Dear Student,
In a couple of days all the waiting will be
over. You will receive a piece of paper
with several numbers and letters that are supposed to define you. From the age of four you have been in
education, spent hours doing homework and group projects, making mind maps for
revision in multi-coloured fine liners, had late nights or early mornings
finishing coursework. Finally, you sat
down to a wobbly desk in an exam hall to scribble answers to questions that
someone decided was the best way to allocate you a grade at the end of the
whole ordeal.
The exam paper may have included all the
topics you revised thoroughly and a question just like one you had practiced in class. Or, it might have been full of questions that
were nothing like the past papers. You
promised yourself you’d go over ionisation later but didn’t have time and now
there’s a question on it worth eight marks.
There was so much in the syllabus that your teacher only briefly went
over chapter three of ‘The Great Gatsby’ as they didn’t think it would come up,
and now you’re being asked to write about how the glamour of the 1920s is being
represented in this chapter for the next forty minutes.
Finally, when the clock signifies the end
of the exam, your paper is taken from you and you can no longer do
anything. Who knows where your paper
will end up? The maker might love or
loathe your style of writing and mark your essay accordingly. They might have been marking for hours and
tallied up your marks wrong. The exam
board could respond to pressures about “exams getting easier” and raise the
grade boundaries. Do they realise your university place could depend on them
giving you the benefit of the doubt on a question or merely marking
fairly?
You might have spent hours adding up UMS marks
and working out what you need in the exam to get the grade you want. Debating whether it’s worth retaking a module
or if you really had done your best the first time round. Maybe you’ll get a better question next time
round, a kinder marker or maybe you’re just not good enough. A single letter is supposed to define
you. Label you and dictate what you can
do after leaving school.
I want you to know you are good
enough. You worked hard and should get
the grades you deserve. Sometimes you
can’t control the end result of hours studying, cramming and crying over
textbooks. You have to look back at how
far you’ve come and what you’ve learnt.
Not just those equations and passages of French you memorised, but the
friends you’ve made and how much more you are capable of now. You have the skills to study anything you
want and teach yourself. You have had
opportunities many others will never get and now many more in the future
because you have had an education.
Whatever that piece of paper says, it does
not define who you are. University
offers are even done online initially, not even worthy of a print out. I hope that everything goes in your favour on
results day. You’ve earned it. You’ll notice that everyone wishes you “good
luck”. There’s only so far hard work can
take you with exams, so I hope luck is on your side. If it isn’t, please don’t feel like the world
is crashing down around you. You can still go to university or get that
placement. There are other options
available to you. School is all you’ve
really known up to this point so results seem like the most important thing. I promise that if you look
back in a few years’ time, you’ll wonder what you got so stressed about. Remember that you are good enough and your education
is worth far more than that piece of paper.
Best of luck,
Jenny
