900 people were thankfully not looking at me

After the exhaustion and excitement of summer, settling into Sixth Form can be somewhat of a struggle, and for me, a new student, the first couple of weeks felt like a whirlwind of work, friends and unfamiliar rooms. Deciding to make King’s Worcester my destination for Sixth Form only three months before September definitely proved to be challenging but after a month of the “King’s experience” I could not be more grateful for the spontaneous change I made post-GCSEs.

Throughout the summer, I reached out through mutual friends to people I understood to be going to King’s in the upcoming term but despite this I still had yet to encounter the daunting nine hundred pupils I envisioned dramatically to be stood at the gates watching me on my first day. The reality was that the cosy site of King’s strangely swallows the children up so much so on my first day that I felt as if I’d walked into a homely haven. However, it has still taken me a while to comprehend the uniqueness of the site and its quirky corridors to classrooms.

Despite all the things I was not accustomed to in my much smaller rural secondary school — the daily commuting experience of the train, the weekly cathedral gatherings, the freedom to go into town for lunch, and the HUGE range of clubs/activities — King’s has welcomed me so much and the past four weeks feel as if I have belonged to these customs and community for years.

The one significant thing I have learnt from “diving into the deep end” and coming to King’s, and which I believe can be taken into almost every situation, is that pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and trying alternate options — not always following the crowd — is the way to go.