"What subjects do I do?"

A... asked me, "I absolutely have to decide by tomorrow for next year. It's the last day we can change anything and I really don't know..."

She slumped into the chair opposite me and added, "Mum said to come and talk to you."

I groaned inwardly.  It is not the sort of conversation I enjoy having with a young person. 

A... is intelligent, indeed highly intelligent. She was the Whirlwind's closest friend and still misses her dreadfully. We have shed more than a few tears together over the past year. At the same time A....'s parents have been sensible and supportive - of both of us. I knew I needed to be supportive too.

A... still isn't quite sure what she would like to do on leaving school. It might eventually be law like her father.

"I do want to go to university but maybe not straight away," she told me some time ago.

Yesterday she told me that her parents have now suggested she spends a year in Italy at the end of her final year in school. It was where her family came from in the 1950's. Her grandparents were children then. There have been family trips back and forth to family who still live there.

"What do you think of that idea?" I asked her.

"It would be interesting but it's a bit scary," she told me.

"Well, it's two years away. It might not feel so scary when you are two years older."

She gave me a sheepish sort of grin. We both know that, like her friend, she is not particularly sophisticated yet.

"I was thinking about doing French - as well as Italian." Italian is an extra subject for her. Her mother started teaching her and now she goes to classes outside school. Her school also teaches Chinese. 

A...brought out the information from the school. We went through it together.  She now needs to specialise in one way or another. There is no doubt she is an arts rather than a science student. 

"You could do Legal Studies," I tell her, "But you don't need to do it to get into Law school later and it might be better to give yourself a chance to learn something else." I know what the curriculum contains and it won't give her any advantage.

We go on through the list of possibilities. She tells me what she has been thinking about and her reasons for doing one subject or another. I can see it is the Legal Studies or Biology, or Psychology options, all of which would fit into her timetable choices, which are bothering her. Psychology is being offered as a new subject next year.

"But I don't like Biology," is her complaint to me. I can understand this. It would not have been one of my first subject choices at her age but I am careful not to say that. 

"Well, what's wrong with Psychology?"

"It's about rats in laboratories and I would hate that."

 I couldn't help it. I laughed. 

"Do you know who will be teaching it?" I asked. I do and so did A... 

"I think you should talk to Mrs W... tomorrow. You might be very nicely surprised to find out what it is about. Didn't they tell you at school?"

"I was away...when I had Covid."

That explained it. 

"Would you like me to leave Mrs W.... an email and tell her you are going to ask?"

She nodded and put the papers back in her school back pack and left. I sent an email off to the teacher in question and had a response this morning.

"Excellent choice for her I would think. Many thanks."

I hope it is. It is hard to make life choices at that age. I thought back to my own school days. We had no choice at all. If you were in the "academic" stream in a rural school you did English, Maths I, Maths II, Physics, Chemistry, Geography, History and the girls did Sewing and the boys did Woodwork. Now they have all sorts of much more interesting choices - and perhaps that makes it even harder.