It is A-level results week, and I like to spend it scandalising young people with my reminiscing. That probably sunny August morning on which my results arrived, in 1989, I didn’t open the envelope until I had smoked all the cigarettes in the house – 26 in total. It took ages, and by the time I had small capital letters to read, I could barely see. Kids are always so shocked by this, and I can never figure out whether what horrifies them is that an 18-year-old smoked at home, the sheer amount of smoking or the neurotic procrastination. I no longer get any uptake from my own kids, who have heard it, but I never fail to get a – I like to think awestruck – “Did you really?”, from their friends, and I always go: “I don’t know why you’re so surprised, I’m vaping right now,” even though I did know they would be surprised, otherwise I wouldn’t have said it.
The world has changed so much in the however-many decades it is since I took my A-levels. Grades have changed, university has changed, the jobs market has changed, the concept of work has changed, students have changed, and yet the suite of responses to this moment remains exactly the same. The Telegraph splashes with a pretty blond student looking happy, other papers of note worry about either grade inflation or grade deflation. On social media, the empathy-wing of the teaching profession reminds us that all the kids worked really hard and deserve congratulation, and this hopefully ignites our better selves, so then a load of onlookers do a generic: “Congratulations on your results! If it’s what you hoped for, wonderful. If it isn’t, remember that [insert platitude about life] happens to everyone.”
