Results Day

Have you ever said you cared what happened on your results day? Did you ever get their and not care about your results. No and no. Results day is another one of those school ceremonies which when you really think about it, doesn't fit in with the rest of rational reality. Not when school could send you the results straight to your home the minute they got them. But instead I found myself going to school in the middle of the holidays on some early morning so I could sleepily open my results in front of everyone I know and share them out. Then just waddled back on home to my parents who were probably just as built up about the whole thing as I was.

I'll be honest: I hardly even remembered to go to my results day. A few days before, I told my friend the best thing about results day would be I could try pick up girls who were over excited by their good grades; I said this half-jokingly but one of those half jokes where you believe in the other half. Only I turned up late and the only girls left were the ones who'd gotten better grades than me and wanted to stick around, probably to drill their superiority into any other late comers they hadn't snatched up yet.

My results: two Bs, a C and a D. Better than average; nothing to boast about. At first I didn't even know whether to be pleased or not. Two friends grabbed me as I was leaving; one said 'those are really good results' and I just accepted that's what they were. But really results day left me with an empty feeling; I didn't even start thinking about why that was until a few hours later. It wasn't the results, maybe the fact that I would have gotten the same reaction from everybody as long as I didn't fail everything, or maybe it was just the disappointment of still looking at pieces of paper with the same misguided belief as everyone else there that my future will be written on it.

I was talking with a friend about grades the other day, he said 'I wish I had done maths or something, something that would make me seem smart'. I knew what he meant: maths is the only subject taught in schools where good grades seems to easily quantify your intelligence. Or at least seems like it does. Could anyone say I was a smart guy for getting a B in sociology? Or: could you put into words, based on results, the difference between the kid I know who was told he couldn't come back because his grades were too bad and the kid who took five subjects (FIVE!) and got straight As? It does mean something, I'm neither stupid or bitter enough to think it doesn't, it means a lot for universities and immediate jobs; but this media-instilled belief that you can look down at your results and depending on what you got look up 20 years later and be a completely different person is poisonous, and downright stressful.

Later on that day me and friends Jack, James and Ross went out drinking to the only pub in town that'll serve us. My dad gave me the beer money for getting good grades. We talked a little about results: James had been worried he'd be joining the RAF by now but he passed pretty well; I hadn't seen Jack worry much but he failed two of three subjects. We talked like it was anything else then forgot it and enjoyed the night. I didn't have the same drink the whole time and by last call I was too pissed to sit down straight. James and Ross left earlier than that and me and Jack congratulated ourselves on being so fun. It took about an hour and a half for the two of us to walk home; we sat along the streets at some points making drunken phone calls to people we don't usually talk to and to a girl I like. He eventually went into his house and I walked the last ten minutes home alone. I walked too far past a hedge bush at one point but in the state I was in decided to just jump over it; it was so big I landed in the middle and had to roll off - I could still feel the nettle stings in my hand the next day. When I got home I sat stumped on the floor drinking tap water in pints (my usual ritual to suppress the inevitable hangover) and on my laptop scrolling through Facebook friends in the belief that I'd be drunk enough to send some girl a message saying all the things I could never say sober but I chickened out in the end.

The reason I'm sharing this: because I'm betting you know more about me from the last paragraph than from the results I gave. And because picking up a girl on results day would have been a good enough consolation had I even failed every subject. And because I'll remember that night long after I've forgotten most of the stuff I was taught this year. If you were someone still young enough to open results this year then I'll guess more than being pleased or disappointed you felt a horrible emptiness; that didn't have to do with your results, more just the horrible feeling of once again being summed up by a few letter decided by structured exams you sat months before.