Exams shouldn’t be such a big deal

It’s the first summer for a while in our house when we haven’t been thinking about exams – at least school ones. University ones are a different kettle of fish and there are some resits going on over the summer. Let’s say that timing and keeping to deadlines are skills that take some honing when you are out there in the world on your own. It’s a life lesson.

As a journalist, my life has been lived around tight deadlines – and as a parent. So much so that there is a part of me that is longing to rebel and for that reason we are usually around three minutes late for most things [if not more…] Getting four children to all get out the house in time has been one of my major achievements of the last decades, but I’m no longer sure I believe in this thing called time since my daughter died – it traps people in the past and you can’t get back to them. My daughter used to love to question the whole idea of time. She studied philosophy and in fact read weighty philosophy books from an early age. She was also often late for things, but not for exams.

Exams – particularly school exams – are mainly about getting you through to the next round, showing that you understand a subject sufficiently well, although many people find them so nerve-wracking that whatever they thought they knew goes out of the window as soon as they enter the exam hall. Some argue that that kind of pressure is part of the whole exam thing, showing you can perform in difficult circumstances. But most of the time in life you just do your job well or not so well without having to sit in a room for three hours writing essays. And, of course, you may be a in school with poor resources or inconsistent teaching. Or you may just have a very bad day, or year. Having understanding teachers is vital in that case and the people who have provided our family with that kind of support in the last years are people I will never forget.

The exam hiatus in our house is welcome. I well know the stress of waiting for the results [and that’s just the parents…] and trying to not have the news on because it is one long round of people with A*s. It’s an easier story than talking to someone who maybe didn’t do so well and is worried about the future. Certainly last year a lot of the people my daughter knew got worse results than expected because Covid was not taken into account. Many of them spent months rearranging plans, doing resits, changing courses, changing direction entirely or just worrying about the future in ways I don’t remember so much in the past. My brother walked out of one A Level and then started a job in computers, saved enough money to go back to uni in his mid-20s and hasn’t left university since. There seemed to be more time to make mistakes and recalibrate or maybe that’s just my rosy view of the past. As I said, time is a weird thing. We cannot get back who we were years ago, or even seconds ago.

So to all the exam takers this year, I hope you realise that one moment in time – and a moment when you are facing quite a lot in terms of growing up, hormones, rampant insecurities etc – doesn’t define you. You are much more than a bit of paper and that you can do extraordinary things in your own way just by knowing who you are and feeling good about that, however long it takes you to get to that point. We are just here for a moment. Don’t waste it. Do something positive – there are many, many ways to do that. It will help others, but it will also help you.

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