Consider both life and career when picking your school

As students finalise choices, here’s the advice I wish I’d been given

DID you know that there are two types of light-detecting cells in your eyes — rods and cones? The cone cells only absorb brighter lights and are concentrated in the centre of your retina; rod cells pick up lower-intensity brightness and are located around the edges.

That’s why, if you’ve ever noticed, you can see a faint light or a small star in your peripheral vision but, if you look directly at it, it seems to disappear.

That, folks, is the single piece of knowledge I retain and cherish from my A grade in A-level biology (sorry, Dr Jeffers).

I still think of it when I look at the night sky, and it gave me a piece of knowledge that once-upon-a-time impressed my optometrist would-be wife.

Outside that, however, I look back and wish I’d made a more strategic subject choice.

That’s no slight on my teacher, I have to add, whose classes I remember very fondly. It’s just that I now see the real-life benefits that I could have been getting down another corridor.

I knew I wanted to be a journalist from a pretty young age and was writing freelance copy for my local paper since my GCSE years.

With that in mind, and unwilling to broaden my horizons with an undergraduate in another discipline, I knew early doors that I didn’t need any particular subject outside English literature to get into any of the university courses I had my cone cells fixed on.

So my choices were made with two things in mind.

First, in which subjects would I be most likely to get a top grade? My brother had done well in school and I wasn’t going to let him win. That meant I’d add geography and biology to English lit.

Second, I was going to do PE because I’d heard on the grapevine that an aspect of the coursework would be getting out of school to play golf. Fair enough, really.

So that was me set. But with hindsight, I’d have made some very different decisions.

For any students now preparing to finalise their subject choices for next year, here’s the advice I wish I’d been given.

I should say that, obviously, if you know you fancy being a doctor then biology’s probably for you, or if you’re keen to be an architect then technology’s going to be a good choice.

But if you’re not overly sure what you want to be when you grow up, and definitely have no desire to go into something so specialised, then think about your life as well as your career.

In which subjects are you going to learn things that will stay with you forever?

If I could go back now, the first subject on my list would be a language.

There’s arguably nothing I’d like to change more than my decision not to take German on to A-level. I didn’t do it because I’d heard it was difficult to get a top result in.

But here’s a life secret: unless the university course you want to study demands a top grade, nobody in the real world really cares whether you get an A or a B or a C. After a few years, you might even struggle to remember what you got yourself.

What would make a tangible difference to my life would be the ability to go to a foreign country and hold a conversation with another human being.

When we visit Spanish-speaking countries, I’m in constant awe of my wife’s ability to communicate with locals who don’t speak a word of English. It’s such a beautiful thing, it brings joy to both people involved in the exchange and it is just very, very useful.

Of course, you’re never too old to do something and I’m just starting to try to right that wrong decision by picking up my German again, but my Duolingo scores would be a lot better if I had more sophisticated learning on which to fall back.

Then there’s art. I ditched that after third year, put off by the scare stories of next-to-impossible coursework assignments.

I still wish I could go back to accept my teacher’s offer of staying on for GCSE and hone an ability to express myself through the medium.

Or there’s the likes of religious education. Learning about global cultures and different people would have stood the test of time better than the theories of sport, leisure and play I was picking up in PE.

School can be so much more than just a vehicle to transport you to good grades and a place in university. Those are positive things in their own right, but not everybody has to become a doctor or an engineer. There’s just as much place in the world for someone who can paint a beautiful sunrise and speak fluent Spanish.

And in working life, there’s more than one way to fulfil your potential.

So don’t just go chasing your most straightforward path to an A.

Unless your future plans depend on it, finishing up with a B or a C that also boasts a life-giving skill may be even more beneficial.

Remember that tonight when you’re looking at the stars. I’ll be thinking about my cone and rod cells, wondering how I’d communicate that in Munich.