Writing Privacy

A-level results day in 2002 proved to be one of the turning points of my life. It’s now becoming an increasingly dominant part of my professional life.

‘Results day’ is the mid-August Thursday when 18-year-olds in England and Wales receive the results of their final high school exams and discover whether they have met the conditions for their choice of university.

It’s a tradition that the television networks go out looking for success stories on that morning every year. Has to be success, though. Disappointment doesn’t really fit the narrative. And bitter disappointment is what defines my memories of the day.

I knew the exams hadn’t gone brilliantly earlier in that summer. Due to my combination of subjects, I had the longest exam season in my cohort. Latin was always first. Economics was always last.

And I would always muck up the first exam each year. Thanks to the introduction of AS levels in 2001, I’d had the chance to re-sit some during the second A-level year and rectify some of the wrongs. But I wouldn’t be rescued this time.

I believed I could have given more. But I was at exhaustion point.

For one, I used to commute over an hour to school each way – more extreme than almost any daily commute I’ve had since.

Secondly, in my final year, I was the Secretary Prefect, which meant managing the registration of the school’s 1,200 pupils every day. That was a grind because it also meant registering the prefect registrars, and quite a few of them didn’t care for basic process.

Thirdly, there was the weekend job. I’d been working at the local Marks & Spencer since April 2001. It was 7am-4pm on Saturdays, meaning I couldn’t renew my season ticket at Sunderland. The one thing I had outside of school, even if only football, was gone.

By March 2002, I had reduced my Saturday shifts down from eight hours to four, but I then overcompensated by taking on Sundays, as they were at double time.

The excuses are lining up, but they don’t explain periods of laziness or disaffection.

With the growing fatigue, I hadn’t been functioning well with my subjects for some time. I struggled with the English A-level syllabus, including (hilariously enough) Andrew Marvell. I wasn’t mature or clear-minded enough to understand what I was reading. It made me listless.

My first-choice university was St Andrew’s to study English. I had visited once with my dad and loved it. There was a romanticism to it, and to Scotland. And there was some expectation that I would make it.

But I needed three As. And I fell short. Publicly. At our school, it wasn’t just a case of collecting a personal envelope. Everybody’s results were posted on a board in the main hall for everyone else to see.

Yes, nobody really cares about anyone’s results other than their own. But when your eyes scan along the board and realise you haven’t made your offer, and a leaden sensation of dread fills your gut, all you can imagine is that everybody has seen and noticed your grades and thought, “ooh, bet he’s missed his offer”.

So then, there’s a trudge of shame to the support desk, and you get your results in detail. Turns out that first exam had done the damage, and I’d missed an A in Latin by three marks.

I’m sent into the library to call St Andrew’s and see if I have my place. As expected, I don’t.

But I dare (out of nowhere) to test the waters. What if I were to request that the Latin paper is remarked? If that goes up just slightly, my conditions would be met, right? They implore me not to do that, because it would mess with their allocation.

Looking back, I’m appalled at that. How does an admissions officer advise you against something that would better your position? But even as a naïve 18-year-old, you learn enough from that. St Andrew’s really don’t want you now – you’re an inconvenience.

So that bridge was burned. I never had any interest in my insurance offer except for not wanting to be left with nothing. And my school didn’t reference Clearing at all. I wasn’t aware of it. Clearing wasn’t a situation that its pupils found itself in.

So, in the absence of anything beyond abject disappointment, the decision made itself. I was going to take a gap year, earn some money, and try again.

It was a sliding doors moment. Three marks more, or a more sympathetic approach from St Andrew’s, and I would have been off to Scotland. Instead, I fulfilled that alternative pledge. I took a year out, extended my part-time retail work to full-time, got some real-life experience, made new friends. It proved a cure to a lot of things.

One reappraisal that I never credit enough was a kind and smart advisor at Sunderland City Library, who offered some help. She asked, ‘why there?’ and ‘why that?’ It seems I’d liked the idea of Scotland because you don’t focus on just one subject in the early years.

“In that case, what about joint honours options somewhere else?”, she suggested. And suddenly some great opportunities presented themselves, including Bristol.

When Bristol offered me a place for English and Latin, I was ridiculously excited. A long distance away, yes, but that felt like punching so far above my league after the sour memories of A-level results day. This was hitting the jackpot.

And that awe of the offer meant I took university seriously, and made a strong start in English, learning to enjoy it all over again.

It worked out well in the end. And I’ve never really left university since. I’ve studied at five and had permanent positions at another four. All very different – Russell Group, challenger universities, distance-learning or alternative providers.

This time of year – and the Clearing process – is becoming increasingly critical to university recruitment.

People do suffer disappointments. Their plans do change. Some make a late decision to begin university. And some institutions become more flexible in their entry requirements. Clearing was a prominent part of my time at the University of Greenwich, and often stressful at that. It’s a fiercely competitive business.

Moreover, nobody is immune from the challenging conditions in Higher Education, and even UCL is involved this year.

It feels rather like Clearing is following me around and snapping at my heels. It’s a constant reminder of a day that felt like a disaster, but a happier life by accident that resulted from it.

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