I have taken Lucy back to school.
It has been such a short weekend, we have hardly seen her. It is horrid when the children go away, they are all brilliant company, and Lucy is beautiful and funny and nice to have in the house.
Nevertheless her exams start on Tuesday, and she wanted to spend her study leave at school. This was partly because she knew that she would work much better at her own desk at school, and partly because she did not entirely trust me to manage to get her all the way to York with a looming deadline and a clapped-out taxi.
She seems to be remarkably tranquil about the exams. We talked about it on the way to school, and she is both amused and horrified at the idea that it could turn into an emotional crisis.
She explained that the whole point of being at school is to learn things. Before the exam it is jolly sensible to refresh your memory a bit, but you are supposed to have learned the subject already. If you have not learned physics a fortnight before the GCSE then you are an idiot and it is too late, you should have been paying proper attention last year.
I could not argue with that.
She was equally dismissive of people inventing creative revision schedules and coming up with new and interesting revision ideas. She thought that by now you should already have developed a reasonably efficient method of studying things, and that it is mental to run round changing things at the last minute.
She says that she thinks she should get at least B in everything, which is quite enough for most universities, and so there is no point in collapsing into an agony of worry and losing sleep over pushing the mark up a couple of notches. She thinks that if you get good A Levels and know what to say in interviews, then nobody will think twice about whether you got a B or an A in Classical Civilizations in your GCSEs two years ago.
I thought about it and decided that I could not agree more.
I would hate to see her anxious or tearful or losing sleep or all of the other dreadful conditions that can befall teenagers. I have seen quite enough dead people to consider that nothing is worth spoiling even a little bit of your very precious life. We agreed that the best way of preparing for exams involved long walks in the grounds and cups of tea and lots of quiet reading.
She said that she thinks these next few weeks are going to be absolutely the best ever. She does not have to wear uniform or attend classes, she can read and think quietly in her own space: and unlike all of the other girls, she is in absolutely no hurry for it all to be over.
This is because of course once the exams are over then she will no longer be a cherished public schoolgirl, but will be unmercifully condemned to a weary summer of slave labour rushing up and down the stairs in the Chinese restaurant.
I am terrifically sympathetic about this, but she needs vast quantities of cash which we don’t have. When she goes into the sixth form she will need a whole wardrobe of clothes, because sixth formers don’t wear uniform and have to dress as if they were formally employed. Also she is getting to the driving lesson age. In November she will be on the public highway behind the wheel of a vehicle.
Now that is the sort of exam that you need to get worried about. That’s a really useful qualification.
Take it from me.
The picture is school, taken from across the grounds. There were enough rabbits and squirrels hopping tamely around the boarding house garden to occupy dozens of Snow Whites.
She will be absolutely fine.
