One thing leads to another – that’s my thesis for today and it leaves me with the question of where to start. Whilst each idea leads onto the next, nothing is the true beginning, and even if we were to trace my line of thought to the cold November night in Trafalgar Square when my parents got engaged there would still be causes and precursors. At some point you have to figure that what went before is less important than what’s happening now and so we will start with a book of comic poems by Wendy Cope. The book is called Serious Concerns and it’s a fabulous collection that no bookshelf should be without: several of the poems have lodged themselves in my brain without the usual expenditure of effort it takes to learn something worthwhile. One such is this piece of charming nonsense:
I think I’m in love with A. E. Housman
Which puts me in a worse-than-usual-fix.
No woman ever stood a chance with Housman
And he’s been dead since 1936.
Maybe, like me, you had not come across A.E. Housman until this poem brought him to your attention in which case I hope your curiosity is piqued – if not then I encourage you to develop your curiosity, to bring it out more often, to give it a greater chance of being piqued. Pique, by the way, is a wonderful word – it comes from a French word meaning “to prick” and when it’s applied to curiosity or interest it means awoken, aroused. When it’s applied directly to oneself it means to irritate – if you were to yawn at this point it would pique me. Similarly, it can be used as a noun, were I to storm off in response to your disinterest I could do so in a fit of pique.
Instead I’m going to return to Housman, a classics professor and poet born in 1859 and, as we’re told in the poem, dying in 1936. His translations of Latin texts are works of great scholarship, but outside the field of classics he is best known as the writer of A Shropshire Lad – a collection of sixty three poems of nostalgia and lost youth. Although published in 1896 it resonated strongly with young readers during the first world war and has remained popular ever since attracting both parody and musical tribute ever since as well as the hopeless adoration of Wendy Cope.
The best known piece from the Shropshire Lad is poem 40 which speaks of blue remembered hills and a happy highway where I went and cannot come again, but I am instead turning to poem 2 which goes like this:
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
It’s a poem of spring, of rejoicing in the beauty of nature but it’s also a poem of regret, of recognising that time is fleeting and that opportunities once missed are lost forever. That idea brings me to you, to the term ahead, to the opportunities you have. Of the eleven half terms of your sixth form, four will not come again – the chances you’ve taken are taken, those you’ve missed are gone. Before you stands the only confidence term you’ll have in entirety – this time next year you’ll be too focused on final exams and coursework deadlines to take advantage of the early summer, but more importantly this time next year you will be in Year 13, your chance to enjoy Year 12 will be long gone – it’s something you only get once, and that once is now.
This, I think, is the term to delight in learning, to explore your subjects, to recognise that you have got the hang of sixth form study and routines over the last two terms and that you can now look up and see what else there might be. I would consider this term well spent if you completed these five challenges:
That’s it for my list – I’m sure you’ll do other things, that the weeks ahead will be packed with individual adventures of your own; this isn’t intended to fill your time but to give you some signposts and handholds as you make your way through. One word of warning – don’t get stuck on the first challenge. It’s an important one: study hard so that you can be proud of your end of year grades, but if it’s all you do then you’ll have wasted the last term of Year 12 you’ll ever have.
One thing leads to another, and each thing on my list leads to something bigger in Year 13. If you start reading deliberately, choosing books because you think they’re good rather than because they happen to be adjacent when someone tells you to read then you’ll find one book leads onto another, that reading becomes a habit and a joy rather than a chore and that studies come easier. If you develop your curiosity and make having it piqued a part of your weekly routine then you’ll learn more, know more, be more interesting, have more to say and give people more of a reason to employ you. Similarly, if you’ve been part of something, taken a lead or joined a team then you’ll acquire skills that will mean you’re more valuable in the next team you join – be more likely to be invited to join one. If you work hard at writing well when you don’t need to then you’ll do better when you do, your personal statement, job application, exam essay will be that much better- and if you take pride in what you do, both outside your lessons and in them then you’ll find there’s more to be proud of.
One thing leads to another, and if you don’t pick up on the first thing you don’t get the shot at the second thing. If you don’t look at the cherry trees this year, not only do you miss out on one of a small number of chances to admire the blossom, not only do you miss out on your only chance to do so as a 20 year old (17, in your case) but you also make yourself less likely to go looking next year – missing opportunities can become a habit just as much as taking them can.
Footnotes:
1. Poem XL (40) from A Shropshire Lad can be found here: