So Many Arguments, So Little Time...

This week has been... shall we say, interesting. I know this because the best day of the week turned out to be Monday.

Everything was fine until the second to last lesson on Tuesday, when our physics teacher decided to spring on us that she'd been "very disappointed" with the quality of the homework that we'd handed in to her the previous week, and, save for around four people, everyone in the class would have a detention on Friday afternoon.

Let me now take the opportunity to explain what this homework task actually was. The explanation of the assignment was vague at best - nothing more than the words "How do birds aim at fish in water? Include a diagram." Our teacher made no comment on how much she wanted us to write, the kind of information she expected us to include, or even whether we were supposed to hand draw the diagram or find one on the internet. If we didn't have our timetables to tell us when our next physics lesson was, we wouldn't have even known when we were meant to hand it in. So we basically assumed that, since she hadn't actually taught us anything in the lesson that we could use to answer this question in the way it seemed to want answering, we should go home and research the topic before writing a couple of paragraphs on it and adding a diagram. Wrong, apparently. To start with, the only (and I mean only) information that could be found on this topic was a poorly punctuated paragraph on Yahoo Answers, which said something about birds having a chemical in their brains which allowed them to calculate the refractive index of the water and determine exactly where in the water their prey actually is (because it looks like it's in a slightly different position due to the refraction of the light as it enters and leaves the water). An hour of searching using a variety of different queries returned no further information, so I wrote the information down in my own words to the best of my ability and added what looked like a reasonable diagram. I was, I admit, a little concerned at how little I had done, but when I got to school on the day of the next lesson to find that the majority of the class had experienced exactly the same difficulties and produced similar amounts of work, I thought no more of it.

So, needless to say, I was surprised (to say the least) when I was handed a 45 minute detention for what my teacher loosely defined as "insufficient homework" claiming that she wasn't convinced that I hadn't just copied it from the internet. Which, by the way, I hadn't. The way in which the teacher handled this situation made me very angry for a number of reasons:

1. She literally accused me outright of plagiarism. For goodness' sake, I can't even copy learning objectives off the board without changing them, so there was no way I was ever going to steal another person's work off the internet and claim it as my own. Granted, my work was fairly similar in places to the original source, but there are only so many ways you can rewrite the phrase "the distance between the bird's beak and the surface of the water" before it just becomes wrong.

2. She then went on to accuse me of lying. When I went up to her at the end of the lesson and explained (politely, I thought) that there was extremely limited information in any source (the task wasn't even on the GCSE specification - meaning that it actually wasn't required knowledge), she replied "I beg to differ!" And well you may, but I would expect at least a slightly more mature response from a teacher.

3. Any reasonable teacher would assume that if an entire class had a problem with a homework task that there was actually a problem with the task, or the way it was explained (or, in this case, a bit of both). What happened here? For what was literally the first piece of research homework we had been set by this teacher, she gave nearly the entire class detention. There wasn't even any logic to it either - it almost seemed like she had decided randomly who would be detained for ten minutes and who would stay for forty five. Big difference there.

And thus, I went home absolutely fuming to my parents, who promptly phoned the school and were told by the head of science that she would sort it out. So when, the next day, our physics teacher didn't even so much as mention the homework issue for the entire lesson, we were fuming. The entire class refused to answer her questions, and she didn't even bat an eyelid. Confused, I went to talk to the head of science, who said that we would all need to come and talk to her at the end of the day. Hoping we were finally getting somewhere, I left the situation alone.

But when the end of the day finally came around, the answer we got was not what we were expecting. We were told that the point of the homework was not to go away and look up the question on the internet, but to use our existing knowledge to come up with an answer. Firstly, I need to mention that this was the first time we had been told anything even remotely similar to this. Well, to be "fair" we weren't actually told anything. All we got was a question written on a whiteboard, with the added instruction to include a diagram. Secondly, why then did the teacher tell me that I was wrong when I first told her that there was no information on the internet? If I wasn't supposed to be using the internet at all. why tell me that I would find what I needed on there? We were then told that our teacher was very worried that she had negatively affected the relationship she had with us. Well, much as I'm sorry that she's been brought distress by this situation, I have very little sympathy for her. She did not behave as any reasonable teacher would in these circumstances, and when confronted by a myriad of angry phone calls and emails from parents, she told us that we had misunderstood what she had told us to do. Which is a pretty mean feat when you're not told anything. Finally, we were told that the science department would "let us off" and that we could all go home. By this time, I'll add, the people who had been lucky enough to get ten minute detentions in the first place had already been there longer than they would have been if they'd done nothing.

And so much as I want to let this go and move on now, I can't. And I'll tell you why:

1. The teachers completely misunderstood why it was we were complaining. They had assumed that we were simply annoyed at having to stay behind after school, when in actual fact it was because close to an entire class of hard-working students had been punished in a completely unreasonable manner which was not in line with any school policy. Effectively, the rules didn't exist until somebody decided we had broken them.

2. They still put the blame on us, changing their own version of events several times in the process. Because apparently I'm supposed to be able to understand that a couple of sentences written on a whiteboard actually means that the answers are all on the invisible internet, but I'm not allowed to look at them, because I should already know the answer. Ha.

3. Then there's the matter of how all this affects me mentally. As I've already mentioned, this was the first piece of homework that we'd been set by a teacher we'd never had before, who expected us to know what all of her expectations were despite never having communicated them to us. When we did what was, in her opinion, wrong, we were immediately given unreasonable sanctions, and when we tried to give our opinions on why these were unreasonable, we were not listened to, but blackmailed and gaslighted until we thought we had. So now, how am I supposed to have any confidence in my work? How can I ever be sure that what I'm doing is what has actually been asked for, when nobody seems to know what's been asked for until much later? How am I supposed to believe that I will be supported and listened to if I have a problem with the work, when my opinions were effectively used against me and a number of my friends? Obviously I don't expect my teacher to have taken any of this into account - we are all only human, after all - but I can't just put things behind me like some people can, and I know I'm not the only one to feel this way.

So, while I feel terrible for being angry (although I probably shouldn't), and I hope my future experiences of physics will be more positive, I and many others, including my parents, friends and even other teachers, still think it was ridiculous that this incident was allowed to go as far as it did.

And on a side note, I would be interested to see how the situation would have played out if Ofsted hadn't sent out parent satisfaction surveys at the same time that all of this was happening. :P

Mental Health Awareness Week 2014 | Anxiety

As you probably already know, this week is Mental Health Awareness Week (although I'll admit that I didn't have any idea that this even existed until people started tweeting about it on Monday), and the focus for this year is on anxiety. And since I've already shared my own experiences of living with anxiety (part of my series of posts during OCD Awareness Week last October), I thought that I'd share some of my coping strategies and tips instead. These may not work for everyone, but these are the things that I've found to be the most helpful in my recovery so far:

Strategy no. 1: Read.

Some people hate reading, but for me it's a chance to escape from reality for a while, while also learning new things and developing my own writing skills (an opinion that I know is shared by my cousin!). It's always a good way to relax, and if necessary can give you an excuse to escape from some social situations (for example, going to your school's library at break times instead of the canteen). Books that I've enjoyed recently include: Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult*, My Secret Sister by Helen Edwards*, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi* and The Way I See It by Melissa Sue Anderson.

* Possible triggers.

Strategy no. 2: Art and Crafts.

I've never been very good at drawing or painting, but I recently took up crochet, which I have found very enjoyable so far (although I only actually started it to see if it was as hard as a couple of girls made it look on TV - it wasn't). It's a fun way to relieve stress and be creative, and you can make a lot of fun and wacky things that you wouldn't be able to find in shops, such as this cat hat, which I found on WikiHow the other day.

Strategy no. 3: Puzzles.

Puzzles are a good way of occupying your full attention, which can be great for helping anxious thoughts to subside. I particularly like logic puzzles, but there are plenty of different types to choose from.

Strategy no. 4: Hobbies.

By far the best way I've found of relieving anxiety (and helping to keep it under control) is to find something that you love and stick at it. For me, this would be music. And you don't just have to have it as a thing on the side like most people do, I went a bit crazy with mine! I now play five different instruments (although I'm only really any good at one or two of them) and am in two different orchestras, so if you find something that you really enjoy, you can totally go to town with it. Have fun!

I hope that my little summary will be helpful to some people, but even if it's not, thanks for reading!

How Schools "Deal With" Mental Health

Anyone with any experience of life in a typical British secondary school will know that it is not easy - large workloads, less than understanding teachers and anywhere between 100 and 2000 teenagers crammed into a building that was definitely not designed to accommodate so many people is hardly a picnic, but add a mental health disorder to that already terrifying mix and you will often be left with what can only be described as a living Hell. 

When I first developed obsessive-compulsive disorder at the age of eleven, I was coming to the end of my time at primary school and beginning to prepare what would undoubtedly be a daunting move into year seven. Now, I'm not saying that everyone else found this thought easy to deal with - moving to a school more than twice the size of your current one where almost everyone around you is a scary process no matter what your circumstances, but in my case, there was one factor that was about to make the switch ten times harder. I could not - and, in fact, still can't - sit or stand with my back to anyone without experiencing serious anxiety, and without any kind of explanation for what I was experiencing, I was stuck. And once I got to secondary school, I was faced with the prospect of having every lesson in a different classroom, and with a different teacher. This meant having to face new classes full of people I had never seen before, walk down crowded corridors several times a day (no mean feat when you're trying to keep the back of your head invisible to every other person) and, worst of all, sit in a different seat in every single class. I specifically remember that I was not sat at the back of the room even once in the whole of my first year, despite the fact that the seating plans were changed every half term. Which meant that, every six weeks, I would walk into each lesson in turn and have to face the news that I would be sitting at the front of the room again.

This continued until the end of year nine (the third year), when I finally managed to figure out what was going on inside my head. When I came back to school at the beginning of year ten, I was genuinely hopeful that things would change for the better. I had a diagnosis, which meant that I could explain my situation and hopefully gain some support and understanding. And, at the beginning, it seemed that I was right. My head of year sent a message to all of my teachers telling them that I would need to sit at the back of the class, and I even managed to explain it to one or two of them myself. So, when I walked into my French lesson at the start of this term and saw that I had been placed right in the middle of the room, I nearly collapsed. If I hadn't known better, I would have run straight out of the room. French is the only lesson I have in which I am physically incapable of explaining my situation to the teacher, who insists that every student must speak only in French from the moment they enter the room. I was angry - why would she do this, when not only my parents but a fellow teacher had specifically told her that I needed to sit at the back? I told myself that she had probably just forgotten, but then I realised that that was not an excuse. If I had a visual impairment and needed to sit at the front, my teachers wouldn't forget. If I was a wheelchair user, they wouldn't suddenly decide that I could handle having a lesson on the top floor. Why should it be different just because I have a mental health problem, rather than a physical one? I decided that I needed to do some research, and find out what rights I have to be given support from my school. The result? It would appear that I have none. I couldn't even find a guideline which suggested that people like me be offered a certain level of support from any kind of primary school, secondary school or sixth form college in the UK.

The issue of schools and mental health was brought to my attention last weekend, when my cousin Clarissa texted me to tell me that her mum would be meeting with her head of year about the panic attacks she'd been having at school. I texted her again yesterday to find out how it went, fully expecting to be told that she'd been referred to her local mental health services and that she was going to get the help she needed. Did that happen? No. Apparently, the best the school decided they could do was to provide my cousin with a red card that she could "wave at her teachers to get her out of class if necessary". Which is fine in the short term, but from a long term perspective actually solves nothing at all. And when I heard that the teacher who allocated said card dismissed her panic attacks as "moments", I was angry again. Is anything actually being done to help her? Seemingly not. Does no one realise that untreated anxiety disorders do nothing but worsen? What we need is genuine support, and when that support isn't given by an establishment where we spend so much of our time, it can almost seem like it's not worth having at all.

OCD Awareness Week Day 6 - Sources of Support

There are loads of places online and beyond that people with OCD can go to for support. I've listed a few here - just click on the pictures to visit their websites.

Minds Like Ours is a non profit organisation that supports those with mental health problems and raises awareness of mental health in general. I talk about them a lot, mainly because of their awesome forum.

OCD Action and OCD-UK are the UK's two charities that support people with OCD. They both do some really awesome work. OCD Action also has a website specifically for young people (if you look hard enough, you can find the article that I wrote for them recently), which you can find via their main website.

The Samaritans and Childline are both charities set up to help people in times of crisis or emotional distress. The only real difference is that ChildLine is specifically for people under the age of 18 (hence the name).

Mind is arguably the UK's biggest and most well known mental health charity. Their website has some great information about different mental health disorders, and I'm pretty sure they have a helpline as well.

Do you like my special "Click Here" buttons? I discovered picture effects presets on Microsoft PowerPoint today and it felt like Christmas.

Anxiety, Stimulants and the Sleep Cycle

As with any mental health disorder, anxiety creates its own set of problems, many of which I find involve the things I eat and drink combined with the amount of sleep I get, and that the two can often negatively affect each other.

How much anxiety I experience in a day depends a lot on what I do and where I am. I'm much more likely to come across things that trigger my OCD when I'm at school than when I'm hiding in my bedroom at home, for example. This in turn affects the things that I am able to do, which often has an impact on how I feel. You can see how I can quickly end up in a negative cycle. However, I have found that altering a few things in my life has helped me to manage my feelings more effectively, even if not entirely:

#1 ~ Sugar. This one might sound obvious, but it only recently hit me that the amount of sugar I consume and the amount of anxiety I feel might have some kind of relationship. The event that made me realise this took place near the end of the summer holidays this year, when I purchased an enormous box of gummy bears in the Duty Free shop at the airport when we were coming home from Menorca and ate the whole lot in the space of about 12 hours. This, needless to say, left me not only hyper but panicked and jumpy, and was followed by a pretty nasty sugar crash! Since then, I've limited the amount of sugar that I eat or drink in one sitting (I generally won't have anything with more than 15g of sugar per serving unless I'm exhausted or feeling low - or prepared to take a risk!), and I've found that it helped more than I thought it would. If anything, it gives me the feeling that I'm in control of something, even if the whole anxiety relief thing is only a placebo.

I still have the box. I'm not really sure why.

#2 ~ Caffeine. I've never really drunk much caffeine to be honest (unlike my younger sister, who's addicted to the stuff), so it wasn't until I started cutting down on sugar that I figured it would probably be a good idea to go decaf as well. As a result, I now drink even less caffeine than I did before (i.e. none) unless I'm absolutely exhausted or feeling very low, in which case I'll have a cup of tea. Right now I've got an embarrassingly weak cup of cold English Breakfast, which I've drunk only half of in over an hour. I'm drinking it deliberately slowly - not only to gauge my body's reaction to it but to avoid spilling it on my computer! It tastes vile, but it's doing the trick.

#3 ~ Sleep. Because my anxiety drains so much of my energy, I find that I often want to sleep at odd times (generally during school, which as you can imagine isn't favourable). I always avoid taking naps even if I'm able, as if I give in I'll mess up my body clock and end up wide awake and twice as anxious at three in the morning. Having said that, though, there is scientific evidence that taking a 20 minute nap every now and again can be beneficial (they even tested it on Mythbusters!), so at the end of the day it's really down to personal choice.

As always, feel free to post anything you think I may have missed in the comments section below, or suggest other things I could post about in the future.

Mental Health and the Daily Routine

If, like me, you're among the one in four people living with a mental health problem, chances are it can seriously affect the structure of your days. I know from my own experiences of exhausting anxiety, ridiculous amounts of time spent on compulsive rituals and an increasingly demanding schedule that it can be pretty hard to motivate yourself to get things done, which is why I've decided to share some of my tips for keeping to a daily routine here:

Tip #1 ~ Write things on a calendar. A calendar is a really useful and easy way of reminding yourself of what you have to do whilst also reassuring yourself that you haven't forgotten anything. It can also be free; you can use calendars on your phone or email inbox, or just do what I did and draw one in a notebook. I find it useful to colour code my calendar so that I can look at it and immediately have a good idea of what kind of day I'm likely to have. I write everything I absolutely have to remember (or, as the case may be, absolutely can't avoid), such as appointments and coursework deadlines, in red; significant days or annual events (like birthdays) in blue; and everything else in black. I also highlight certain days in different colours depending on how much anxiety the events on that day are likely to cause me. Yellow is some anxiety, orange is significant anxiety and pink is severe anxiety. To show you what I mean, this is what the next two months currently look like:

On the back of each month is my notes page, which is where I write the things that happen that might be useful to me in the future, such as good coping strategies I've discovered or warnings not to do things a certain way. I also colour code these notes to show how much anxiety I felt on the given day.

Tip #2 ~ Allocate your time. Make the commitment to finish the things that really need doing before moving on to other things. For example, if you know you've got a project due tomorrow and you still have half of it to do, you will feel a lot better later if you sit down and finish it rather than going off to play video games, as tempting as the second option may be. It's perfectly alright to allow yourself a break now and then, particularly if you're working at a computer or doing something that requires straining your eyes, but make sure you set yourself a sensible time limit (the recommended time for a break is about twenty minutes) and that you go back to your task once it's over. If someone asks you to help them with something or a friend calls asking if you're free, be sure to check that you actually have time before you say yes. Whoever it is will understand if you're too busy, just like you (hopefully) would for them.

Tip #3 ~ Know when enough's enough. Everyone has limits, and it's really important to remember that, particularly if you're already struggling with your mental health. Take care not to over commit yourself, and let people know if it's all getting too much. It would probably be a good idea to let your school or workplace know about your disorder if you haven't already, as they'll be able to work with you to make sure you're not taking on more than you can handle. 

So, that's my advice on keeping a structured routine. Feel free to comment with any additional suggestions, and I'll let you know how well I do with sticking to my plan!