Exam Tomorrow!!

Well, after a seeming age, I finally have the exam for Russia 1855-1917 tomorrow. I feel pretty relaxed and haven't done any revision this weekend. I'm pretty confident that I know the material as well as I ever will and that I can recall most of it and how it all links together: I also have to keep telling myself that the exam that I will be taking is designed for the average 17-year old.

I'm also calm because after giving it a lot of thought, I don't think that I will be continuing with the A Level after the exam. I said a month ago that I'd been blindsided by how much the local college were going to charge me as an administration charge per exam. This, I must admit, is a big factor in why I can't see myself taking any more exams: I'm not prepared to pay a couple of hundred quid to take the exams (75 quid per exam at the rate that I want to take them). I reserve the right to change my mind on this if I found a college or school that would just charge me per exam, but at this point I can't see myself doing that. I also want to devote more time to the MA and reading generally around history and the history of crime in particular for the day job.

When I began the A Level, I had fallen back in love with history and I wanted to get the qualification in it that I didn't get for various reasons at school. In the course of things, I've oscillated between wanting to get an A-grade by all means necessary and trying to enjoy the journey as much as possible. More recently, I've started the MA and am enjoying that (mainly) and doing pretty well with it (so far, so good). Again, I veer between wanting to get a really good grade for the MA and wanting to just enjoy the process, but I think I'm more 'ok' now with the journey side of studying.

So, unless I decide to continue this blog for the MA, this will probably be one of my last post for the blog. I'll post something tomorrow reflecting on how the exam went, but the blog will probably end in March when I discover how I did tomorrow.