Please don’t take this as a cue to stop studying, or to stop making a positive difference to your life through the world of education. That is not the message being proposed, here. Education is actually the one and only tool that will improve your social mobility and get you far. As you grow older, you’ll discover it’s also more about being teachable, and learning how to learn and remember things – more than hitting a grade. 

But if you haven’t done well in your GCSEs, please don’t panic. This anxiety-inducing phenomenon when you open your email or envelope your results starts the whole preesonal and then bigger world doomer process in your mind, wherein you might thin that your future has not options and that you can’t do anything. This is simply not true. Climb out of that chasm, fast.

If you can retake, then retake. Don’t be afraid and don’t be embarrassed if that is -and this is key here- what you want to do or legally have to do. Your education is your choice – it might well be you’ve eyed up a coding course and you see yourself becoming a cybersecurity expert, or a software developer, or getting a job and right now, you don’t need grades, you jsut need to show hard work, evidence and potential to become great. Your choices still exist.

Never forget this – because you’ll know when you don’t have a choice. How? You won’t have the luxury of time to panic.

I didn’t hit top grades – at all. What should I do?

First: breathe.

You still have so many options. You have not failed. You are about to reach a point in your life where you take full responsibility for your actions and your life, so it might be good to get the practice in early.

Second: assess.

So what if you didn’t hit top grades for everything? Are they stopping you form learning or bettering yourself in a different way? Are they stopping you from exploring a new learning journey, or running a business? Since when did grades define life success? For as hort time in the past century, your grades would affect the kid of joub you could get and the welath you could accuulate in your lifetine. But thye don’t make you happier.

So unless your heart is set on going to a top university and going down the well worn path – be aware, you still have 5 or more years ahead of you of studying, and then you’ll have to fight for a place on a graduate scheme. Or you’ll rough it out in part-time jobs, with student debt, and ending up in the same place as your peers who may not have ever reached University in the first place, applying for the same level or “grade” of job. But we have to be careful when we think this way. Yes, there are some parts of life and career paths which do indeed have ‘graded’ job which correlate with money and responsibility and accountability – but you must be aware of what you are sacrificing to hit these “grades”. Some people stay stuck climbing up ladders and grades for life.

Third: make a decision to know what will make you successful in YOUR life.

But your life isn’t what others think of it. Your life is your own.

Learn this early, not 20 years down the line when you’re stuck. 

Advice from Millennials About GCSEs

As you know, Millennials are the most hated generation on the planet. We know a thing or two about not doing the things you’re told will be better for you, how you should meet age old standards an benchmarks before finding out you’ve wasted money and time and energy – literally your sanity and your energy – chasing something that isn’t serving you.

Why do millennials say this? Because they’ve lived it, and the see it all the time in people who suffer emotionally in their own generation – and the ones that preceded them.

See, most people in the world would rather lose, doing something which makes them only look successful — than be judged for trying, failing, trying and then succeeding, but looking goofy in the process. 

When millennials talk about self care, it actually goes long, long way beyond having a foot bath or a bit of yoga, or buying a houseplant for your desk. Self care at its core means fulfilling your OWN path, and finding out what is important to you and makes you truly happy in the long term.

Sad Truth: Ultimately, Your GCSEs Won’t Matter In The End

The truth is – as long as you’re willing to work hard, you can connect to the world and to other people in a meaningful way online and offline: then your GCSEs ultimately do not matter. many, many people succeed despite not meeting the arbirtrary levels and grades that they’re expected to achieve to get into X college or X University.

15 years after you take you GCSEs, you will probably be 29, 30, or 31 depending on your birth year and circumstances. Most of the time, and by that age – people who wasted their lives chasing grades instead of life end up miserable.

These people end up in credit card debt, doing a job they hated, because they were too busy pleasing others, or trying to impress other people who actually don’t care about them, and meeting standards set by others instead of treasuring their life’s journey and doing something for themselves. The answer isn’t to create or cause pain to your self or others, as one might be prone as a young adult with hormones swimming absolutely everywhere, no, the answer is to find out what interests YOU. What makes you, well – you? What do you love to read, play, write? Follow that energy, and ensure it’s making a practical and honest difference to your life.

People make it to the end of their lives without ever having figured this out, and regret not doing enough to make themselves truly happy.

Don’t add to the count.