The stress of A Level results

Today is A Level results day across the UK. It was 9 years ago I collected my A Levels and I can still remember quite clearly how traumatic it was. As a fully fledged grown up (apparently!) it's quite easy to pass judgement on our teens; claiming results don't matter and they shouldn't worry but when you are 17/18 years old you feel like your whole life depends on it.

I was always fairly smart at school. I loved learning and even though at the time I remember threatening to leave my 6th Form to go to the local tech college, I think overall I did enjoy it. I've always been creative and my A Levels reflected that; English Literature, Media Studies and Theatre Studies. Maybe some will say they are wishy washy subjects but I loved them. I didn't want to study Maths or Science. I wanted to immerse myself in the arts, read novels, plays and poetry. So that's what I did.

In my first year I did well - 2 As and a B. At this point I didn't want to go to University. I had always been pretty adamant I didn't want to go. I didn't see why I had to have a degree to get a decent job, why couldn't I just work my way up? This was how I had felt for a pretty long time but then something in me changed and I decided to apply.

To this day I have no idea why I changed my mind. I could try and justify it by saying there was a lot of pressure put on me to apply, but this would only be true of the school (they really couldn't understand why you wouldn't want to go) but definitely not true of my parents. Even now my Dad still asks me what changed my mind and I really don't know. One day I just woke up and had decided I was going to apply to do English Literature. I'd applied to Cardiff and they wanted 1 A and 2Bs which seemed like a walk in the park.

On the day of the results, I was so nervous. When I opened the envelope and saw it said 3 Bs I was devastated. I felt like the whole world had caved in. It only got worse when my head of year phoned Cardiff and they confirmed that there was no place for me there. How could I be so upset about something that I only  had wanted for such a short amount of time? No matter what the reasons I was. My second choice University was Portsmouth and I'd only chosen it as it had lower grade boundaries.

In the end I went through clearing and got a place studying Psychology at Sussex. Now half of this decision made a lot of sense. When looking at Universities I had really wanted to go to Sussex. I absolutely adored Brighton and really wanted to live there, yet it was so far away from my rural roots in Gloucestershire that I ended up choosing Cardiff ;an hour away from home on the train. Choosing Psychology however was a different story. It was simply because they didn't have any places left on the English Lit course and I thought it would be interesting. Yep that's right, I got myself 12k worth of debt over a subject I thought would be  'interesting' (talk about throwing all my morals out of the window!).

Going through clearing again made me feel like a failure. Ridiculous huh? But it was how I felt. For years I'd been working hard, working towards something, working for these grades that seemed like they were the answer, and somehow I'd not done well enough to secure myself a place at Uni.

With hindsight, I want to go back and yell at my 17 year old self and tell her that none of it matters and to stop putting so much pressure on myself. I am a driven and motivated person and I strongly believe that no matter what path I would have taken I would still have made a success of myself, in whatever shape or form that ended up being. Maybe in part I feel cross because Uni wasn't really worth it for me. It was constantly hard, more pressure I hated and I was completely glad when it was over. The only thing I enjoyed about Uni was it allowed me to move to Brighton and I know for a fact I wouldn't have had the courage to move so far away from home if I hadn't have gone to University.

So it turns out my 16 year old self was right all along. My degree simply acts as a checkbox on my CV that says 'yep she's got a brain' and probably helped me to get my first 'career' job. Now? It doesn't make any difference whatsoever. It's about the experience I've got. I have many friends who don't have degrees who have successful jobs, and are earning a decent salary too.

 I just hope the 17/18 year olds getting their results today only go to University because they have a passion for learning or because they know what career they want to do, not because they feel they have to.