In Memory of Those Exams

This year GCSEs and A-Levels have been back in my life, as 2012 has been the year of exams for the majority of the young people my husband and I work with at our church youth group.

For those of you not familiar with the education system in England - sorry if you already know this, but I don't know what the equivalents are in the States and Australia *looks embarassed*  Ahem, so GCSEs are the end of school exams you take when you are 16. A-Levels are the ones you take at sixth-form college when you are 18, and you will have already received half the marks for these in the form of AS-Levels the year before. Your GCSEs determine your admission to college, and your A-Levels determine your admission to university. Both sets of qualifications are obviously useful in the job market too. I prefer to think of them in the Harry Potter sense - GCSEs are more or less the same as OWLS only in less exciting subjects, and A-Levels are more or less the same as NEWTS, again in less exciting subjects.

School never was as cool as HP, but at least I never had an invigilator like her

This year's A-Level results were out last week and the majority of the youth we know got into their chosen universities with their results. It wasn't happy news for everyone but for those who didn't get what they wanted they are trusting in God and making plans to fit around this unexpected and disappointing time, and we pray that they will come through stronger and even more prepared for university.

This year's GCSE results came out today, and my Facebook news feed has been alive with joyful status updates. I smile and like the happy statuses, wishing them, "Congrats!" They all thought they were going to fail, or at least mess up really badly. I think, "Oh youth, they're not that bad, you won't have failed, and you'll be ready to go to sixth-form college. It will all be fine." They are, after all, a bright bunch. But then I remember how I felt about my GCSEs and my A-Levels. I was almost physically sick just moments before I received my results on both occasions, not having eaten properly or slept well for several days.

Let's go back in time and take a peek at how I coped with the news of my results:

The month is August. The year is 2001. The time is 9:58am. I am on holiday with my family in the Lake District. I am thinking, "Could Mum and Dad have chosen a worse time to go on holiday?" We've just moved house, there's a heatwave down south and heavy rain up north, and more importantly I am waiting to find out if I've made it into my sixth form college of choice. I haven't been able to enjoy milkshakes or big holiday meals because my stomach has shrunk with anxiety. I couldn't care less about Beatrix Potter and William Wordsworth because all I want to know is if I managed to get an A in English Literature and all this culture isn't helping!

It is results day. My Head of Year, Mrs M, promised she would call at 10am with my results. We are driving round and round in the unrelenting rain, up and down fells, desperately seeking a mobile phone signal. No luck. I begin to panic.

Then suddenly one bar appears on my phone. We're on a steep, narrow lane, but praise God, there is a lay-by ahead. The bar flickers and dies and then reappears as my dad pulls in. Will it stay?

10:08am. Mrs M still hasn't called. What's taking so long? I need my results. I can't expect my family to sit here all day with me waiting to hear. The tension in the car is growing. My mum passes me a pen and a tiny piece of paper from within the glovebox, so I can write my results down. 10:11am and everyone holds their breath as the phone chirrups. By this time I am silently sobbing with stress.

Mrs M is as chirpy as ever as she quickly rattles off my grades for each subject. I'm so shocked that I achieved an A* for Drama and a B for my hardest subject, Maths, and an A for French (take that Mrs E for moving me down a set!) that I start crying more. As Mrs M congratulates me and says goodbye, my crying is more than my parents can take. My dad leans back and grabs the list from me and he my mum read it together. "You've done brilliantly! What you are crying about you silly girl?" they exclaim. We leap out of the car to hug and kiss. I am going off to college to do my A-Levels to set me up for drama school, hooray!

Fast forward two years.

The month is August. The year is 2003. I am in a car with a group of friends on the way to college to get our results. We've hardly slept. We were at a small party the night before, and despite an attempt to catch a few hours, sleep has eluded us. I'd had too much guarana punch, it was really hot, I felt sick with fear, and the room I was 'sleeping' in was next to the bathroom that had the loudest cistern and pipework in the entire country.

But finally we are on our way to get those results. The stakes are high. I've decided that I don't want to go to drama school but that I want to go to university, a good university, to become a Classicist. I've chosen a University of London college. I need decent grades. My AS-Levels were not amazing, and I have done a few retakes. Were they worth it? Have I done enough to get through?

When we get to college we are shown to the main hall, and shuffled into a queue depending on where in the alphabet our surname comes. We have to patiently wait our turn. There are people smiling, cheering, crying, and looking dumbstruck. Which look will I have?

I sit down in front of the kindly looking woman for the 'H to M' surnames, and she reads out my grades. Three Bs. I got three Bs. More than what I needed. I'm in! I'm going to Royal Holloway to study Ancient History. So I burst into tears. The woman looks aghast. "That's good, three Bs are good. It says here you needed BCC, and you've got BBB." I smile through my tears, acknowledging this, attempting to point out that I've just been so worried that I wouldn't achieve that. I regain my composure and leave to let the next panic-stricken student receive their results.

Outside the hall the college is abuzz. One of my best friends got one of the top 5 grades in the country for English! A local newspaper wants her picture, and then they want mine too. They want to interview a range of students, to know our grades and where we're off to next. The whole thing is overwhelming and exciting. There is much cause for celebration.

Royal Holloway Classics Class of 2006. Try and spot me, I look like a goon.

So, GCSEs and A-Levels? At the tender ages of 16 and 18 these were a big deal. The stakes are even higher now. Most good universities require more than one A at A-Level for you to get in because demand for places has massively increased. My old course now asks for ABB. It didn't ask for BCC in my day because it was an easy course but because it wasn't that popular, but even my year, the Class of 2006, were declared to be the biggest the Classics Department at Royal Holloway had ever had, and after that the numbers just kept growing, so the entry grades had to as well.

I'm happy for our youth that have done well, especially when the pressure is higher than ever on them. I hope that those who got their GCSE results today use their time at college as an opportunity to really think through what they would like to do next. When I was 16 I saw my dreams of becoming an actress as set in stone, but college changed that for me, and I realised that I didn't want to let my love of history go.

I also hope that university is amazing for those who will be starting this September, and for those who won't be, especially not by choice, will have a year of experiences that will shape them and give them direction in their future studies.

I can look at them and think in that annoying adult way, "Why were they so worried? They've got their whole lives ahead, and there is always a chance to improve," and "They're only GCSEs for goodness sake," but the reality is that I was just the same, that doing well in my GCSEs and A-Levels was so important to me - I actually thought I would die if I failed - and that our youth have more than just cause for celebration in coming through the other side better than they had expected.

Harry Potter photo from BBC News. Graduation photo my own.

A Day at London 2012

Yesterday I went to see Olympic Wrestling... Yep...

Well, there's a bit of a story behind it all:

Both my husband and I made no secret of declaring our apathy towards the Olympics, our disdain for the vast amount of money spent, and our disinterest in the torch passing through our town.

It was sad, because when London won the bid back in 2005 I was very excited. I expected that I would look forward to the games being here, because I've always held some vague interest in the Olympics, and have always loved watching the gymnastics. I also remember moments during Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004, finding my attention grabbed by swimming, cycling, and the athletics. I would always be reading a book in the living room, whilst my brother was watching the games, finding myself looking up every now and then, and eventually allowing myself to be gripped by the races for gold.

Maybe I had just been suffering some Olympic fatigue, because for the past year it's been in our faces everywhere, and we don't even live in London.

We were at a barbeque when the Opening Ceremony took place, and the majority of the party were squashed into the host's living room to watch it. My husband and I preferred to hang out in the garden, chatting to others who felt the same as we did.

It was only a couple of days later when I joined a colleague to sneakily watch James Bond taking the Queen onto a helicopter on BBC iPlayer that I realised that maybe I'd missed a good show. And then it wasn't long after that, the TV playing in the tea room at work during the lunch break, when Heather Stanning and Helen Glover won gold for the women's pair in Rowing that I began to grow excited again.

Suddenly Team GB were doing amazingly well, and it was impossible for my attention not to be caught. It was great to see the highlights of Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah, the Brownlee brothers, Beth Tweddle, and others winning medals, and I found myself watching all of the Artistic Gymnastics competitions on BBC Catch Up, regardless of whether or not Team GB were competing.

It was amidst this furore that my husband suddenly declared that we should try and get tickets to see something, admitting we were wrong about the "bloody Olympics". Thus began a battle with the ticketing website to actually be able to see something. I won't bore you with the details here, but basically it would appear that tickets were available but when you put them in your basket and then tried to buy them it would transpire that they were not. So I was shocked when I got through all the way to purchasing tickets to...Wrestling! Not, admittedly, my first choice of sport to watch, but my husband was happy with it, and finally we had tickets to go to London 2012!

So yesterday morning we made our way up to the ExCel Centre in London Docklands. We arrived in plenty of time to pick up our tickets from the box office, with no trouble on the public transport network at all. There was a great atmosphere at the Docklands with plenty of volunteers around to help, and lots of excited fans milling about. There were no Team GB entrants for the Men's Freestyle Wrestling, but it was impossible not to be caught up in the excitement of other fans from around the world, notably from the USA, Mexico, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.

Once inside the centre we were able to find a place to grab a caffeinated beverage and then to sit and eat our picnic before entering the Spectator Zone for the Wrestling, and on into the arena.

We were sitting very near the back, but we still had a great view, head on with Mat A where the 60kg wrestlers would be battling it out. We could also see the two mats for the other two categories pretty clearly as well, but once the fighting began our attention was most easily caught by those directly in front of us.

We saw the 1/8 finals, quarter finals, and semi-finals. It was a shame not to have managed to get tickets to a medals match, but we were just pleased to have got any tickets at all, especially having decided so late in the day that we would like to go to one of the events.

The fans for other countries were so excited, which made for a great atmosphere. I often struggled to understand the rules, and a lot of the moves looked pretty painful to me, but it was still surprisingly fun to watch, and my husband definitely enjoyed it.

USA vs Azerbaijan Semi-Final 60kg Category

After this fantastic spectacle it was a relief to stretch our legs and then make our way out of the arena, just in time to see Hulk Hogan* getting into trouble for breaking through a barrier to get out by a different route.

Then it was off to Piccadilly for to meet a friend for a coffee. Piccadilly was actually far busier and more hectic than we had expected. Outside of the Olympics the rest of London was said to be a bit quieter than usual, but that didn't seem to be the case yesterday.

It was with great relief that we escaped the mania and found a small French patisserie down a quiet side street. Having quenched our thirst and calmed down from the commuter-zone frame of mind that London crowds are prone to put one into, we walked our friend to his bus stop before continuing through the posh streets of Mayfair, and onwards to Hyde Park to investigate the BT London Live festival therein.

Once we finally got to the entrance of the festival we had to queue for about half an hour, which didn't bode well for the volume of crowds inside. We were both feeling tired, hot, and thirsty; the latter not helped by the strict ban on bringing food or drink into the site.

When we finally made it through, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that whilst there were lots of people, there was plenty of room to mill around at leisure. We wandered aimlessly, sitting for a while to watch the Women's High Jump at one of the big screens, but our view was frequently blocked by people standing up and walking around. So we continued on to the big screen over the stage, just in time to see several Team GB athletes parade out and wave to everyone. We were quite far back, but we saw them  nevertheless!

By this point we were getting hungry, so we decided to head to Victoria to find somewhere for dinner before going home. We were just delicately making our way through the crowds towards one of the exits when we heard the announcement that the Men's 5000m was about to start. Ignoring our rumbling tummies for a moment, we decided to stay to cheer on Mo Farah, and I'm very glad we did.

The atmosphere was epic, with everyone getting really excited as the race began, and cheering like crazy. The tension and the shouting collectively rose as each lap was ran, and by the second to last lap we were all screaming ourselves hoarse, cheering on Mo as though he would be able to hear us all the way over in the Olympic Park. And he won the gold! He did it again!

Lots of hugging and dancing ensued from the crowds, all of us thrilled with Mo's performance, and that Team GB have done so wonderfully well this Olympics.

Snapshot of Mo, post-win, on the big screen at Hyde Park - go Mo!

We then headed off into the comparatively peaceful surroundings of the rest of the park, and onto Victoria to a little Mexican place for food, where we were able to toast Team GB's success with cocktails, and chatter about how we could photoshop chairs into some of our wrestling photos.

I'm really glad that we finally let the atmosphere of London 2012 win us over, and that despite difficulties getting tickets and then a nightmarish train journey home, we had a great time and now have a few more stories for the grandchildren.

*Sadly not the real Hulk Hogan, but a very good lookalike.

Photos my own.