I feel like a lot of schools fail in their pastoral care, as the stakes got higher, the material more difficult and my mental health got worse, I lost my ability to focus and went from performing at the top at GCSE (advised to focus on Oxford/Imperial College etc.) to crashing and burning at A level, getting into my safety uni which I hated because the material wasn't challenging and then dropped out before working retail and then later starting to study again. It's difficult when everyone decides they know why you aren't performing to expectations, but even I didn't really understand why I was suddenly struggling so much and some support at the time would have made a world of difference. Everyone thought my home environment was fine, but between fostering mostly toddlers constantly (sometimes 2), having a special needs sister and parents that rowed on a near daily basis, best case scenario was having minimal support, worst case scenario was constantly getting handed 2-3 minute tasks and constant distraction. When I was a few months into my As-levels I just gave up as I was already behind and then hit a cycle of attempting to catch up, being too far behind to understand what was going on in class and then giving up.

I still freak out a little too much over tests and assignments, especially with the time pressure of full time work, but at least as an adult I have the experience and emotional maturity to have some idea why I'm freaking out and to try to deal with it constructively.

I'm not sure I'll ever love tests like I did in primary when they were effortless, but I'm heading towards the point when I don't start to feel dread in the run up.