What I wish I’d known on A-level results day
Charles Darwin was considered an average student
Like many people, I remember the day I got my A-level results like it was yesterday. And like many people, that day was categorically not yesterday – in my case, it was 21 years ago. Still, the memory of that traumatic period of my life is etched deeply into my brain, unlike any of the information I obsessively memorised in preparation for my exams. It was 1998. Tony Blair was banging on about “education, education, education”. I had just been put on antidepressants for the first time, a wreck burnt out from exam stress. We always think that depression and anxiety in young people is a new thing, a modern phenomenon bought on by social media and an uncertain political future, when in fact it is as old as the hills. Or at least as old as me.
Even then, standards were slipping. Commentators in newspapers boiled with indignation about how easy A-levels were becoming, the pieces illustrated with pictures of pretty young girls clutching results and hugging each other. I am pretty sure that if you were to find a newspaper from A-level results day 1998, the reports on the declining standards of our youth would be identical to the ones we have seen this week, and the only thing that would have changed is the stories around them. The parlous state of the youth of today is a subject that never gets old, unlike the people discussing it.
And as I have watched friends and their children panic about grades and university clearing systems, I have been thinking about
the things I wish someone had told me way back in 1998, when I thought my A-level results were going to define the rest of my life. In actual fact, they only really defined the rest of that week. So here, for any anxious teenagers (and their parents and grand parents), I present all the things I have learnt about A-level results, in the 21 years since I got my A-level results (AAB, since you’re asking). Please feel free to add any tips over email.
The question “what did you get in your A-levels?” is annoying, and often repeated right now. But it won’t be in five years time. Then it will change into some other generic inquiry about the life stage you are at: “where do you work?’; “have you got a boyfriend?”; “do you own your flat?”; “are you getting married?”; “when are you having children?”; “are you breastfeeding?”; “are you planning on having another one?”; “what school are you/ they going to?” and so on and so on. People are only asking these questions in a misjudged attempt at politeness. They don’t really care about the answer. So do feel free to make it “none of your business”.
You are more than a grade. Your worth is not tied up in some letters presented to you by an exam board. You are a human being, with hopes and dreams and character quirks and a personality that many people adore. Being rubbish at maths does not make you rubbish at life. Your best is always the best, and if you didn’t try your best then you’ve learnt a valuable lesson for the next time life tries to boil you down to a single letter or number. Suck it up, kiddo!
Failure is not the end. In many cases, it is just the beginning. John Major never got an A-level, and he barely got any O-levels either. Thomas Edison’s teachers told him he was “too stupid to learn anything”. Charles Darwin was considered “average” as a student. Saul Bellow was described by one of his professors as a “dud” who showed no sign of literary greatness. And then there are the zillion other people who were entirely mediocre at school and went on to do great things. You have an entire life to light up the world. How dull if you only ever managed it at 17!
In the end, it doesn’t matter how good your grades are, how amazing the university that you get into. Because the most important thing you can ever learn is a rock solid sense of resilience. And no, resilience is not being able to withstand anything without ever showing an emotion. Resilience is not a stiff upper lip. It is having a good sense of self esteem, and a faith that everything is as it should be – even if everything is a D in geography, an E in general studies, and an F in English literature.
It is knowing that long after you have left school, you still have much to learn. That even 21 years after you finished your A-levels, there is a lesson to be found in everything.