I had dreaded the change. I played the sensations over and over again in my head, despite having not yet experienced them. The embarrassment, the stress, the struggle, all of it; the GCSE’s had left me with PTSD. I was readying myself for exam season, but a million times over. I was worrying for no reason. When I returned to Langley, I was greeted by a sense of familiarity, and granted a new perspective on learning – seeing it as I never had before. The work, whilst being structured across my subjects to ease newcomers into Langley life, was adeptly focused as I had never known it to be. Everything was so clean, so un-muddied by the mindset of a stressed, sleepless GCSE student. This new light, which shed its glow across all that I saw, brought a new excitement even to that which I had before thought was mundane; the mac suites, the corridors buzzing with hive-like activity, the thickly intense atmosphere of examinations, the deafening near-silence of the concourse during lesson time. It was all sparkling, like seeing the school demolished and rebuilt again, as I had so many years ago. I felt as if I was a new student, seeing it all for the first time. Such a euphoric sensation I had never thought could be derived from something as simple as a change in suit, or in timetable. Not to diminish the experience of my time at Langley in uniform, but there truly is a palpable difference in walking these corridors in threads of your own choosing.
Thomas Tsoukaris
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