The School Saga: Results Day

As I write this now it is very almost 11am on the 11th of August, exactly one week until A Level results day. And I am shitting it.

The nagging of stress that comes with results day has been in the back of my mind for just under two months now, but only today has it hit me full force. I’ve spent the last few weeks having moments of ‘oh shit’ but then I forget, and I carry on with my life. Yet today, I woke up with a pounding headache and my eyes too heavy after having a nightmare of failing my exams. I can’t remember the exacts, but I definitely got a C and in a depressive rage I checked UCAS, discovered I didn’t get into either of my university choices, and promptly threw everything I had in my hands at the window of my mum’s car. The letter C has been mocking me for months now, it was the grade I got in my final Media mock after years of As and A*s, it was the grade that made me realise that my exams were coming thick and fast, and it was the grade I have convinced myself I’m getting three of next week.

My predicted grades for my subjects (Psychology, English Language and Media) are as followed: AAA*. And what I need to get into my firm choice of university (studying English Language and Creative Writing) is ABB. Though the uni offers a £2000 scholarship for those who get AAA or above so really, I’m hoping for that. I’m not sure why I’ve convinced myself of CCC, because I know I worked my arse off in Psychology, a subject I’ve still never gotten a C in despite it being my worst, and English Language has been a strong suit of mine. So realistically, not joking around, I believe/hope I have gotten ABB or AAB, I’m not sure but definitely a B in Media. So, let’s hope me joking about my three Cs is actually just me being self-deprecating and I do not fall victim to the self-fulfilling prophecy.

It’s not just the stress of the grades that’s freaking me out, though it’s definitely the biggest cause, it’s more the not knowing of how results day is going to play out. With the pandemic, the last two years results have been sent via email and students were not able to go into their school to collect the envelope. We’d been promised this year it will be back to normal if we wish to go and collect, but this was by teachers not the people in charge, and as the day draws closer, we are still not entirely sure if we can turn up and what time to do so. We’d also heard word they might be texting us our results, a prospect that is utterly terrifying considering I will not have chance to prepare myself if I wake up to a text or just three letters on my home screen. I’d already told myself I was going to delete my email app so I can avoid any unwanted emails from college, my chosen universities or UCAS track, because at the end of the day I want to do this all in my own time.

I haven’t decided which way round to check yet either, to get to college and see the grades and then check UCAS track, because then at least I am almost certain of success or failure as I log in, and if the university decides to be nice and let me in regardless of not meeting the requirements it would be a pleasant surprise. Or to wake up at 8am with the rest of the country and try to fight the crashes and lag of UCAS before I get my results, because then I’d still have the almost certainty but if I don’t get in it’ll be a day of heartbreak. And if the university does decide to be nice, I’m still going to be gutted when I don’t get the grades I wanted. I think I’ll open my results first, but then UCAS is at my disposal and I’m very impatient. So, stay tuned.

And then is the question of where do I open the envelope. In front of all my friends where they will jump to look at what I got? In front of a teacher to see the drop of the eyes and the sad smile when I don’t get what I was predicted? In the toilet where no one can see me, but the innocent passers-by can hear my sobs? Not that one, not the story I want to tell in the years to come. My mum is dropping me at college so I could open them with her, that’s probably the nicest thing to do for me and for her, Dad and Reece won’t be there though which sucks a little bit but that’s okay. But when you’ve done great things at school all your life, and your GCSEs ended up with three 9s, it’s hard for people to not expect great things from you. And I am terrified of letting everyone down. I guess we’ll just see how the day plays out, hopefully I go out for brunch with Emily and Eleni afterwards, but we’ll see. But I’m so scared, I’m just hoping the cool things I’m up to over the next few days are enough to distract a bit. But enough on that because I’m going to do a summer round up like I did last year. For now, Georgia is coming round in a bit, and I keep making awkward eye contact with the guy washing our windows. I’ll be back with more thoughts, or my actual results, who knows. AH.

There are three days left to go and the unbearable panic is setting in. Still no word from college. And now my mother is counting down the days, sticking her fingers up and wriggling them in my face like a reminder of Doom’s Day. She’s been reading articles to me this morning ‘thousands of students likely to miss out on their first-place university choices among significant grade drops after the pandemic’. I don’t know if the media are being dramatic, because we’ve known from the start that grades would be lower than last year but it’s scaring me. Of course, it’s scaring me. I have worked my arse off for two years (the last two months) and have gotten my heart set on a university that might just be too far out of my reach. And all because the government has decided to say a big ‘fuck you’ to the entire class of 2022. I’m hoping the media are being dramatic, I’m hoping their wrong and my god am I hoping to scrape that ABB. Only time will tell.

The day has come and gone and so many people have been emailed. My mum emailed somebody and got the response of ‘we won’t have the results at the college, but an email will be sent at 8:30 on the morning of the 18th’. Abigail then phoned them, and they said an email will be sent in the morning and we will then be able to pick up the physical copies of our results at 1pm. My mother then followed up with another message to another staff member who said that the plans are still being finalised and we should receive an email today with the plan and these will then be published on their social media pages tomorrow. It’s 8pm now and we have heard nothing. But regardless I’m in a bit of a mood. Because if the first person was correct, all we get is a pathetic little email, no seeing friends, no nothing to make the day notable. Just me, my laptop and some letters on a screen. And if the second person was right, who in their right mind is going to wait till 1pm to get their results when we have access to them from 8:30. Everyone else I know from different schools are allowed in to collect their results between 9 and 11am. They clearly have the results there and ready to give out by 8:30am, so why make us wait 3 and a half hours when you can get it over and done with and give us the ’normal’ results day we were promised before we even took the exams. It’s only fair when we are being set up for mild failure and had to take the ‘normal’ exams. It’s pissed me off a bit, I’ll be honest. The dread is just mounting up with every stupid email and conflicting message.

I tried to watch Thor: Ragnarok last night. I thought that if I watched something that ultimately comforts me and makes me laugh without fail maybe I’ll be okay. I only just got to the Thor vs Hulk fight, and I had to turn it off. I couldn’t focus, and I was genuinely tired. I didn’t think I’d sleep. I thought I’d be tossing and turning and driving myself insane. I lasted until 6am; a solid, dreamless 5 and a half hours of sleep before I woke up and the slowest two hours of my life began. I tried to get back to sleep but what felt like an hour was only twenty minutes. I’d told myself all along to avoid my phone, in case an unwanted notification popped up, but the boredom overruled.

8am came around. I’d decided that although there was finally confirmation that I could go in and pick up my results from college if I wished to (though they advised against it), I would stay home and open the email with my family. Going in wasn’t worth the stress, a forty-minute drive for a piece of paper to just come home again. At least at home Dad and Reece could stick around and share the experience with me. The email was late, so I checked my college website instead. There they were. The three letters that would decide the next 3-5 years of my life.

A*A*B

So, I was stress crying for 4 hours on Tuesday night for nothing. I do have to say though it was not what I expected. Going into exams I thought that Media would be my easy A but when I finally sat them, they were so frustratingly difficult I thought that there was no way I was getting much more than scraping a B. Yet I got an A*. Psychology has been the subject I have struggled with the most, it’s the one I cried about, it was the only one I did not have the safety net of coursework and it involved Maths. I do not like Maths. My parents and I have always joked ‘can you imagine if you had done the best in Psychology when you struggled and dreaded it so much’. Yet I got an A* and the highest marks of all three courses. English Language had been my favourite, it’s the subject I research for fun, it’s the one I have done so well in for two years. It’s the subject I am going to study at degree in October this year. Yet I got a B. I know I should be proud of that, and I am because I know a B is still an amazing grade, but the perfectionist in me instantly said ‘wouldn’t it have been nicer if that was an A’ because straight A’s would have been a dream. Maybe, now I feel like a fluke because I did the worst in English but it’s that that I’m doing for another 4 years. But there’s also a sense of unfairness because my friends haven’t done as well as they wanted in their English exams either, and nobody so far has received an A, so I’m wondering if it’s us, or if we can pass the blame to AQA.

I’m hard on myself I know, but at the end of the day I am proud of myself because never in my right mind did I truly believe I’d be capable of two A*s. And at the end of it all, I am going to university. My place has been confirmed at my top choice, the one I had gotten my heart set on to the point I’d almost convinced myself it would be life or death if I didn’t get in. I’m so excited to start. I’m in a lot of group chats for this year’s freshers, and it’s been so lovely seeing so many others sharing that they have gotten in too. And it’s nice having that certainty of how the next two months are going to pan out. I move the first weekend of October, none of my September plans have been dashed (a genuine concern, I had a show the Saturday night of move in weekend for my insurance choice) and we’ve been given quite a detailed plan of what information we will be given and what actions we need to take to ensure a smooth enrolment before we actually get there. And I can finally put term dates in my calendar!

Nobody prepares you for the anticlimactic nature of results day though. The morning is stressful, the anticipation dimming any excitement as you scroll through the tag on Twitter. And then you get your grades, and it almost feels like Christmas and the tag on Twitter melts your heart rather than stresses you out. Then you really do spend the next few hours just texting all of your friends, desperate to find out how they did but not wanting to ask outright in case they don’t want to share and trying so hard not to brag when they ask how you did in return. All of my friends have done incredible, I’m so proud of every single one of them even if maybe it didn’t quite go to plan. At the end of the day, the class of 2022 have been pushed and shoved and thrown about with very little clue of how all of this will go for us. ‘We’ll make it easier’ they said, then they send grade boundaries sky high. ‘We’ll help you out’ they said, then all their help was wrong. It’s not been easy, but it’s over now and we have all survived. And for that only we should be proud.

I should wrap this up, Mum and I are going to get 22% off at TGI Fridays in a bit, but then that’s the excitement of results day over. No seeing friends, very little drinking. And that’s not because we don’t want to, but you think results day and you’d like to believe you’d catch up with everyone one last time before you move across the country but then emails exist and half don’t even go into collect. Then everyone already has plans with their parents or their partners or other friends, and you realise how many groups of disconnected friends you have and how it’s impossible to see them all. Then comes the realisation that you went to a college miles away from your house, and there is no central meeting point even if everybody was free. And yes, Birmingham exists, and it would be such a good shout for an afternoon out drinking and golfing or the like and then you realise the trains are on strike today and you wouldn’t be able to get into the city even if you wanted to because no one can drive and nobody lives quite close enough to walk. So, you settle for texting, and promises that you will see each other soon and you just look forward to the house party on Friday night where only half your friends will be there anyway. And that’s it, you bid farewell with a ‘I’m so proud of what you’ve achieved, I love you’ as you strut or stumble into the next chapter of your life.