Positive Stories Please

[tisallabitofafaff]

DD thought her paper 1 went well until she compared answers with others. She had several different answers to everyone else, including the genius who gets everything right, so she is now anxious. It's a subject that she needs an A in and she has never achieved this consistently and I am worried how this might affect her confidence. I am trying to reassure her that there could still be hope. Please can you help? !

Paper for what subject and which level? GCSE / A / university exams?

Apologies - A level Further Maths.

Ah ok. I think you can only wait and see, keep moving forward - I'm assuming there's further papers to be taken. I would 100% focus on those. My kid is taking exams this week too and it's hard stopping them ruminating after the fact. Good luck.

What's done is done. There's no point stewing over it because nothing can be changed, so push it to the back of the mind and focus on the next one. And don't discuss any answers after exams!

Thank you @Changinforaday
I will be glad when all of this is over.

Don’t you get a tonne of follow through marks for maths so even if you get the answer wrong, if you get the methodology right you can get almost all the marks?

I completely agree! I am trying to encourage her that it isn't all over because of one paper but I am mum so she isn't convinced by anything I say.

Thank you @LaPalmaLlama that's what she needs to hear. As she initially thought it went well then it may be that she has picked up some marks for her methods.

A long time ago now and in a different country, my younger sister sat an exam for a subject roughly equivalent to further maths. Their teacher in my opinion should not have been teaching maths at that level; but a lot of the class was tutored anyway (possibly part of the problem).

By the time I got home from uni the day of her exam, my sister was convinced she must have completely messed up as everyone in her class was distraught and found it such a hard paper. She'd worked through steadily and thought it was ok. I still remember sitting down with the paper with her and talking through how she'd approached every question so that I could reassure her.

When the results came out, she'd done very well.

Best wishes to your daughter for the rest of her exams, and I hope she's demonstrated what she's capable of and gets what she needs for her next step.

Thank you @LuckyOrMaybe that is a lovely story and just what she needs to hear. I appreciate you taking the time to share. Thank you also for the kind words

DD did A levels last year. She came out of her first physics paper convinced it had been a disaster but when she got her results she had higher marks on that paper then on the other two!

Also remember that the marks needed for an A in further maths may not be as high as she thinks. For AQA last year the percentages needed for an A ranged from approximately 59% to approximately 63% depending on the combination of options taken.

That's really helpful @GinandDubonnet and gives her hope!

This happened to me in my home country. We were comparing answers after the exam on the hardest question and I still remember I got a coefficient of 117 that no one else did.

Except the official solutions, when they were eventually published. I did very well and that particular question was the beginning of my confidence as a scientist.

I was very quiet and all the recognised geniuses were boys. AFAIK I am the only one with a PhD in a maths-adjacent subject and research that is sometimes classified as maths. Neither explicit nor implicit sexism is dead and sadly it starts very, very young and can be very subtle.

I hope your DD’s FM story has a short term happy ending, OP, but even more I hope that whatever happens now she will maintain her confidence for the long term.

@poetryandwine thank you for sharing your story. It has given DD (and me) comfort and hope as have your kind words. I think she will bounce back.

DD sat her A levels last year. A year where results were huge unknowns due to reverting back to 2019 grades. She refused ti discuss too much detail with friends as she knew it would ‘psych her out’. It couldn’t help positively and so she just ploughed

Don't benchmark against others, just yourself. That way you know you’ve done your best and that is all you can ask of yourself.

It is notoriously difficult to have a realistic assessment of one's own performance in exams. In my DC's school a few were in tears after papers they found particularly hard, and ended up with As and A-stars. And some came out pretty confident but did not do so well.

As others have said, grade boundaries are low in difficult subjects like FM. Your DD does not need to have got everything right to achieve a good grade. Best to put this one behind now and focus on the rest of her papers.

My dc last year threatened to pull out of fmaths after the first two papers...didn't think they had gone well and they were a lot harder people in general felt than the year before...carried on (with a lot of huffing and puffing) smashed the final paper and got an A star. Just hang on in there. It's a stressful time and emotions are heightened. There are lots of marks for workings etc etc Good luck!!!

@PettsWoodParadise thank you. I think she has learnt her lesson about discussing the answers! It's so hard when you can't do anything but let them get on with it.

Very true @TravellingLightToday . I know I had no idea really how it had gone for mine many moons ago. Your words are reassuring.

Thank you @user15913 ! It's so good to hear good news from a similar situation. I am not a mathematician and it's hard for me to understand the context. Well done to your dc!

Thank you everyone for taking time to reassure an anxious student (and her anxious mum) . We appreciate it. She is ready to give the next paper her all.

@tisallabitofafaff if it was further maths she probably has another 3 papers to sit, Ds does. For GCSE maths Ds got 98% or higher in class for a year but then dropped marks when in the exam. What I am saying is even though he was very academically able he still made some silly mistakes in the exam so didn't get full marks for every question. Had she spoken to him he may have had a different answer to your DD and he would have been the one that was wrong.

Don't forget students don't always tell the truth so if one person says I got 175 as the answer some who didn't put 175 might feel compelled to say that is what they got rather than look like they are in the wrong.

All she can do is focus on what is coming and not to dissect the paper with others. This isn't just about her academic achievement but the ability of those also sitting the papers because the grade curve applies. All she can do is her best and considering she is taking further maths she is clearly very able at maths. Best of luck to her.

Thanks @MrHowardsPears for another perspective and your kind words. It doesn't seem like the disaster we thought it was any more.