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Looking back.. A’level despair.

I remember results day like it was yesterday, my results arrived and I had missed one grade, I stared at the paper looking at the “C” which needed to be a “B” and felt failure. I still remember thinking “oh why did you go out to the beach when you should have been studying, now look what’s happened!” and yet I still remember those days spent on the beach with my friends so happily, I now wouldn’t change it for the world. I had to accept that University of Birmingham wouldn’t take me that year, the course only took 13 students and I stupidly hadn’t chosen a second choice place so was thrown into the depths of clearance. 

There were no places to do my first choice of course through clearance, and I had to choose to either wait a year or do something else. I was a stubborn teenager, and opted to do something else, something which resulted in my not especially enjoying my time at University, as although as I was good at what I choose to study the course itself was not at all suited to anyone who liked to think outside the box. I made some dear friends and have some fabulous memories from University, I also went on to study elsewhere for post-graduate so it wasn’t all bad. Why am I writing this? It’s A’level results day and somewhere someone will be feeling those same desperate feelings, sitting crying into their tea and believing that they have let themselves down. I often wonder how things may have worked out differently if I’d waited a year and gone to study my first choice of course, or if I’d got the right results to begin with. The reality is of course I’ll never know, but when I think back to the lazy days on the beach, days spent sailing with friends, falling in love with my first real love, the same love who broke my heart several years later, those are precious memories, treasure those moments. University will still be there, even when you’re old and grey!