countless others, gets sorted in my head alongside the population size of Vanuatu and Hitler's birthday. It's hard to fit anything else into my head with all that's already crammed in there.

So, as you can imagine, studying does not come naturally to me. It definitely doesn't make it easier the fact that, in today's world, there's roughly about a million different things out there just calling to me, promising escape from the mundane world of A-Levels. In order of what I can see around my room, I have, within arm's length of me, a television, a Xbox 360 with about 15 games for it, a bookcase filled with the obvious and an iPad with about another 15 bookcase's worth of literature on it.How can anyone expect to choose revision over any of those? Even still, none of these can hold a candle to the biggest distraction of all that we try, and fail, to not get sucked in by. That, of course, is the Internet.

The Internet is truly brilliant. I mean, how can you not love the Internet? It really does have something for everyone. Animals dressed as humans? It's got it. Sad pathetic teenagers with no life and won't shut up? You're reading this, aren't you? Looking for love? Actually maybe it's not the best idea not to use the Internet for that. But, nonetheless, you'd be hard pushed to not find anything more interesting then binomial expansions and the Data Protection Act of 1998 on the Internet.

My school, in fairness, does try to help. They try to compete with all these alternatives we have and near force us to do the work required to make the past 14 years of education worthwhile. They do this by, making available to us, a 'Senior Study'. This is a large room with carpet floor, cushioned seats and radiators that actually radiated heat on a regular basis. They did this to give us students a secluded area where we can sit comfortably and revise in peace and quiet, free from all distractions made available to us. But do we actually work in this comfortable, warm place? Of course not! We put out head's down and sleep. It must be difficult for teachers to motivate students to work when we genuinely prefer being unconscious over it.

The worst part of all this is that I know I'm going to regret not revising. I'll sit there, on whatever distraction most appeals to me that day, knowing that, in a few hours, I'll be sitting there, doing an exam, staring at a blank page and trying to remember anything to do with whether or not the US Constitution protects the rights of it's citizens and of course nothing will come to mind other than the storyline of 'Lost' and the lyrics of 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. From that, and, I suppose, this entire piece in general, you can imagine how optimistic I am for my results tomorrow. But maybe this is a good thing. Maybe these certain-to-be-catastrophic results will be what I need to scare me into revising for the summer! Well, I say that now, but deep down I know that little will change and I'll still be on the Internet to the small hours in the morning, hours before a life-changing exam and not caring in the slightest.

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