Exam result joys and blues

Life is long and opportunities do not end at 16, nor 18. Grades at school represent one facet of intelligence. You are not defined by the grades you get. If you did not get the grades – honestly – you are in good company. Some of the most interesting and intelligent people I know did not get particularly good grades at school. What’s more, in the real world you often see school-intelligent people just not ‘getting’ how business and people work. Successful entrepreneurs often buck the trend of education success = business success. There are a whole load of different ways that people with different kinds of ‘intelligence’ can succeed. Do you somehow just ‘know’ how to talk to people? Do you ‘get’ what makes a good party a good party? Can you quietly understand what’s actually happening in a given situation? Do you have a gift of making a child feel safe and empowered? None of those and countless other things require you to understand trigonometry…

What schooling success is changes too. With every generation we have some Government and/or Education Secretary who attempt to change everything in the name of their own legacy. The goalposts move within the period of time it takes us to start primary school and leave secondary/further education. How we are tested changes; how we form classes changes; what we should aspire to – educationally – changes. Nothing about school is as important as who you are as a person and how you come across. Nobody is restricted in making a good first impression. And for one’s first job, a good first impression is the thing to make.

So don’t despair or feel bad in anyway about what you read on a few pieces of paper and even if you don’t feel like the you’re the person you’d love to be – you have so much time! There are so many different ways to get to a place where you’d like to be. Think back to what you were like when you started your A Levels. That first day and those nerves and look at what you’ve learned, off your own back, about the world in that time. That’s two years. Life is a lot, lot longer than two years!