Wise Decisions (April 2025)

Today’s assembly is about wise decisions, but rather than dive straight into the advice, I’m going to start with what our ancestors used to call the “hit parade”. In 1986 the Swedish band Europe had a number one hit with a song based around a simple keyboard riff and a four-word chorus. If they can do that, I thought, then surely I can get an assembly out of it – I’ll even use the same four words: It’s the Final Countdown. This is the last assembly you’ll have before the last vacation before the last exams of your school career. You have reached the end of the road, the crunch point, the moment of truth when the hours you have spent in study will be tested – how much work have you put in, and how effective has it been. It’s quite a thought, and I don’t want to terrify you, but if it’s not making you a bit nervous then you’re not taking it seriously enough.

I have, however, lied to you a very small amount because we’re not quite at that crunch point – there are 39 days left before the exams begin: fifteen days of school after today, ten days of vacation, two bank holidays and six weekends – this is not the moment of truth, it’s the final countdown, the last few days of your school career.

The best advice I’ve come across for this situation comes not from the Scandinavian rock giants, but from the students of Harris Clapham Sixth Form. As some of you know, it is my habit to spend Friday lunchtime in the prayer room meditating on some reading whilst keeping half an ear on the lecture. Last Friday the talk was based on the impending end to Ramadan and the exhortation was to make the most of the last few days, to engage harder rather than slack off, stop early, give up. What is true of those last few days of fasting is true of the final countdown to exams – you need to work harder than before, not slack off, not stop early, definitely not give up.

Philip Larkin was an English poet who died in 1985, just too early to enjoy Europe’s biggest hit – although I’m not entirely sure it would be his kind of thing: he gives the impression of having found his idiom in the 1950s and refused any blandishment to leave that grey decade. His poem Annus Mirabilis refers to this, saying that 1963 marked the beginning of a new world that came a bit too late for him to enjoy it. That poem is rather too rude for me to quote in assembly, as is his most famous piece: This Be The Verse, both of which are masterpieces that you’re invited to look up in your own time. I can, however, read you the first stanza of “Days” – a piece that has relevance to today’s them, to the final countdown of 39 days.

“What are days for?” asks Larkin,
“Days are where we live.   
They come, they wake us   
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:   
Where can we live but days?”

You have 39 days – what are they for? They are to be happy in, says Larkin – and I would not disagree. I think I might need to impart some of my own wisdom to you, though. It is this – happiness does not come from idleness but from purpose – hard work is not an impediment to happiness, in fact it can be the source. Some of the happiest times of my life have been when I’ve had something really worthwhile to spend my time on – and some of those have been when I’ve been studying for exams. Now, before you get the wrong impression, start rolling your eyes, I should make the counterpoint that some of the happiest times of my life have been lying in the sun slipping in and out of a warm doze, but honestly, the best holidays are the ones you’ve earned, when you know you’ve worked hard and have a well-deserved rest.

Days are where we live – it is in these days that we must make the difference and whilst you have 39 days now, by the time the next assembly comes round, four school days, one bank holiday, three weekends and ten days of vacation will have passed – you will have just eighteen left. That means the decisions you make between now and then are crucial to your success – and I’d echo Friday’s advice: make the most of these last few days.

So, let’s suppose I’ve convinced you – that you’re suitably nervous about the exams, keen to do your best, that you recognise the importance of the final countdown and want to welcome each of the remaining days as an opportunity for hard work. What specifically, then, should you do?

Well, specifically, I have three pieces of advice:

• Make the most of the days in school. A government study has shown that each day in school is worth £750 in lifetime earnings – when you think of it like that it’s an amazing hourly rate so don’t miss out. There are interventions during the vacation when you can come in to school to get an additional £750 worth of education – your teachers are putting these on to help you and you’d be mad to miss out. Don’t be mad.
• Work hard on the days when you’re at home. I know it’s hard to make yourself study – it’s easier when there are teachers telling you to get on with it – that’s one of the reasons school days are so valuable – but being able to do things independently is an employability skill as well as part of adult maturity so you should make an effort. Do three hours in the morning, have lunch and then do three hours in the afternoon. If you think you’re going to need an afternoon off then do three hours in the evening before – earn your holiday time. And if this sounds like hard work then it should – you should be working harder now than you ever have in your life but if you keep going right through to the end of your exams you’ll have earned the best summer you’ll ever have – and what will make it feel so great is the knowledge that you deserve it.
• Work smart whether you’re at school or at home. The best conditions for study are the ones we put on in the exams – distraction free silence. You should try to get as close to this as you can. Sit away from friends who will take your attention from what you’re doing, set your phone to do not disturb, turn the music off (the only exception to this is if you have a noisy house in which case find something that lasts the best part of an hour so you’re not always fiddling with the settings and that doesn’t have lyrics so that you’re not following the words. Beethoven has some good symphonies – and if that’s not your kind of music do it anyway, the sound is there to drown out your annoying siblings, not because you like it).

The other thing that was said on Friday that struck me was that if you do the right thing one day just to abandon it the next then you may as well not have bothered in the first place – a point that clearly went over someone’s head as they took their lanyard off just after I’d watched them put it round their necks. The key point is that your study has to be something that happens every day, time and time over as they wake you and I’d add that just because you get it wrong one day doesn’t mean you have to get it wrong the next. It’s not like a streak on an app where you lose it if you miss one: every day you study properly is worth £750 to future you, so if your will fails you one day and you spend it not living, but binge-watching Criminal Minds then the next day you need to regroup, refocus, put Matthew Grey Gubler back in his box and return to the books.

And I have three points to make about those books

• Inking is thinking – your study is much more likely to be effective if it consists of you writing on paper: if you are staring at a screen or simply reading then you’re not really learning. So, if it is content that you need to understand, get your pad of paper at your hand and make notes. If what you need is practice, then practise. If it’s something to memorise then cover your books, turn off your screens and write out as much as you can from memory. Then check it, make corrections, and do it again – and do it again not until you can get it right, but until you can’t get it wrong.
• You need fewer breaks than you think. In an exam you will have to concentrate for an hour and a half, two hours, two and a half hours – right now my observation is that some of you find fifteen minutes a trial. You need to build up that endurance, so when you do your three hours work, don’t give yourself more than one break – and don’t give yourself more than ten minutes when you do break – and add those ten minutes on at the end, take them out of lunchtime rather than study time.
• Don’t kid yourself that you know better than I do when it comes to studying – don’t believe the voice that tells you that you work better with music on, that you’re more effective with a break every fifteen minutes, that working every day is bad for you, that holidays are for rest rather than study. That voice has never been through the Year 13 exams – my voice has, it has made a success of them itself and has seen about three thousand students through the process since. My voice knows what it’s talking about, your teachers’ voices know what they are talking about – I know that there are internet sites that will tell you otherwise and I’m sure you can find someone to tell you what you want to hear, but sometimes, now, in the final countdown, you need to hear truth rather than the echo of your own preferences.

What are days for? What are the next thirty four days for? What will you do with those last few days? How will you use the final countdown? Those are all big questions – and future you will look back on the answers that you gave – and judge present you. I don’t say good luck to people going into exams – I don’t think luck has anything to do with it: exams are a celebration of how much you know, how hard you’ve worked and how clever you are. I won’t say good luck, but I will say make wise decisions, and make them in the final countdown of days you have left.

Footnotes:

1. This Be The Verse is also not quoted in Kindred Spirits. Not quoting Annus Mirabilis is a new venture.

2. The conversation between present and future you is developed further in Get Educated.

3. The hits of the eighties and the amount of time left before exams also coincide in Discretionary Hours.

4. The idea that exams are a celebration of how much you know, how hard you've worked and how clever you are gets a more thorough airing in Entropy Inspires.