The realities of getting your A-Level results

Waiting for results is actual hell on earth

Whether you took your last big exams twenty years ago, or you're waiting for them right now, the feeling of sheer terror never really leaves you. Whoever thought it was a good system to finish school with a load of potentially life changing exams and then ruin your entire holiday by making you wait for a piece of paper that, to some extent at least, dictates your future, was clearly a sadist.

So whether it's a distant memory or your current reality: here's everything that happens to you when you're waiting for your exam results...

- You've always got that one friend who wants to talk about how the exam went and what they wrote, which ends up making you realise how much you left out/got wrong/didn't understand. This person should be avoided. Spoiler alert: they don't always end up doing that well themselves.

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- Then there's the friend who won't stop talking about results day. Should you go out afterwards? What if you do badly and you don't want to go out afterwards? Should you make two separate plans? Have you got a back up Uni choice? HAVE YOU GOT A PLAN? This person is human panic. Lose their number until results day.

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- 'I literally didn't do any work. Not at all. About two hours of revision. In two years.' The person who talks about how much work they didn't do is lying to you. Everyone who actually skipped the revision is either a) lying in a ditch with a hang-over because they genuinely DGAF, or rocking back and forth in their bedroom panicking about the approaching doom.

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- So they day dawns, and if you're really unlucky you'll have to go into actual school to get your results but you're more likely to get them online (technology, hey?). Seconds after they're released there'll be someone from your year who's going round every singe person asking them what they got. If you did well then it's kind of okay. If you didn't there's a good chance you might hit them.

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- One of the truly unavoidable parts of getting your results is the person who was supposed to screw it all up and fail but somehow managed to scrape their way to perfect graces. This person will gloat for the next year about how well they did without even trying. You'll try to be happy for them (for about half an hour) but it'll severely test your patience.

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- But even worse is the person who was predicted all A's an ends up with straight D's. Even if a bit of you is a little big glad because they were annoying and brought fifteen different ball point pens to the exam, seeing someone cry because their imagined life plan has gone up in smoke is a pretty traumatic experience, and it'll probably take at least two Jagerbombs to forget about it.

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- At least there's always the happy-go-lucky friend who doesn't really care. They probably took a BTEC in something obscure and didn't bother turning up to get their results because they're going to travel the world/be a dancer/work in their Uncle's car dealership. This person might not care about the results but they're at the forefront of the celebrating, which is exactly what you need.

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