CONGRATULATIONS
With A-level results due this week, and GCSEs hot on their heels, it’s the time of the year when I indulge myself and travel back in time to when I was the young person waiting to open a brown envelope, unsure of where I was going but knowing so well where I didn’t want to go. Every time I do it, I imagine what the (marginally) more grown me would say to all of us as we waited in the school library in our beaten up Levis from American Classics and cherry red Converse. So, this is my message to all of you out there waiting for the modern-day equivalent of the small brown envelope.
Congratulations. Congratulations today. Congratulations before the results even arrive. You are all more than a grade on a piece of paper or a cloud server somewhere. You have worked (some more, some less) with the goal of exams in mind but what you’ve really been doing is growing and learning about who you are. That isn’t measured by a grade. You have succeeded before you even put pen to paper. You are a different person to the one that made those option choices and you won’t be the same person this time next year, or in five years, or ten. Exams are part of the experience that forms you but they aren’t what controls who you are. Embrace who you are before you even pick up your envelopes. Congratulate yourself for navigating life and what it has thrown at you as you worked for your exams. For some of you, it will have seemed easy. For others, the things you have had to overcome to get to this stage will be impossible to imagine. Know this, each and every one of you, whatever your route you have already achieved an immense amount. You’ve taken the foundations that were set for you, and for some they were shaky but for others they were deep and firm, and you have built a young person with great potential. You have built that person to your own design and you are unique. Exams are not the defining factor nor are they the only measure of that potential.
As a teenager, life seems to rush at you and it’s easy to believe that if you don’t jump on that speeding train of opportunity, it will leave you behind. Everything is more immediate. I want to tell you that looking back now, it’s clear that life isn’t moving that fast – at sixteen, I was moving so fast I couldn’t see that I was missing a lot of the waypoints. Over the next couple of weeks, some of you will get the results you hoped for and some won’t. The thing to remember is that whichever group you belong to, that envelope is the beginning of something not the end, not a full stop. Learning and opportunity are really lifelong. You may have missed your grades this year but there is always another year. You may feel that you aren’t on the path you intended but unintended pathways can lead to the most exciting places. You may be so sure of yourself that you can see the runway lights all the way to retirement. All of you need to believe and understand that you have the right to change that path as you change. Nothing that you decide now needs to define who you are in a decade if you have chosen to redefine who you are. You are in control. The envelope isn’t. If you have a supportive home environment you are lucky. If you don’t, you aren’t alone. There are people and places who will lift you up and not knock you down. None of these are dependent on that brown envelope.
You are young. You are incredible. Whatever the envelope holds, remember that I believe you can do whatever you want with your life. That means there is one person out there who is unconditionally proud of each and every one of you for who you are.
Congratulations.