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I'm now a seasoned veteran of parenting through results days.

As a parent of my own children, I've ‘survived’ about 6 of these so far.

Two of them occurred during COVID, when everything was shut down, and no one was allowed to go anywhere; an interesting experience.

And so today was my last one, at least for the moment, and certainly in terms of school.

It's funny to reflect on these past years of seeing the process play out across different people and different institutions and through different staff members and through all sorts of eyes and lenses.

Such enormous sway and pressure is built up around exam day (particularly A-level results day) for the young people involved in that; at least for many of the young people involved in it, it's everything.

The contents of that email (it used to be a letter) define the rest of the course of your life, and it feels like you’re teetering on the edge of a razor blade between success and failure.

Of course, the truth is, it's nothing of the sort; nothing is defined on results day.

Nothing is won, and nothing is lost; it only changes.

It's a metaphor, like all things are a metaphor; it's how you tell the story. How you accept it and receive it, and then how you pass it on.

As one door closes, another one opens, but of course the reverse is also true. When you get accepted into the place that you're going, it means that thousands or millions of other doors close, as your options now narrow into something else.

37 years ago I had a results day of my own.

I was on holiday in the northeast town of Dornoch (I'm returning there on Saturday with Callum to see my parents and my brother in their new house).

In the phone box in the square, I received a set of results, as my mum and dad opened the envelope at home that had arrived.

I still have the envelope; my dad tore it terribly with his big fat car mechanic fingers.

I scored A, B, B, B, D.

Much, much better than anyone ever expected, but not good enough really to get anywhere of huge significance.

People realised that I was university material, and the path shifted and changed to try to find something that didn't have any maths in it that I could go and study.

It was geography or dentistry, and at the last minute, I got to dentistry. More by chance than by design, more as a basketball player than an academic.

The sliding door moment changed my life; the D wasn't particularly helpful, but we managed to get over the top of that.

I was unable entirely to study maths, I was awful at it.

My narrative changed; I ended up being the smallest fish in the biggest possible pond, the lowest grades in my year. There are many ways to receive her, accept that, many reactions to that.

The same is true for every single young person who got their results today.

The truth is, it's not about today. In fact, it has nothing to do with today; it's to do with every day.

It's Faramir of Gondor from Lord of the Rings: “a chance for Faramir of Gondor to show his quality”- every single day.

Results day is one tiny snapshot into what happened over the last 2 years, and if truth be told, almost everyone gets almost round about exactly what they deserve.

It might be looked on as a success, and it might be looked on as a failure, but by absolute right, the greatest transformations that have happened in my life came from the bad things, not the good things.

The fear that my wife was seriously ill.

The fear that my son was seriously ill.

The practice being sold from under my feet.

The positions that I didn't get, the jobs that I lost.

The setbacks that I undertook.

Day by day, still trying to turn up.

Still trying to do the best thing; that's what counts.

Not the results.

Blog Post Number - 4630