#not me referencing 9-month old poetry

[hardly-an-escape]

would you go along with someone like me? | chapter 1/9

Square: A5 - Black Death Rating: T Word Count: 1536 Ship(s): Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling Warnings: No archive warnings apply Additional Tags: college AU, non-traditional college students, don’t worry they’re actual grownups, poet Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, history student Hob Gadling, referenced character death, rating will go up in later chapters, more tags to be added Summary: Hob is a freshman history major and a first generation college student, while Morpheus is completing a graduate degree poetry. When they're crammed into a small room together due to a shortage of on-campus housing, it seems like an odd couple situation at best and a recipe for disaster at worst. But as the months go by, mutual respect turns into real friendship. And then... something happens that Hob never expected. Read on AO3 | fill for @dreamlingbingo

The man was as pale as the woman was dark, with a shock of black hair and imperious eyes. He set down the box he was carrying on the desk and stood with his arms at his sides. He looked out of place and uncomfortable in the shabby dorm room, like some kind of alien who’d been dragged to a horribly human experience like getting your photo taken at the DMV.

“What a poncy-sounding git.”

Hob immediately looked over his shoulder, as though his future roommate might already be lurking nearby to hear the insult, but the hallway was empty.

Morpheus van de Eindeloos read the sign on the door, just below Robert Gadling. Hob sighed, looking down at the orientation packet clutched in his hand. No, there was no mistake: barring some kind of horrible bust-up, this would be his roommate for the duration of the school year. And maybe even if there was a horrible bust-up; apparently student housing was full to bursting this fall, with no extra beds to speak of. Hob had had to fight tooth and nail to get into a graduate suite at all, patiently convincing the housing office through a series of increasingly tersely-worded emails that, no, a thirty-year-old man did not belong in freshman housing, yes, even if he was a freshman himself.

By rights this room should be a single, not a double, but by this point Hob was sick of fighting. At least Little Lord Fauntleroy would be an adult. Or, if not an actual adult, a graduate student, which he supposed was the next best thing. Hob sighed again, dug a pen from his bag, crossed out Robert and added Robbie in his embarrassingly uneven handwriting, and started to haul his worldly possessions into the fifteen-by-seventeen-foot room that would be home for the next nine months.

An hour or so later, Hob was folding the last of his t-shirts into the chipped dresser when there was a polite and perfunctory knock as the door opened.

“– just saying, it might be good for you to see people on their terms instead of yours,” said a warm and accented voice as two people entered the room, arms full of bags and boxes. “Actually listen to other human beings, or – God forbid – even talk to them. This doesn’t have to be a punishment.”

The speaker was a beautiful woman, perhaps a little older than Hob, with a face that looked very kind, if somewhat tired, and an accent that clearly came from somewhere in the London area. It was a bit of a shock, to hear it here in the American Midwest, and it gave Hob a bittersweet feeling of almost homesickness.

“I am not treating it like a punishment,” said the man accompanying her. “It is simply a choice. Our brother made his choice, and I have made mine.”

The man was as pale as the woman was dark, with a shock of black hair and imperious eyes. He set down the box he was carrying on the desk and stood with his arms at his sides. He looked out of place and uncomfortable in the shabby dorm room, like some kind of alien who’d been dragged to a horribly human experience like getting your photo taken at the DMV.

The woman dropped her load on the bed and turned to Hob with a bright smile.

“Hello!” she said, reaching out to shake his hand. “You must be Robert – you prefer Robbie? It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Teleute, but you can call me Tel. I know it’s a mouthful. And this is my brother. Morpheus, say hello.” She jostled him forward until he, too, shook Hob’s hand and muttered a quiet greeting. “I’m afraid the moping is inescapable, but he’s not that bad once you get used to him.”

The glare Morpheus sent his sister was equal parts ire and fondness, and Hob felt a familiar, blessedly brief pang of grief. He hadn’t grown up with siblings, but Eleanor and her sisters had ribbed each other just like that.

But he wasn’t going to think about her right now. That would be for later, maybe, when the lights were out and he was curled up alone in his narrow bed.

“Robbie’s good, yeah,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you, Tel and Morpheus.”

“And he’s from England too!” exclaimed Tel, delighted. “Now, what are the chances of that!”

“Obviously not zero,” Morpheus said dryly.

“Well, I think it’s lovely. Means you already have something in common, that’s a good sign.”

Morpheus had several more boxes – mostly books, it seemed – which Hob gamely helped schlep from their rented van to the room, chatting idly as they went back and forth. On the last trip, Teleute hung back at the bottom stairs and gestured for Hob to do the same.

“Look, I’ll make this quick,” she said. “I know my brother can be prickly, and he’s kind of an idiot sometimes, but I promise he’s not too bad. I’m not asking you to be responsible for him or anything. You’re both adults, and he doesn’t need a babysitter. But if you wouldn’t mind just… looking out for him? You don’t have to be best friends or anything, just maybe remind him to eat and interact with other humans occasionally?”

“Yeah, sure,” Hob replied. “I think I can do that.”

“Thank you,” Tel said. “I’m sorry to ask. He’s just. Well, you’ll understand once you get to know him, probably.”

“‘S alright. We’re both a long way from home, eh? Maybe he can look out for me a bit, too.”

“Definitely,” Tel said with a smile. “Thank you, Robbie.”

Hob was not necessarily encouraged by the fact that Morpheus’s sister seemed to think it necessary to reassure him several times that her brother was not too bad. But whatever. He’d gotten this far; after everything he’d been through, he figured he could handle a difficult roommate for a few months.

He wasn’t… wrong.

The first few weeks were somewhat tense, as they danced around each other and tried to settle into a routine. Morpheus was abrupt – sometimes to the point of rudeness – but generally not outright unpleasant. He kept odd hours, often sitting up with a tiny reading lamp late into the night, but he was quiet at least; and he kept his person and his clothes fastidiously clean, almost like a cat. His desk was an absolute disaster, covered in notebooks and scraps of paper, and his books overflowed the small shelves that they were provided with – but at least he kept them on his own side of the room.

Hob didn’t forget what Teleute had asked him. Every few days he coaxed Morpheus down to the dining hall, or out for a walk across campus, or got him to talk (or sometimes just complain) about his seminars.

Not that Hob wasn’t busy with his own work. There wasn’t much of a grace period before real, hard assignments were being thrown at them, and for Hob – who hadn’t been in a classroom in over ten years – there was a steep learning curve as he figured out how to balance studying, sleeping, writing papers, and his work-study job.

“Why are you so worried about it?” Morpheus had asked, the first time Hob had gotten back an assignment (a quiz on the spread of the Black Death through Northern Europe) with a less-than-perfect grade and was bemoaning his failure. “It’s just a grade. In my experience they are indicative neither of the true quality of your work, nor of your mastery of the subject.”

“Well, in my experience, my scholarships are dependent on me maintaining a certain GPA,” Hob had retorted. “Look, mate. I’m the first person in my family to actually make it to uni. If I don’t do well, it’s… it’s not just my own pride on the line, you know?”

“I do not know,” Morpheus had said. “But I can appreciate your stress. I can… help you study for your next quiz. If that would be helpful.”

By the end of that first month, Hob thought they were at least tentatively friends, although the one time he’d dared to mention it Morpheus had rolled his eyes, insisted he had no need for companionship, and been stiff and formal toward Hob for several days.

True, he hadn’t learned much about Morpheus’s personal life, or his family, aside from the fact that he had a lot of siblings, who seemed to meddle in his life to varying degrees. He knew the man was about his age – early thirties, though he looked a little younger – and that he was doing an MFA in poetry, though he never allowed even a line of his work to pass under Hob’s eye.

All in all, it was… fine. Morpheus was a bit of a git, from time to time, but he wasn’t an asshole. The room was too small, but there was a big campus to escape to, with libraries and gardens and plenty of quiet corners to read and study. By the end of September the air was getting crisp and the leaves were just starting to turn, peppering the quad with dots of red and gold.

It was really only once or twice a week that Hob caught himself laughing over some incident in one of his lectures, or a ridiculous comment by a professor, and thinking I’ve got to tell Eleanor about that. Once or twice a week wasn’t bad. He could handle once or twice a week.

Her picture was still tucked safely away in one of his dresser drawers.

Read on AO3 >>>

green = complete, orange = WIP

#dreamling #the sandman #dreamling bingo #dream of the endless #hob gadling #my writing #if you've been following along for a while this is the 'omg they were roommates' college AU I've talked about a couple of times #would you go along with someone like me?

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hi! So I’m rewatching TAB atm and it’s giving me feeeels. Do you have recs for after the get off the plane where John deals with Sherlock and specifically his overdose? I wish we’d had a part 2 where the show went into it, but I’m hoping you can give me some amazing fanfic instead! And Johnlock as friends is good as well as slash!

HI NONNY!!!

AHHHH I love TAB SO MUCH. It’s my favourite Sherlock Ep, and I wish I had more fics related to it :( I don’t have anything new since then, but all these fics are from my S3 / TAB / S4 [FIX IT] Fics list from last March, but because I love y’all, I’ll separate it on its own because it’s pretty far down and hidden, and I know other people would like to read some separate, so here you are!

And friends, if y’all have any TABlock, PLEASE give them to me!! I need more!!

THE ABOMINABLE BRIDE (TABlock) (APR. 2020)

See also: 

S3 / TAB / S4 [FIX IT] Fics (March 2019)

Victorianlock 

ACD Canon

The Two of Us Against the World by slashscribe (T, 1,617 w., 1 Ch. || Post-TAB, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Drug Addiction, Anxious Sherlock, Angsty Fluff) – John is there to take care of Sherlock as he comes down from his overdose in The Abominable Bride. Set immediately after the tarmac, back in 221B.

Loudly Unspoken by Mount_Seleya (M, 1,871 w.,  1 Ch. || Post-TAB, Love Confessions, Vulnerable Sherlock, Frottage) – John confronts Sherlock about the words he left unsaid on the tarmac. Set immediately after TAB.

Stay by sussexbound (M, 2,067 w., 1 Ch. || Post TAB, Suicidal Ideation Mention, Implied / Referenced Drug Use, Kissing, Love Confessions, Frottage, Coming in Pants) –  “Why? Why did you do it? Hmm…?” He takes a deep breath, waits, lets it out again. “Look at me.” There’s no denying him when he takes this tone. “Why did you kill him? Hmm…? For her? After…” A muscle twitches in the corner of John’s eye, and he clamps his jaw down tightly, swallows and sniffs a little before continuing. “For her? After everything she’s done?” “For you.” Before he can even stop himself. Just like that.

Journal of Truths by Goddess_of_the_Night (T, 2,317 w., 1 Ch. || Post-HLV / TAB, Pining, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, Love Letters, Declarations of Love) – When John escorts Sherlock back to Baker Street from the tarmac, he discovers a journal that Sherlock has kept secret...that he has kept secrets in.

Green Carnation by glenien (T, 2,616 w., 1 Ch. || Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Meta-Fic, Angst and Fluff, Communication, Post-TAB) – John takes Sherlock home. Part 1 of It’s No Longer Eighteen Ninety-Five

The Trial of Sherlock Holmes by jenna221b (G, 3,015 w. across 3 works || TAB!lock, Metafic / TJLC, Victorian AU / 1895, Christmas, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Oscar Wilde) – Scripts based on speculation that Sherlock will be put on trial in The Abominable Bride to parallel the Oscar Wilde Trials of 1895.

I Love You (Is All That You Can't Say) by theSeventhStranger (T, 3,147 w., 1 Ch. || Post-TAB, Post-Tarmac Scene, Fix-It, Dev. Rel., Retrospective, Angst and Fluff) – “Sherlock. On the tarmac. I got the feeling that you were going to, um. To say something else.”

five times sherlock holmes lied to john watson (and one time he finally told the truth) by miss_frankenstein (G, 5,948 w., 1 Ch. || TAB Compliant || Homophobia, Pining Sherlock, Oscar Wilde Trials, Happy Ending) – Set in "The Abominable Bride" universe, this piece adopts a familiar format to chronicle Sherlock's quiet suffering in the wake of the 1895 Oscar Wilde trials and the particular way they affect his relationship with (and feelings for) John.

Drawstring by May_Shepard (E, 7,412 w., 1 Ch. || Friends to Lovers, UST/RST, Fluff and Smut, Post-TAB, John POV) – John is bothered by Sherlock’s slowly-falling jim-jams… as in hot and bothered and he is trying to deal with a sexy dishevelled Sherlock while also keeping his pining in check.

Never Been This Swept Away by estalita11 (T, 8,531 w., 1 Ch. || Post-TAB, Mary is Not Nice, Drug Use, First Kiss, Love Confessions) – Set immediately after TAB, Sherlock visits his brother to definitely not apologize about earlier and ends up finally learning a few things that would have been nice knowing about months ago. Mycroft never wants to deal with lovestruck idiots ever again.

Out of the Darkness by Irrevocably_Sherlocked (M, 12,165+ w., 2 Ch. || WIP || Death, Overdose, Heavy Angst, Whump, Mary is Not Nice, Post S3/TAB Compliant) – John Watson has long assumed Sherlock Holmes is immune to sentiment, “doesn’t feel things that way.” Sherlock, however, would do anything for the person he loves most in the world, including putting himself in danger while keeping John in the dark in hopes of keeping him safe. Tired of being left behind, John is running a strategy of his own. Unfortunately things do not go as planned for either of them. And as John lays bleeding, Sherlock finally allows himself to say the things he’s always meant to… This is the story of love, forgiveness and finally making right all the wrongs in these two men’s lives.

Wars We Fought, Things We're Not by blueink3 (M, 55,204 w., 10 Ch. || Post S3 / Post TAB, Parentlock, Fluff & Angst, Kidnapping, Whump, Post-TAB, UST/URT, 3G, Mild Peril, Slow Burn, Couple for a Case, Protective Mycroft, Infant Death Pre-Story, Friends to Lovers) –  Five months after John's world has fallen apart, Mycroft sends the consulting detective and his doctor on a case that neither is prepared for.

The Adventure of the Silver Scars by tangledblue (NR [M], 142,458 w., 41 Ch. || S3 Fix-It, Post-HLV/ Post-TAB / Canon Compliant, Case Fic, No Baby, Angst, Humour, UST, Slow Burn, Angry John, Reconciliation, Not Nice Mary / Leaving Mary, Dependent Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Caretaker John, Fist Fights, It’s An Experiment, Virgin Sherlock, Dancing, Drugging, John Whump, Pet Names, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Scars) – It’s been thirteen months since Mary shot Sherlock and John finds he’s still pissed off about it. Sherlock had thought everything was settled: John and Mary, domestic bliss. But when John turns up at Baker Street with suitcases, the world’s only consulting detective might not be prepared for the consequences. A new case. Some old scores to settle. Certain danger. Concertos, waltzes, and whisky.

MARKED FOR LATER

Stay for Me by Itsallfine (M, 17,310 w., 7 Ch. || Post-TAB, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Drug Withdrawal, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss/Time, Bed Sharing, Mental Health Issues, Not-Nice Mary, Divorce, Angst with Happy Ending, Parentlock) – 221B was packed into boxes and bins, and that was when John knew, really knew—Sherlock had planned to be gone forever.

Crimson Hymns by brilliantlyburning (E, 48,982 w., 9 Ch. || Post-S3/TAB, Angst,  Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Drug Addiction, Unhealthy Coping Methods, Demisexual Sherlock, Boxing, Pining, Sensory Processing Issues, Drug Use, First Kiss / Time, BDSM, Mary is Not Good, Parentlock, Proposal, Happy Ending, Beekeeping, Violence, References to Addiction, Poetry) – He laid his head over John’s heart, eyes level with his silver-rough scar, and listened to the crimson hymns beating beneath the surface. He imagined flowers blooming in his own chest: veins weaving intricate patterns on petals of thin muscle engorged with blood, sinew for stems and tendons for roots—the flowers would be poppies, maybe (addictive) or foxglove (deadly yet useful)—twining gleaming blood-red around the porcelain bone of his ribs. In his mind’s eye the gruesome bouquet all tied together on the left side of his chest, the stems bound together in heartstrings and the flowers fed by the rhythmic contraction of ventricles. It’s yours, he imagined saying to John—from the vena cava to the mitral valve to the arteries it is yours.— Or, the Love Song of W. Sherlock S. Holmes.

NO! by Tildathings (M, 50,043 w., 36 Ch. || Homophobia, Bed Sharing, Military Uniforms, Past Abuse, Jealous John, Stalking, Violence, First Kiss/Time, Fluff, Pillow Talk, Coming Out, Sherlock’s Past, Shower, Cuddling, Grief and Sorrow, Hugs, Character Death) – Sherlock has been in a coma in over 8 months after he overdosed on the plane at TAB, during which time Mary and Rosie were killed by Vivian Norbury.  This story starts 3 weeks after Sherlock has woken up. John is asking to move back to Baker Street.

The Summer Boy by khorazir (T, 94,706 w., 6 Ch. || Post S3/Post TAB/Alternate S4, Friends to Lovers, Flashbacks, Sussex, Bullying, 1980′s Kid Sherlock, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Inexperienced Sherlock, Grief/Mourning, Pining Sherlock) – About half a year after the fateful events at Appledore, Sherlock and John embark on a private case in Sussex. For Sherlock, it’s a journey into his past, bringing up memories both happy and sad that he has locked away for almost thirty years. For John, it means coming to terms with the present – and a potential future with Sherlock. Part 1 of the The Summer Boy series

#steph replies #the abominable bride #tablock #tab fics #my fic recs #Anonymous #fic rec wednesday

[deanessner]

I Can't Give Everything Away

I have a cycle. When I’m bored or lonely, I break up my un-momentum with a little dance: checking my Facebook, then my email, then my Facebook again (keeping this tab open for easy access in case someone wants to contact me), then my Twitter, then my email again, then my Twitter again, and so on. Maybe I’ll disrupt the routine by wandering onto a New York Times article I discovered in my Twitter feed for a few minutes, but it’s only a brief footnote.

I read somewhere in some article — probably in one of those aforementioned “footnote” sequences — we approach this cycle the same way a lab rat presses a lever over and over again hoping for a food pellet. For us, those pellets probably seem to vary. Nourishment can come in the form of being up-to-date on the news or being in on a funny joke or knowing that an old friend received your birthday message.

But I think there’s a darker, duller edge to that gratification. I may check my Twitter in the focused spirit of seeing what inflammatory stuff Trump said today. I may check my email to see if an editor got back to me about a pitch. I may check Facebook to see if someone liked a song I shared. But, I also check for the sake of, well, preventing the pain of not checking. I’m not even referencing a fear of missing a crucial, time-sensitive thing; I’m talking about the deep, guttural, language-and-logic-defying need to check just to check. Even after pulling on the lever a few times and it yielding no pellet, a rat is bound to just keep pulling, right? (Sorry for the annoying Thomas Friedman-esque metaphor here — it just seemed appropriate.)

Why am I like this?

I used to think the main purpose for making and consuming art was to share  and experience it with others. You didn’t just have an opinion, you formed it, sculpted it. You thought about the right words and vocal cadence to describe something. You considered your audience. You ranked things, not for your own compartmentalization but so others could see the breadth of what you’ve seen. Art was something to advance your ideology and self-worth in the eyes of others. Art absorption was a proxy for power-grabbing and knowledge-accruing. What a piece or work actual meant to you was important, but, then again, that “meaning” was probably also informed by a restless fear, and also an excitement, about how others may see you. If a tree falls in the blah blah blah...... well, you get it. 

Peppered in with that perspective was a thirst for originality. I remember feeling a wash of sadness and futility after a college lit class I was taking studied the Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author” — which suggests that writing is inherently unoriginal because words are finite and each reader attaches his or her own meaning to sentences and paragraphs and stories anyway. If I couldn’t be new, then why should I bother to try and do anything?

Then, the need to try regardless of any audience came to me. In the summer of 2013, my previously bulky and broad-shouldered grandfather developed cancer and started losing weight at a rapid clip (he passed away in February of the following year). One afternoon, while I was alone with him, I suffered an intense panic attack. Then I suffered another one that night. It would keep happening. It was a bad few months for my mental health, but it taught me a valuable lesson: people make art to survive. 

I could barely play guitar (or any other instruments for that matter), but I started making music. I wrote and recorded a full 9-song album and 5-song EP over the course of three months. I now consider myself an accomplished songwriter, but not a musician, because I haven't really taken the time to learn music theory or chord patterns. I just know the way I feel when I press my fingers on certain keys or strings. Maybe I did this to run from and resist Barthes’ thesis, but, regardless, I knew I had a lot of emotions to purge that summer. I knew I needed some way of articulating and understanding what I was going through. I needed a way to feel more alive.

Since that summer, though, I’ve fallen back on old habits. I created and religiously monitored a Last.fm account: a social media platform for music lovers that let’s you see what you and your friends are listening to. I grew obsessed with the idea of others looking at what I was listening to. What did they think of me? Every time I’d listen to an album, I’d check to make sure it was also “scrobbling” (aka recording) to my profile. I recall a conversation with a friend where he remarked that my Last.fm account showed I didn’t listen to music all that much. I was devastated. In my quest to scrobble obscure artists as a way of displaying a depth of taste, I fell in love with some of my favorites bands: Stereolab, Can, The Dismemberment Plan, Shabazz Palaces. But still, was any of this authentic?

This obsession with exaggerating the extraverted parts of myself makes me think of the recent Jim Jarmusch film “Paterson,” which is about a bus driver (played by Adam Driver, ha ha) named Paterson who lives in Paterson, New Jersey and writes poetry (his favorite poet is William Carlos Williams, who has a book of poems titled “Paterson”) in between shifts. The audience’s intimate connection with Paterson comes in the form of these poems — he doesn’t share them with anyone, not even his loving wife Laura, except us. He stores them in a secret notebook. 

Paterson has the same routine every day. He eats his lunch by the same waterfall and walks home through the same industrial complex. Coupled with the fact that he doesn’t own a smart phone (by choice), Paterson lives an extremely boxed-in life. He writes poems, a form of escape and expression for sure, but for the most part, Paterson just listens. He listens to Laura discuss her dreams of becoming a country music star. He listens to a heartbroken man named Everett talk about losing his lover. He listens to Doc, the owner of the dive bar he frequents, tell stories of Paterson folklore. He listens to the chitchatting of his bus riders. 

Jarmusch doesn’t paint Paterson as a hero or a gifted genius as much as he does an observant vessel to frame the movie around, however I saw his character in a different light. For Paterson, poetry wasn’t a means to any end. He seemed to have no ambitions of getting published or sharing his work with the world. Rather, he wrote to survive. He wrote to make sense of everyday life. It’s easy to see Paterson as docile and powerless, but in reality, he was fully in control of himself. He didn’t need to open his mouth or share his art for it to mean anything. It existed for him.

As I consider my social media tendency with that “language-and-logic-defying need to check just to check” in mind, I’m reminded of David Bowie’s last song “I Can’t Give Everything Away” from the album “Blackstar.” The song concerns itself with two topics that mean a lot to me: how difficult it is to control the way people think of you (and in the late Bowie’s case, remember you) and whether it’s possible to keep anything to yourself. 

In reference to the latter, Bowie’s speaking about the pressures of celebrity. But, for me and my life, I view this theme through the lens of temptation and pressure. “Seeing more and feeling less/ Saying no but meaning yes/ This is all I ever meant/ That's the message that I sent/ I can't give everything away,” he sings. Translation: Let me die with some secrets. 

I also see this lyric, though, as a warning: Words are malleable. Ideas are interpretable. Nothing is fixed. But you know what isn’t subject to the whim of others? Your feelings. Your thoughts. Your secret notebook. Don’t give it all away if you don’t want to be hurt, he seems to say.

And maybe that’s the key to freeing myself from the cycle of checking Facebook and then Twitter and then email, and then doing it all again: Keeping some things to myself. 

Maybe the sooner I learn that only I matter in the network of me, the sooner I can learn to just exist in the poetry of everyday life.

[careergrowthblog]

GCSE Exams: Keeping a proportionate positive perspective.

Despite the fact that we’ve been running Y11 exams in one form or another for decades, there is always a fairly strong undercurrent in the discourse around the annual exam season characterised by a sense of injustice and unreasonableness.  In relation to GCSEs, the following arguments are rehearsed fairly often:

Exams don’t measure everything that matters in a subject.

Exams don’t teach anyone anything – they’ll forget most of it.

There are too many exams condensed into a short time.

Or, conversely, the exam window is too long – too drawn out.

Exam pressure causes unjustifiable mental health issues -and this is rising.

Exams are too hard – which isn’t fair for some students.

GCSEs are shallow and don’t prepare students for higher levels of learning.

GCSEs don’t encourage a lifelong love of learning.

Exams are all about targets and league tables and we’re supposed to be educating rounded individuals.

And the usual dose of survivor bias – happy successful people who failed their exams always keen to celebrate this fact.

The annual confusion and ignorance about grade boundaries shifting (they have to and always will) and imagined conspiracies between examiners, Ofqual, the DFE and the Secretary of State to make us all miserable on purpose.

This recent article by Simon Jenkins is a classic example of this kind of anti-exam hysteria.  It’s so way over the top, it’s hard to take any of the arguments seriously.

Let me restore some balance.

I think it’s very powerful to have a rigorous test to aim at when teaching a course – and learning one.  It’s all too easy to graze over the surface of a subject, getting a general feel for it but not quite going in deep enough to really commit to learning, understanding and acquiring fluency at the level that is possible.  The very fact of having an end-point assessment that really matters drives behaviours all along; it makes it all count; it makes you commit.  Good teachers balance low-stakes formative learning with the process of getting ready for the high-stakes performance and step things up at the right moment.  The intensity required to excel at GCSE pushes us all to secure deeper learning.  If anyone suggested that, without exams, we’d reach deeper learning – I’d say they were wrong.  We just wouldn’t.

As I report in this blog, GCSE Revision is Poetry: Intensity, hard work – and so much deep learning    I’ve seen my son enjoy the business of getting to grips with learning, brimming with ideas and knowledge, thriving on the challenge of aiming high in lots of subjects.

We need to be realistic about what a system can be like if we want 16 year olds to gain valued qualifications in a range of subjects.  (Arguably we could do away with GCSEs and just teach stuff or condense it all into one general qualification with subject elements, examined more tightly over a few days but that would require a much wider debate.)  Meanwhile, qualifications require standards to be set; standards require thresholds; thresholds reference a bell-curve.  (See here if you don’t understand this – I do really get tired of people who argue against norm referencing as if it’s a conspiracy. Every time someone says this, it just means they don’t know how assessment works. )

Exams can only ever measure parts of what makes up a subject.  Of course.  Obviously. Lots of things can be tested by exams but that doesn’t mean this is all that we value.  It’s up to us to give value to a wider curriculum beyond the assessed curriculum.  Yes, there is time pressure – but it’s still a choice we make in how and what we teach.   Let’s have a nuanced debate about the scope of a curriculum, the content and structure of exams – but exams themselves need to be rigorous and tightly managed if they are to lead to credible qualifications.  Grade inflation and dubious equivalences between subjects do nobody any good – because people don’t trust the whole system.  Ed Balls never understood this. (The same man who ‘talked tough’ on standards and  introduced the technical insanity of floor targets in a bell-curved system and should not be forgiven lightly for that…)

In my view there is a healthy pressure and work ethic that endpoint assessments generate.  As a parent I’ve been quite happy to see my kids work really hard – super hard – for several months, motivated by the desire to succeed; to be ready to do their best.  I totally reject the idea that this is intrinsically unfair or unhealthy or that the kind of exam revision required to get top GCSE grades is superficial and temporary.  Would our kids know more in five years’ time if they hadn’t sat their exams – no! They’d know much less.  They have much greater chance of remembering knowledge having had to revise extensively.   This is particularly true, for both of my children and countless students I’ve taught, because the exam revision process had yielded multiple lightbulb moments.  The intensity of study suddenly brings things together that were only half understood before. I had the same experience myself – I can still remember when A level chemistry suddenly all fell into place: not at school but in my room, at my desk, sweating it out ahead of my exams.

Passing on pressure to students  or failing to keep them in perspective within a broader ‘love of the subject’ is an issue for schools, teachers and parents.  And, of course, sometimes this can go wrong.  The reported rise in mental health issues always cites a combination of factors – including social media and school work.  It’s a complex message to give:  to encourage/push students to excel, to risk failure, to aim high, to put themselves on the line… whilst also saying it’s ok if it goes wrong, that life goes on: that it matters a lot – but not *that* much.  However, even if we accept the data, I don’t think it is possible to separate exam pressure from wider teenage mental health issues to the point that we might conclude that students shouldn’t do exams or that we should change their nature.  It’s more that we need to give more value to other things as well.  I don’t think it helps to argue that, because some young people do not cope well with exam pressure – or are not adequately supported to cope well – , that we should change this system for everyone.

The answer is not to soften the challenge – it is to do a better job of preparing students for it: academically and emotionally.

To keep the new GCSE reforms in perspective, let’s remember that there isn’t anything new to having a 4-6 week period in May and June packed with exams.  I cringe every time someone blames Michael Gove for the existence of hard exams.  Even if we might want to go back to coursework, Mode 3 assessments and fewer papers in Maths and History – it’s not as if the exam window is really significantly different to what it was.  It has evolved but the basic format is largely the same, even with more terminal exams.  I would say that getting rid of lots of coursework has been a blessing, freeing up time in the curriculum, removing really poor assessments and learning experiences like science ISAs and the annual parrot-fest of English speaking and listening assessments. (Your school might not have done this way –  hundreds did.). Some things are better off being left out of exams.

What issues remain?

It’s not all perfect of course. But it’s often hard to raise concerns in a manner that doesn’t fuel the hysteria. Here are a few things we need to deal with:

Ideally exams would form just one part of a wider Baccalaureate system. Half the issues with the exam system stem from there being no nationally recognised framework to formally give value to everything else. Perhaps, if a proper English Bacc was the main thing, we could have less emphasis on qualifications at 16  – even we still set exams; they wouldn’t be quite so high-stakes.

Grades 1-3 need to be rescued from the dustbin of failure. It’s totally unnecessary; it’s wrong; ignorate even – to have a pass/fail in a system were thousands of children must fail.  I’ll never forgive Nicky Morgan for her wilful ignorance in this area – when she destroyed the revolution 1-9 grades could have been.

For sure, the accountability pressure schools and teachers experience is misguided and over the top.   We still have a ‘shock horror, half of children in bottom 50%’ level of understanding of what is possible within a cohort – in the media, in government, in governing body meetings, during inspections.  Every governing body and Lead Inspector expects results to go up even when, de facto, this can’t happen for everyone.

I’m doubtful that we need three separate papers for any subject instead of two. A small reduction in total exam time would probably make little difference to grading  but would ease the revision burden and reduce the total exam window time in a proportionate manner.

Post-16 we need a different qualification to aim at other than resitting English and Maths GCSE – repeated failure and disillusionment is hard-wired in the current system.

Progress 8 needs to be put in its place as the shaky-baseline  noisy zero-sum average that it is – with dubious real value to any student and multiple negatives in terms of some short-term school curriculum choices.

We need to be cautious with 9s – taking care not to diminish 7s and 8s. 8s are the dominant A* standard and 9s will be noisy in relation to representing ‘true’ superiority in students’ relative capabilities in any subject.  As a parent of someone ‘aiming at 9s’ in most subjects, I worry about how 8s will be valued in his eyes and the eyes of others. We’re all working hard to manage our hopes and expectations and keep it all in perspective.

For further assessment material, I’ve gathered lots of assessment-related blogs here:

Understanding Assessment: A blog guide

  GCSE Exams: Keeping a proportionate positive perspective. published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege