Results Day 2018

The time is here. The one day that every student dreads more than taking their exams. Results day (or dooms day as I like to call it). It's not the be all and end all of how our lives are going to pan out (however it is pretty stupid making a bunch of teenagers decide what they want to do when they 'grow up' and expect them to get the grades to do that by the time they've turned eighteen).

I got my results back on the 16th (this Thursday just gone) and was both pleased and overwhelmed by what I got. I had been predicted CCC in my three subjects (which was also what I needed to get into uni) however this didn't really matter that much as I had already received an unconditional offer from my firm choice (first choice) university (for those of you who don't know what an unconditional offer is, it basically means that it doesn't matter what grades you get, you are still guaranteed a place on the course).

My overall results were BCC. I got a B in history (which was VERY shocking) and a C in psychology and health. BCC is roughly equivalent to 104 UCAS points and I only needed 96 so I am in complete amazement over how this happened. I was already aware that I had got a C in health due to the amount of coursework that is involved and because as it was still the legacy A-Level, I had to take an AS exam at the end of year 12. This was a bonus in some ways as it meant that I could focus a little more on my other two subjects because I already had the grade that I needed for health. However, as good as this was it was also bad in some ways because as I was focusing slightly more on my other two subjects, it meant that I focused a little less on revising for my health exam (which wasn't particularly helped by the fact that I didn't like what the exam was on) and I think that the grade that I got in that exam reflects that a little bit.

My overall history grade can be broken down into four different things. In my coursework I got a B. For this we got to choose any event that happened at any point throughout history to write a 4000 word essay on - I chose to do mine on the fight for women to gain the right to vote. I was slightly disappointed with this grade because I spent a little over a year working on it and feel that all of the work that I put into it didn't exactly pay off, yet despite this a B was the lowest grade that I said I would be happy with when it came down to my history coursework. A grade that was kind of predicted from the start was the fact that I got a D in the American West and Civil War exam. I got the same grade for this exam at GCSE so always kind of knew it would be reasonably low (except this time it was at least a pass). I can also put it down to the fact that I didn't really put that much time in to revising for this exam, partly because it was my least favourite out of all of the history exams and because as it was my last exam EVER, I had pretty much run out of stamina to feel able to spend enough time revising for this, particularly the night before (but NEVER leave your revision until the night before your exam, especially at A-Level, because it puts more stress on you and there is no way that you can learn/familiarise yourself with a whole unit in one night). I also managed to get a B in the Tudor Foreign Policy exam, which was quite surprising as it was worth 40% of the overall grade (double what the coursework was worth) and it was only a few days before the exam that I found myself being able to properly understand the stuff I needed to know and how to answer the questions. I am very impressed with myself for managing to get this grade because I don't think that me or my teacher ever thought this was going to happen (in previous mocks the highest grade I had gotten was a D) and all of the hard work definitely paid off. To top all of this off, in the Wars of the Roses exam I somehow managed to get an A, which I have never managed to get at all in history and the fact that it happened in my actual exam means more to me than anyone will fully understand. I guess part of the reason for this grade is because I found the exam fairly easy as the essay question that I chose to do was on the one thing that I had made sure to go over when revising, however the source question wasn't even in the spec (specification) so I had to try and use my knowledge from something further on in that period to make some attempt at answering that question, which I'm guessing seemed to work in my favour.

I was particularly impressed by my psychology grade (I got a C) because in the mock I did in March I got a U, E, and C in each individual exam, giving me an E overall. I don't know what I got in each individual exam in the actual thing as it wasn't on my results slip, however my teacher told me that the grade I got was a high C, so I'm guessing that they can't have gone too bad. I did find psychology particularly difficult because you have to remember a bunch of different studies, including who carried them out and which part of psychology they were done for; as well as studies that supported and refuted (proved wrong) each other for the longer exam questions (eight and sixteen markers). I would recommend psychology as it's a very interesting subject and even though it involves a lot of biology and maths (both of which I'm incredibly bad at) as long as you have a genuine interest in it, this can help to motivate you to revise for it and should help in giving you a higher grade than those who don't enjoy psychology quite as much. Psychology was definitely my favourite subject to revise for (if that is even possible).

As far as health was concerned, I had already achieved the grade that I needed (a C) due to the fact that my grade from last year counted towards this year and because the grades I got in my coursework this year meant that I had already secured my C without having to take the exam. This meant that I could just turn up to the exam and write my name on the paper and would get a C just from doing that. My teacher had told me a month or so before the exam that in order for me to get a B I would have to get a high C in the exam (which, let's face it, was never going to happen). I somehow managed to get an E in that exam, which was surprising because in any previous exam papers I had only ever gotten a U, so it was pleasantly surprising. Even though most people probably wouldn't be happy with an E, this meant quite a lot to me because neither me or anyone else had thought that I would manage to get anything above a U in the exam, so for me to prove myself and others wrong was an achievement in itself. As I said before, I had gotten good enough grades in my coursework to mean that I would definitely get a C as my overall grade. In my Care Practice and Provision coursework I managed to get a B, which was also surprising because I struggled with this quite a bit in terms of either finding the things that I needed to include and trying to write enough in order to get a good grade. This coursework was based on the 2011 census for the county that I live in and I was having to assess why the population is mostly people aged over 60 and the different types of healthcare services that are available to us for that reason and compare it to the rest of England. It was difficult and most of the time I had no idea what I was doing, but somehow I managed to get through it. Next there was my Child Development coursework, which was the one that I needed to do well in because it's what I'm going on to do at university, and luckily I managed to get an A and only dropped two marks. I wrote twice as much for this coursework than the other one (although it's more about quality than quantity) and was very pleased with the outcome. For both modules there are four different pieces of coursework we have to write (eight in total) and we were always given two weeks to write each one (which I did use a little longer than I was meant to for each one) and it did become quite stressful and definitely isn't something that you can get away with starting a couple of days before the due date without having to re-do it.

I feel that doing a legacy A-Level goes to show that subjects should be slightly more coursework based (my final grade for health was 60% coursework and 40% exam) as I didn't feel as stressed about my health mark than my other two subjects (particularly as psychology is 100% exam) and even though the exam grade did let me down in my final grade for health (I would have needed a high C to get a B), as I have proven before, the tiniest slip-up in an exam could be the difference in a grade. Also, at least once I had taken my health exam (and even before I had taken it) I had some form of idea of how well I had done and how hard I would have to work for the exam (although you should always work hard, no matter how well you have already done), whereas for history and psychology I had absolutely no idea and was convinced that I had gotten no higher than a D in both of them and if I hadn't of gotten an unconditional offer for uni then there is a chance that I wouldn't be starting uni in September (or ever). So if anyone is reading this who has some sort of position of power to change how A-Levels (and GCSEs) are being ran, please consider doing something about the lack of coursework that is available to students nowadays because during A-Levels my mental health was at the worst it's ever been and I really don't want to go back to that place again. I would walk into school on a daily basis wondering if I was going to have a breakdown that day. In some exams I felt like I was close to having a breakdown but somehow managed to prevent it from happening. (Oh and OCR lowering the grade boundaries for an A* but making them higher for C just goes to show how everyone seems more concerned of those of a higher ability and making it easier for them to get into their chosen university than those like me who often struggle to even get a D).

Where my results are concerned I am so proud that I managed to prove quite a few people wrong where my grades and ability were concerned. I had four teachers and only one of them ever believed in me 100% and gave me the confidence to feel that I had a chance of passing. Even when I was saying how I was going to get a U in my health exam and that nothing could be done to change that, she encouraged me to carry on and to try my absolute hardest to at least get a pass in the exam (which I somehow managed to do). She also encouraged me to try my absolute hardest in psychology because she could see that I had the potential to do well as long as I tried really hard and encouraged me to get that C that I needed in psychology. Even though she wasn't my history teacher, as she was my mentor she encouraged me to keep on trying at history even though at times I really hated it. To my health teacher and both my history teachers, I would just like to say a massive f*** you for making me out to be thick, that I never had a clue what was going on and that my chances of either achieving my target grade in history or passing my health exam were very slim. To my health teacher, thank you for continually picking on me in class and making me seem thick in front of everyone else. Thank you for making me believe that I was going to get a U in the final exam. And thank YOU for turning things around on me and making it out like I was the one who had never believed in myself and you had believed in me all along. To my history teachers, thank you for those constant looks of disappointment whenever I either couldn't answer a question or it took me a while to realise the answer with a bit of 'help' from you or someone else. Thank you for making me feel really thick in front of all of my classmates and making it out like I knew absolutely nothing. And thank YOU for constantly putting me down in front of everyone else and laughing AT me when I either got an answer wrong or pointed out something that was apparently really obvious.

To anyone else that got their A-Level results or the equivalent and got what they needed to go on to the next chapter in their lives, a massive congratulations to you and you deserve every success in the world. To those of you who weren't so successful, it doesn't mean to say that you can't go on to do what you had originally planned to do, it just means that you might have to work around it somehow (and if you don't believe me, just go and check out all of Jeremy Clarkson's results day tweets because he likes to remind us how he failed his A-Levels but still managed to earn a lot of money).

If anyone has any questions about A-Levels (particularly if you're about to start year 13, about to start sixth form or just starting to look at sixth forms) then please feel free to ask me absolutely anything and I'll try and help you in any way possible. All of my contact details are at the top of the page in the contacts tab.

Love Beth xx