Taking an exam gave me a new respect for my children
Going back to school was harder than she thought, confesses Carol Muskoron as she awaits her result
At last, the wait is almost over. Today, as you eat your breakfast, I will be nervously awaiting the gentle thud of a manila envelope landing on the doormat, telling me how I have done. I will cope with a B, or even a C. But a shiny A* would, let’s face it, be nice. For it is GCSE results day. And, along with hundreds of thousands of teenagers around the country, I am eagerly anticipating my results.
I decided to go back to school last year, after a fruitless attempt to learn Italian via a CD bought for a family driving holiday, and a teach-yourself app. When my progress stalled, it became clear that I needed more structure to my studies and, surprisingly, the GCSE syllabus appealed. I had seen my older children (Nathan, 19 and Yolanda, 21) take scores of them and both had gone on to higher education. If they could manage, surely it would be pretty easy for me?
It turned out that I was in for a shock or two. Firstly, GCSES are hard work; secondly, what seemed like a small decision turned my family dynamic upside-down. Pressure started to mount even before I had applied. I had chosen a fast-track course of 30 lessons at London’s City Lit college, which involved an acceptance test to check my competence. “What will it be on?” I asked in an email, and an answer pinged back: “Just the present, past perfect, future and imperfect tenses.” This might be harder than I had expected, I thought.
Thankfully, and to my surprise, I passed with flying colours. The children may have laughed at me all these years, as I swanned around wearing earphones and shouting, “Dov’è la cattedrale?” (translation: “Where is the cathedral?”) – but I actually seemed to have learnt something.
I was buzzing with excitement, when my phone rang – it was Yolanda. She is a language student at Oxford, so my little test result suddenly felt very small.
“Darling, I got on to the GCSE course,” I blurted out.
“That’s fantastic, Mum,” she said. “I’m so proud of you!” It was a taste of the encouragement that my children were to give me all year. I was suddenly an honorary teenager and they “got” what I was going through. Nathan had only taken his A-levels a year earlier and was now doing an art foundation course at Oaklands College in Hertfordshire, so the memory of
school exams was particularly fresh for him. To my delight, both developed a new respect for me.
My classes were on Thursday evenings and – to my horror – they were entirely in Italian. Plus, there was homework – and, like a teenager, sometimes I did it; sometimes I didn’t.
My husband, Jack, soon became a finger-wagging pain.
“If you don’t study, you’ll only have yourself to blame,” he would bark.
“I know!” I’d shout back. More than once, I felt like storming up to our bedroom and slamming the door in rage.
There was, however, a point when I was grateful that he took my studies so seriously. One night, I came home from college and explained that there was talk of a trip to Florence – though I couldn’t justify going. “You have to go visit a country if you’re learning the language,” Jack insisted.
In the end, only two of us from the class went; enrolling in a local language school and spending every evening in a local trattoria, talking about life – and practising our verbs. It was transformative, turning me from a nervous Italian speaker into someone altogether more confident.
Before I knew it, exams loomed large and I started sending drafts of Italian writing to Yolanda.
I have won awards for journalism, but nothing made me glow as much as a “Well done, Mum” and a smiley face emoji from my daughter. Nathan came up trumps, too. “I’ll load the dishwasher. You revise,” became a common refrain, as he would put aside his coursework to allow me time to study. And it worked both ways – sometimes I would pass him on the stairs at 1am and offer to make him tea, as he beavered away, creating illustrations for his own end-ofyear tests.
There were four parts to my GCSE: writing, reading, listening and speaking. The latter took just 10 minutes, but felt like an eternity. Listening was the worst, but the invigilator did allow sweets – I couldn’t have survived without a constant supply of Tic Tacs. It gave me a new found respect for my children and their friends, most juggling 10 or more such exams in a single school year. Doing just one, I found a humbling experience. What’s more, it was a good brain workout.
Nathan passed his foundation course with a merit, and we have decided that – whatever my result – we will celebrate with a family meal at our favourite Italian restaurant. And next year? I plan to sign up for Italian A-level. The only question is: will I be able to handle Jack’s guilt-tripping when it comes to the next round of homework? Ci vediamo – that’s “we’ll see” in Italian, in case, unlike me, you haven’t done your revision lately.