On this day 23 years ago, I received the news that I had scored a U (yes… an Ungraded) in my English Language A level exam.
To say it came as a blow, is an understatement, and so convinced was I that the examiner had made a mistake, that I actually requested a re-mark.
It turns out, there was no injustice to be found in this particular fall from predicted-A grace!
I just did really, really badly on that particular day.
Fast forward to the present day, and I can concede how little bearing this ‘failure’ was ultimately to have on anything of any significance.
I appreciate of course, that there are times and circumstances when ‘getting the grades’ DOES matter.
However, hindsight does have a rather uncanny habit of whittling right down, the number of instances where this is unequivocally true.
On A Level results day, this is a bigger picture perspective that more young people should probably be focusing on, than most likely are.
It’s controversial, in a way, to suggest that grades aren’t the be-all-and-end-all we’re conditioned to believe they are. To voice out loud, that they might be less a measure of knowledge and intellect, and more a way of gauging one’s ability to perform an exam.
It took years to reconcile this as a possible, plausible explanation for my ‘epic fail’, rather than the much-easier-conclusion - that I was simply rubbish at English!
Over the years, the ‘dodgy’ A Level result I had gleaned edged further and further down my CV. Eventually, it fell off the document altogether, as work experience and higher-ed creds took precedence.
Beyond the age of 23, I’m not sure there was an occasion where I ever had to divulge that ‘Ungraded’ again…other than as a mildly-humorous, self-deprecating quip in small-talk settings!
It wasn’t, as I was rightly assured by wise elders at the time, the ‘end of the world’, nor was it the road-block that it so often seems to be, in a teenage brain.
What it was, by contrast, was a learning experience, and maybe even a ‘blessing in disguise.’ I say this, because the fact that I WASN’T able to arrive at those post-college interviews on a raft of my Record of Achievement - meant having to pull some serious personality trickery out of the bag.
‘Fake it till you make it’ gained a whole new meaning and importance, that's for sure.
On reflection, it’s really hard to say, after all these years, whether the compensatory behaviours (in terms of attitude and enthusiasm) actually provided a better or worse spring board from which to launch, than the 'A on a piece of paper.’ The same ‘A’ which perhaps (perhaps!) would have been counterproductive, owing to the attitude of greater entitlement and complacency it might have risked cultivating.
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