Could Try Harder...

I was in top sets but was told I needed to push myself.

While others were praised for average work, I was always being told I could do better.

This confused me and annoyed me, it felt unfair.

My work was scrutinised, questioned while classmates got a tick and got to leave.

I didn’t know why I was in top sets for these either, just let me drop down and breeze through like the others.

But there were whispers of ‘has potential’, ‘university’ at parent’s evenings.

And this annoyed me, ‘why were adults deciding this without me?’

Assumptions were being made all the time, but no one asked me.

I tried to tell teachers, I answered back, mocked lessons by not doing the work, did half jobs, all to try and tell them I didn’t see the point in it, show them it was boring, that I was fed up.

I even scribbled all over my higher paper Math GCSE because it was so hard and boring. I had asked to do a lower paper so I could just pass, fine then, I’ll fail it.

The truth was while anger and frustration prevailed, I was trying, I was trying every day just going to this place, navigating friendships, enduring the smells, the bright lights, the disgusting uniform. Illness and absence dotted my time of endurance.

Finally leaving this place I knew formal learning was over for me, I never wanted to go to another place that scrutinised me like that, with people who didn’t care about each other, where rules prevailed, with furniture bought from a wholesale, strip lighting, where passions were crushed with assessments and tests. A million miles from how home looked and smelled.

I wanted to learn; never stop I was just going to have to find my own way.

Extract from Could Try Harder by Eliza Fricker published 2026