Waiting for Results

Hey everyone! Hopefully you are doing well :)

I'm sure most of you love summer.

Sun,
fun,
friends
- sadly, that is not everything.

One of the biggest summer worries for many students out there is receiving results. Depending on what you are doing (school, university etc.) exam results will either be looming over most of your summer or just a tiny part of it.
I always thought that I would prefer knowing how well/badly I did in an exam straightaway, but it turns out that I was wrong.

After finishing my A-level exams in June last year, I had to wait until mid-Auguest for my results. By the time I found out, I had genuinely forgotten what the exam had even been about, which is a very strange feeling - looking at a mark being a bit confused about what exactly it is corresponding to.

Apart from that, the wait itself was terrible.

I had always believed that I would simply forget that I was yet to receive results. Naively, I imagined the whole of summer being just like the first high you get right after finishing exams…
...yes, I even expected it to be that way until then one day, I would (in my imagination) wake up, realisee that it was - oh so suddenly - THE day, get my results, open them and be happy every after.

NO. That definitely did not happen.

I blame my friends.

Everyone got so nervous about finding out how we had done that we must have combined all of our worries to one giant flood of emotions that was carrying us through summer.
However, I wasn't just nervous, but mainly annoyed that I had to wait for so long.
Couldn't they just tell me straightaway?
If not an exact mark, then at least some sort of tendency of what was happening?
Should I start considering other options?
Should I maybe check other universities' websites in case I would not meet my offer?
Should I research gap year options?

Needless to say, I did ALL of these things. One day I reached a point where I just tried to distract myself from waiting.

I survived though. Results day came, I found out that I got into the university of my choice (yay!) and all the remaining details followed.

Then came the next year.
I didn't worry much about waiting for my first year university results because I knew that after taking exams in May, we would already find out in June or early July. Yes, I was happy because it meant that I would actually remember what I had written. In my mind, I would ride on that post-exams high for a month, get my results and then enjoy summer.

Again, NO. That was also not what happened.
Yes, I did enjoy my summer after finishing exams and wasn't very nervous for results day. However, looking at my grades was - to say the least - a bit of an anti-climax.

My results still haven't fully sunk in; it hasn't quite hit me yet that it should now be the time to move on and continue to enjoy the summer.
I'm not entirely sure why this lack of having to wait feels so bizarre - at first I thought that it had to do with the grades not being what I wanted them to be (more on that in my next blog post), but the longer I'm thinking about it the more I'm starting to realise that frankly, I enjoyed waiting much more than knowing disappointing results.
In fact, waiting for results is a little bit like the Schroedinger's cat principle: Just like the cat in the box which is neither alive nor dead until you open the box and look, your results could be both amazing and terrible - you do not know until you find out.

I'm pretty sure that in a few weeks, I will look back at this post and disagree. I will probably be at the point where my grades have sunk in and I will have moved on (let's hope so!)

The point is though: 
No matter whether your results day is still far away, has already happened or is only a few days away, try to look at the positive side of either waiting or knowing.

I promise you, you will find one.

Lots of love
xxx