Exam results aren’t the end of the world, they’re the beginning

Pupils open their results live on television, while a select few get to do that star jump of joy so beloved of photographers sent to capture the moment.

Every August we’re inundated with press releases offering advice on next steps - whether that’s university and college, or what to do if your results went down the pan.

And all of that is fantastic.

The support pupils get is excellent, but it makes me smile when I think back to my day when things were much more low key.

The exam season hoopla simply didn’t exist. My results arrived in a brown envelope and were opened at breakfast before wandering into school where we compared our grades, and that was about it.

By then I knew what I wanted to be, and what I needed to get started.

University or college held no appeal, and my two Highers were just good enough to get an interview and job as a trainee journalist.

Forty years on I remain, without doubt, the least academically qualified person in my newsroom.

Even my seven O-grades fail to impress when I mention they include music, and a Comp-O in maths.

Back in the day a compensatory award was basically education’s way of saying “aw, bless, at least he had a go…”

I’m not entirely sure I even made that much effort when it came to maths. My brain glazed over the very moment in third year they introduced me to trigonometry. Who knew the answer to the question, “Crow! What’s the cosine of 42?” wasn’t “who cares, miss.”

That earned me detention. Still none the wiser what trig is or does and I don’t think my life has suffered as a result.

Should I have done better at school? Probably - but the only time it ever impacted was at an interview when the editor ignored my CV and decided to drill into my motley collection of grades, and asked: “Didn’t you stick in at school, then?”

And here was me thinking my box of cuttings and industry experience might have been of more relevance than the B I got in Modern Studies. His loss.

I get that exams are important, but the opportunity to study and gain more, and very different qualifications is greater than ever - certainly more so than when I left school.

And career paths are much, much more varied.

The ‘job for life’ expectation died just as we left school. Long service was something my generation and others admired and applauded even if all it gave you was a rubbish carriage clock and a dreadful dinner with the managing director. The thought of staying 30 or 40 years with a company is probably alien to most young people today.

And that’s good.

Every generation should strive for better things, different challenges, and embrace the opportunities that simply didn’t exist when I was mulling over what to do with my O-grade music.

If your results were what you hoped for, then the exam hoopla is something to enjoy.

If they weren’t, don’t panic.

It isn’t the end of the world.

In fact, it’s just the beginning.