My A Level Results- Am I disappointed?

If you've been reading my blog at any point during the last 2 years, chances are that you've seen me talk rant about A Level exams and the stress that comes with them. And since I feel like a lot of you have been on this journey with me, I thought it's only fair to actually share how they ended up going.

To cut the long story short, I would describe my sixth form experience as "simply dreadful". Don't get me wrong, I had a really tight group of friends who I'm so grateful for, and the majority of teachers were extremely supportive. Nevertheless I couldn't help feeling that I was completely on the wrong path throughout my entire time doing A Levels.

Not only did I feel like I was doing the wrong thing with my life at sixth form, but I also felt like I was preparing to go down the wrong path. Almost everyone I knew was applying to university, and since I didn't exactly have a "plan" for what to do after sixth form, I felt an enormous pressure to apply too. I ended up applying for a Psychology degree, for which I needed ABB to get a place.

I swear this is all I said to my friends throughout the 2 years of A levels

I really don't want to go into too much detail about my sixth form itself, but what I will say is that they put a crazy amount of pressure on their pupils and basically brainwashed everyone into thinking that they should be disappointed if they don't come out with straight A's. I witnessed countless numbers of panic attacks whilst being there, and now because of personal reasons I completely disagree of the morals behind the way they run the sixth form. Needless to say I was under a great deal of stress whilst being there. Like to the point where I had to take 2 different types of medication to deal with stress, and I could barely make it through all of my lessons each day (even if I didn't have a full day) without feeling physically sick. 

It got to the point in the Christmas holidays at the start of the year where I actually didn't think I could bring myself to go back there. I used to cry and cry and cry to the point where I thought I would run out of tears and I just thought I couldn't take it anymore. I was practically on my hands and knees begging my mum not to let me go back there because I didn't have the strength to face another day there. All in all my sixth form experience (minus my wonderful friends of course) was really shit. And by the time the exams rolled around I was so physically exhausted from not being able to sleep more than a couple of hours, if at all, due to complete panic. I honestly think a monkey with no arms would have done a better job at sitting my A levels than me, considering the shattered state I was in!

This was meeeeeeeeeeeeee

Despite all that I still didn't drop out and sat the exams. Even though all my concentration was focused on my exams and all I did when I got home was revise, I still couldn't bring myself to stay awake during the exams. And let me tell you, trying to write essays when you're physically falling asleep in the exam hall is damn near impossible. I can honestly with all my heart say I tried my hardest for these exams, but it was just devastating getting to the actual exams knowing I had no motivation or energy left. 

So you may be wondering what I got overall for my A Levels so let me tell you:

• German: A
• Psychology: B
• Chemistry: D
• RE: D
• Biology (AS): D

As you can probably tell, my grades weren't exactly what I needed to get into university this time around. And as crazy as that may sound to some people; I couldn't be happier!

You see, I'd be lying if I said I had my heart set on university. Even though I find psychology insanely interesting, I don't feel like at this point in time it's something that I want to pay £9,000+ a year to study. I really need to take the time to decide what exactly it is I want to do, and by me not actually getting in it's saved me a job by not having to decide whether to go or not to go. (wow I couldn't have made that sentence more confusing!)

So in summary, even though my grades weren't amazing I literally couldn't be happier with them. Since I technically passed all of them and I taught myself German, I feel like they are decent enough. And plus I really need the time to decide if uni is for me in the first place. And considering I really wasn't in the right state of mind whilst doing them, I'm just so happy I was able to get through them.

This is probably the longest post I've written in a while so I'll be amazed if anyone's made it up to here. The song of the day is Lush Life by Zara Larrson. If you had any exam results recently how did they go?

Izzy K xxx