Just changed my profile description to add ‘wrong demographic’ in solidarity with exam results people. I think that fits me well, but look: I’m doing ok and so will you. Remember, the only relevant thing about grades is ‘why’ not ‘what’.

Thread…

The education & corporate systems favour certain demographics & talents over others, not including all the ones that matter most in life. Through my life lens I know a grade & university place is often a mark of privilege & a display of compliance with a narrow set of criteria...

That’s worse than boring. We're not machines. If I were hiring I'd not assess people based on what university they went to or what grades they got. If anything that might put me off. My experience tells me the most interesting & innovative people are often outside the bell curve

often they don’t fit the ‘system’ so they do things their own inspiring or less visible way. Frequently they have skills that are less recognised by the education system or life experiences that have excluded them...

... and those experiences are often why they become even more amazing people in different ways, because they had to make their own alternative path and do it with odds against them.

I’ve met people like that so often and they remind us that what is important is being ‘you’. Sometimes that takes longer to work out, so forgive yourself if you didn’t get the result you wanted this time, you can try again or try differently...

Hopefully what you have heaps of, if you've just done A levels, is time. You can do Uni at any age, you can try out other ideas in the mean time. And so much matters more than grades...

I like working with people who are kind, passionate, compassionate, fun, inclusive, creative, different, pay attention, put the time in, original thinkers, who get along with people, and treat everyone else with as much regard as themselves...

That’s worth so much more than people who can memorise trivia for exam day, comply with selected criteria and display their privileged circumstances on a certificate.

Am I just saying that because I didn’t fit the system? I’ve fitted when I’ve had an equal opportunity to, but I have had many experiences that have made me feel like the wrong demographic. That can feel very personal & hurtful when we are young...

But as we get older I think we get wiser and spot what’s really going on. For example, like many who don’t get the grades 1st time, I came from a troubled, poor, lower working class family where no-one finished school...

With flumped grades I [god knows how] blagged my way into a post-grad journalism scholarship when I was 18 instead & [after years] got 1st class results at universities incl Oxford. [Maybe just to prove a point?! No, under favourable condition learning is easy & enjoyable]