Results Days

It was an eventful week here.

My nephew picked up his GCSE results on Thursday and then enrolled in one of the college courses he had set his focus on.

I was a very proud uncle when he came home with his lanyard.

The results day thing.. well, that got me thinking of the times when I received mine.

I hated the last couple of years at school. To show how little I cared about the place - at that time in my life - I handed my teachers a stamped address envelope, told them I would be on holiday when the results came out, so asked if they could send the results to me.

I lied. Kinda. I did go away (and that too is a 'kinda' but that's a story for another time) but I would have made it back in time to collect the results. I simply had enough of the school to want to walk the two-plus miles.

By results day, things had changed.

I had started hanging out with a group of lads from my year at school and they all planned to trek up for their results. I went with them.

I found myself having to explain that my results were in an SAE, so they had to root through some envelopes to get those. I recall one of the heads saying 'that was disappointing' or something along those lines as she was looking for my envelope. I don't know if she was referring to my holiday (remember, it's a long story) or my grades. It could have been either. It could have been or. It could have been both.

With that said, I was happy with what I came out with. There were some terrible results, but I did well where I thought it mattered - English Language.

The school didn't enter my class for GCSE English Literature because of the expected low grades, so I didn't get to do that course until I was at a sixth form college. For those keeping score - I picked up a B for that one. And I achieved that in one year. 

For my case, and to be fair: my case alone, the B proved my high school had made a poor decision to exclude everyone from my class from English Literature.

As you can see, my sourness remains to this very day.

And that's almost all I'd like to revisit about results day. I already mentioned that  one of my former colleagues came up to the school in a car with 2Pac blaring from the speakers when I wrote about Me Against The World earlier this year. I also recall one of my close friends at the time having a deal with his grandmother about getting a monetary reward per result. I'm unsure how much she offered per grade, but he was quick to dump us and run home alone - with his results -  once he had his.

My memory ends at that point. I don't recall what we did that night. I'm sure we went out to a club, but I have no recollection.

I remember a year later, though. I came home from that night with a black eye. But, I also came home with a B in English Literature.

A year later than I should have.