- It is currently exam result season in the UK.
A time of high emotions.
Maybe you got the results you were expecting.
Maybe you did far better than you were expecting.
Or maybe you only made it through to one exam
before paralyzing your arms, being rushed into hospital,
and told by a consultant that you really
couldn't continue with your exams
because it would probably kill you.
Relatable content, huh?
Subscribe if you haven't already.
There are lots of amazing stories on YouTube
about people studying really hard
and achieving amazing grades.
I recently made friends with some absolutely
lovely StudyTubers, Eve, Jack, Ruby, and Jade
who do a podcast together called The Wooden Spoon.
And who are delightful human beings.
What I'm not seeing is a lot of content about
what happens when things go really wrong
and how you can actually recover from that.
I mean, not everyone has a smooth journey in education
or even in life and it's important
that those of us who didn't complete every year
like we were supposed to or took a very winding path
to where we wanted to be or even just
dropped out and went off to do something else
know that we're not alone.
So I sat down with my wife Claudia
who had an academic journey that looked like this.
(light music)
Compared to mine which took like this (airplane rumbling).
To have a conversation about how we find
the happy places that we're in today.
I really want you to share your stories
in the comments as well and if you're feeling like,
oh, no, no one else has ever been in my position before,
I can guarantee you that someone else
will probably be able to relate.
Don't be shy and if you see someone who needs
some kind words, please go share a little love at them.
Remember, you are not alone and having a wonky education
is not the end of the world.
You will find your way.
So, on with the conversation.
Hi, wife. - Hi, wife.
- So I decided that we should have a little chat
about exam results because we have
incredibly different life histories
when it comes to school and results.
Because how many schools did you go to?
- Two.
- How many schools did I go to?
- Seven. - Yeah.
I apologize, also, for my voice.
I am very ill but.
So, I think it's really important to talk about
because a lot of the stuff around exam season
and people getting results and it's all like,
wow, amazing, how exciting!
You know, the kids, they always take pictures of
on exam results date and they do the jump
because everyone has to have a jump photo
for some reason. - Oh, I see, yeah.
Like, woo-hoo, free! - I bet you were
in a jump photo. - No, I was not.
- I bet someone would have wanted
to put you in a jump photo.
- Probably, seeing that I was
probably one of the only ethnic of the--
(Jessica laughs) Whites in the school.
I was often in the school catalog
for that little bit of representation.
- Just bring you out.
Oh, it's Christmas. - Yeah.
- Wait, make her Mary.
- No, I think I did feature-- - We're diverse.
- I think I actually featured on the front cover.
- Sure, Surrey's a diverse place.
They want you to know it.
- Yeah.
Talking of which, that is one of the reason
why my sister and I got sent to a nice, little
private primary school.
Yeah, we were like, why did you send us
to a private primary school?
Like what is the point of spending money
on primary education, you know?
Especially when you don't have that much money.
Dad was like, "Oh, look, well, Dad was bullied
"when he was little." - Yeah.
- And he just thought, he grew up in Dover
and anyone who was not white was picked on
'cause it was quite racist in his day.
- This story needs to point out
that your dad is the white parent though.
- Yeah, my dad is white, yeah.
He was bullied for being a boff,
I guess. - Aw.
- I mean, maybe he wasn't bullied,
but he always, I don't know, I just assume he was.
(both laughing)
He said that was the main reason
he sent me and my sister to a primary school
because he thought the class sizes are smaller,
the teachers are less likely to
pick on the kids in that sense
and also the other kids would then less likely pick on.
- So, then, would you say you had a pretty smooth
educational history?
Like you went to primary school,
you just changed to a secondary school.
- Yeah.
- They taught you stuff.
- Yeah, I did the-- - You passed some tests.
- Yeah, so-- - Do you even remember?
What were your exam results?
- For what? - GCSEs, what did you get?
- Well, let's start earlier.
For, what are they called?
- [Both] SATs.
- Quick explainer for those of you who aren't British,
we go to primary school from the age of five to 11
and secondary school from 11 to 18.
We take SATs at the end of primary school,
that's 11 years old, and at the end of the first
three years of secondary school.
So that's 14 years old.
There are then two years of working towards
our GCSE exams from 14 to 16
where you'll do between five to 10 subjects
followed by two years of A level exams,
that's 16 to 18, where you generally narrow down
to three or four subjects.
- For SATs, I think I got, what is it,
like, five, five, six or something?
Is that even a thing? - You got to do six?
You got to the six paper? - Yeah.
- They didn't have that in my school.
- I think it was like five, five, six.
I think six was in science
and the five and five were in math and English.
Is that how it worked, I can't remember.
This is a long time ago. - Science, what?
- I swear we did the science-- - This was a while ago.
- I might be making this up.
I was only 10 or 11 years old.
Yeah, so I might not have got a five in maths
'cause that maths was pretty bad.
- Your maths is terrible.
- My maths has got worse with age.
I actually was gonna do maths a F,
a S level, can you remember AS levels?
- Yeah, but also--
- Yeah, I was doing maths and statistics
and I started to do that, God knows why,
and there was only three other girls
because, again, I went to a very good
secondary private school
where there weren't many people in the school.
Anyway, there were only three other girls
doing this class. - Yeah.
- And the teacher was like, I've kinda diverted,
I've gone on a bit of a tangent here.
And they were like, "Okay, so to warm you up
"after the school holidays, we're gonna do some GCSE level,"
what are they called?
Equal? - Equations.
- Yeah, equations (laughs).
There's a name for them, though.
That type that you find out what the,
you have to prove what the answer is.
Some apparently very simple GCSE level equations
and, anyway, I realized at the end of this class that
I needed to not be in this class
(Jessica laughs) because
I was on question three and everyone else
was on question 16, 17.
One of my proudest moments was that
I made a decision for myself.
I know.
'Cause my education was very much spoon fed.
I went down to the staff room, knocked on the door,
and said, "I need to speak to the head of year."
And she was like, "Okay," and, anyway,
I was like, "Look, I've made a wrong choice.
"I don't want to do maths statistics.
"Can I change to a different subject?"
And she's like, "What do you want to change to?"
And I was like, "English Literature."
Okay, well, let's just see if it works with your time table
and luckily it did. - Okay.
- And then that was that. - Excellent.
- The reason I did maths statistics, actually,
was because the careers advisor at school told me
if I wanted to be an architect,
which I did at the time of being 16 years old,
that I would have to have maths.
'Cause then I went to university
and I met some architectural students,
they were like, "No, you just needed to have
"something that had maths in it,
"like chemistry or physics would have been fine."
I was like, "I was frickin' doing chemistry and physics."
This is a lesson to be learned.
Don't listen to careers advisors
unless yours is particularly good.
- Yeah, actually, fill out your own path.
You know yourself best. - Yeah.
Who can dictate, like,
they're a careers advisor at school, for God's sake.
They haven't really got--
- Who's met you for 20 minutes.
- They haven't really got that far in life and they're--
(Jessica laughs) And then they're telling--
- They've not gone far, don't listen to that.
- And then they're telling you you need this subject
or you can't fulfill your dream job.
And then if you can't do that subject
like I was with maths, I was like,
well, that's it, I can't be an architect now.
- And it's not true. - It wasn't true.
- Oh, gosh. - Anyway, where were we?
- Your exams, did you pretty much get
everything that they predicted?
- Pretty much, I mean, yeah.
I did nine in total.
I got one B.
I got three A stars, five As.
- (laughs) Yes. - Yeah, one B.
- That makes nine, that makes nine.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Wow, wow.
- Guess what I got a B in?
- French? - No, but fair enough.
History.
- And then were your A levels? - And then A levels,
well, AS level, I did English Literature
and Critical Thinking.
I got an A, God, I can't remember.
This is the point.
- This is the point of this video, people.
If it feels like it matters so much right now,
but I swear to you, it doesn't.
Wait 'til you hear my story, though.
- And then A levels, I got A, A, B.
- Lovely. - And I got B in chemistry.
No, sorry, it was two marks off an A,
so I sent it back to be remarked.
You have to pay to get it remarked.
It was like 50 quid or something.
And then they sent it back one mark off on A.
I was like, screw you!
I should have slipped an extra 50 quid into that envelope.
- You got to university.
- Got to university.
- Got to do the thing you wanted to do.
Graduated. - Yeah.
- With a-- - 2:1.
- 2:1, did another course at university.
- Yeah.
- Graduated with a? - A honors.
- Lovely.
(both laughing)
- Yeah, well, with dentistry,
you don't get 2:1 or first. - Oh, you don't?
- You can't really be a first dentist.
Third dentist. - You're an okay dentist.
- Yeah, no, I just passed--
- You pass or you-- - You pass with honors
in that it's honors if you have had distinction and merit
like throughout each year.
- But you also didn't take any breaks
between your education at all.
- Oh my God, no.
I was at university for seven years.
That's the same amount of time I was at high school.
- And you didn't take a gap year after school either.
- No.
Or after university.
- So you were in full-time education until you were 25.
- Yeah.
- And then you started working full-time.
- On hindsight, I wish I had had a gap year.
And my mum actually said to me,
"I think a gap year would have been good for you."
'Cause I did our A level and I actually think
I would have really benefited from doing
an art foundation year rather than being like
I've got to go and do a valid, worthy degree.
- It has always left you with that burning passion
of the question unanswered.
What if?
- I was very much like that in my mid-20s, when you met me.
- The first three years of our relationship.
- Yeah.
But I think-- - I need to find my passion.
- And now I'm over that. (Jessica laughs)
Well, I've kind of moved more towards photography now.
- Yeah, which is an art. - Because that's useful
to you and it's less messy. - And it's fun.
- Yeah.
It's either photography or stone carving.
It's really clean or really, really messy.
- My journey in education
was perhaps not as smooth.
Not quite, not quite the same.
I was a very ill and sickly child.
I was forever, there was something wrong with me,
whether it was a cold or I had injured myself
which was near constant.
That was what adults like to call a hypochondriac
and what I like to call doing my goddamn best.
But I was very good at school.
That's the one thing I was very good at.
I was quite a bright little child
and I really enjoyed school,
I really enjoyed learning things.
I used to love reading.
At one point, I thought I had hyperlexia
which is where you have to constantly be reading
because I just wanted to know everything about everything.
Every time there were words, I just had to read them.
But, unfortunately, physically,
school was a bit of a struggle
and throughout my primary school years,
I probably went to school only four days a week
because I just physically, by Friday was like no.
- You told me a different version of that story.
You told me that your mother didn't believe in
primary school education particularly
and took you out to go to live drawing classes on Fridays.
- Yeah, she did.
No, I mean, by Friday I was like,
I'm tired, I don't want to go to school
and she was like, "Okay, let's go to live drawing."
- Okay, well, to be honest, that's probably quite good.
You are very good at drawing now.
- Oh, yeah. - And maybe that's why
you got a love for the female form.
- Yes, I became a lesbian thanks to live drawing classes.
See if it works for you.
And then when it came time for secondary school,
I went to a lovely Quaker school
that was also a private school in Somerset.
Quaker values, as I explained before,
are very much about equality and openness
and it was just a really good learning environment for me
but also, physically, was quite beneficial
in that we weren't carrying around bags
with loads of books in because
our books were kept in each classroom and
our teachers were very kind
and if I was like, "I am injured,"
they would allow me to sit down.
And I went to that school for three years and
it was good for my education, I'd say.
I was pretty smart, smart cookie.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- You are a smart cookie. - Thank you.
Got to be talking to in the class and things.
I'm not just bragging, by the way.
There's an awful downfall coming.
I'm just bigging myself up before it does.
So, I did generally quite well
in all my end of year quizzes.
They predicted that I was gonna do very well--
- You were basically a shining star
heading in the right direction.
- Yes, yes.
And then, unfortunately, I had to change schools.
Right before the start of my GCSEs, which was not great.
And I went to an inner city comprehensive school
in Bristol, which was very large, and
not what I was used to.
Bit of a soft child.
Bit of a soft human, to be honest.
- Yeah.
- Never really hardened up.
I think my parents idea was to toughen me up
for the real world and instead I was like,
I'm a marshmallow.
And so I really struggled throughout the school year.
Physically, as well.
It was the kind of school where
we weren't allowed to go inside at lunch time.
We had to be outside, even if it was snowing.
And eat a little cold-packed lunch.
- Why, why couldn't you be inside?
Was it K through all? - 'Cause they thought
we'd do bad things.
- Was there no dining hall? - Yeah.
- Why can't you eat in there?
- Because you can't eat in there if you have a packed lunch.
- Oh, they're weird. - I know.
But, yeah, even after you've eaten,
you're then supposed to go outside
and hang around outside. - I mean,
they would do that at my school as well.
But only really forced the year seven and eights outside.
- Probably not when it was snowing.
- No, I mean it was, it was just when it was a nice day.
It was like, go out and get some vitamin D, girls.
- Yeah, we had to sit outside in the rain
while it poured down with rain.
- Weird.
- And it was a physically very demanding school
because the campus was quite large and
I had to take all my books with me.
For some reason, we all had books that big for every class
and you had to carry them with you at all times.
It was just a real struggle for me
to be able to learn anything because
it was physically so demanding of me.
And I was just getting kind of iller, and iller, and iller
and no one knew that anything was wrong with me.
By the time it actually came to GCSEs,
I think I was so exhausted from the,
I don't even remember them.
I remember at the time, being like, wow.
Everything is swimming (laughs).
I feel so bad.
That wasn't great.
And in my old school, they predicated
that for my GCSEs, I was going to get all A stars and As.
And in the end, I managed to scrape together
three As, two Bs, two Cs, and two Ds.
- What did you get Ds in?
- French and something else. - Fair enough.
I mean, you can't hear, so French would be a struggle.
- No, yeah, and I was super deaf as well.
- Yeah. - And no one noticed.
That was a thing.
So I would sit, I'd go,
"Can I sit at the front of the class, please?
"Because I can't understand what's going on."
The teacher would be like, "Sure, sit in the front row."
And then everyone behind me would be yelling
and I'd be trying to work out
what the hell this teacher was saying.
And I thought it was just me
and I was unable to concentrate, but no.
Plot twist, I was deaf.
- And the biggest thing that happened to me was that
I said, "I don't want to do maths stats
"and I wanted to do English Literature."
(laughs) And you're like,
yeah, my whole life was medical compromise problems.
- Oh, I've not even finished.
- Okay.
- So those are my GCSE results.
Not good, I also got them while I was on holiday in Italy,
in a hospital, of course,
because I tore the ligament in my foot.
So when I returned for sick form,
I was actually on crutches for six months,
which was pretty difficult.
And then at the end of that year,
as I was about to take my very first AS exams,
I lent on my arm while I was writing
and paralyzed both of my arms for a year and a half.
And then I went to hospital and had a medical procedure
that went wrong. - I'm glad you're just
laughing about this. - And then I dehydrated
my brain and then it took two years.
- You didn't dehydrate your brain.
The doctor that did the lumbar puncture--
- Thank you. - Dehydrated your brain.
- That's very kind of you.
No, I didn't dehydrate my brain.
- She then also went a bit brain dead.
- Yeah. - I know some of it.
- I genuinely have brain damage because of that incident.
Point is, though, I begged the doctor
to let me go back and take my damn exams!
And he was like, "It will literally kill you.
"No, I'm gonna put you back a year at school."
- That's one of the biggest fears,
I think, of a lot of people, is to be put back a year
during education. - Yeah.
Yeah, well, it gets worse.
So (laughs) I got put back a year.
That was the AS level year. - Yeah, yeah.
- So I had to do it again.
But I was too ill to actually go into school at all, ever.
So, one of my teachers who just happened to be very kind
would occasionally come to my house and talk to me
and that was my classical civilizations A level,
which means that I now know a lot of stuff about Agamemnon.
But, unfortunately, was not able to take
any of my other classes.
So at the end of the year, I had to take the exams again,
still with paralyzed arms.
I was still actually too ill to lift my head
or be near light, so I had to be in a tiny, dark room
in my school, in the dark, so lying down on the floor,
with one of the school receptionists sat
with her computer, typing away, as I dictated to her.
Dictation means I spoke aloud and then she wrote it down.
So that's how I did all of my exams that year.
And then, the next year, because I'd been put back a year,
I was now in the A2 year.
And I had to, again, try and struggle through that year.
Didn't work out so well.
Went to hospital for quite a few months
during that year, actually.
That year was a bit of a mess.
We'll skip over it.
And then we come to the next year,
by which time, I'm what, 19?
I'm two years behind, it's not good.
I decided at the poor clutch of A levels that I had
needed to be added to because
I really wanted to go to university.
It was my burning desire.
I was going to go to university
and I was going to have a life,
which is quite a big dream for someone
who literally, for two years,
didn't really leave their bed.
I wrote a lot of fanfiction, though.
- I have yet to see this fanfiction.
- You'll never get to see it.
So, during that last year, I decided
that I would take English Literature.
Two years compressed into one year
because it was something that I could teach myself at home
and at the end of that year,
I took both of the English Literature exams.
Actually, I say both, there are probably six of them.
So, in the end, I managed to come out with four A levels.
- Well done. - Thank you.
- There was three As and a B.
And it took me four years. - That's very impressive.
- And I almost died.
But it happened. - Yeah.
- And then I managed to talk my way into a university.
- Yeah.
Which you spent also seven years at.
- Yeah, which I spent seven years at.
Wait, no, I didn't, I spent five years.
- Oh, okay, five years. - I spent five years
at university because I did the first year of university,
that was a stupid idea, why did I think
you could go into full-- - Anyway, when I met you--
- Almost died, and then-- - You were just graduating.
- Yes. - Yeah.
Film and what was it?
Film and studies? - Film and Screen Studies.
- Yeah.
- So now I have a job that I absolutely love.
And I really enjoy doing.
And the thing is, whether you have
a very simple educational pathway
or a very complex one, where it all goes a bit wrong
for a while and you kind of have to do it yourself,
still, there will be a happy ending waiting for you.
So do not panic if the exam results
that you have just received are not what you were hoping.
- Whatever your dream is,
you'll find a way to get there.
You don't need exam results to, you know,
get you to achieve that.
- Yes.
- It's not about the grades, it's about your mindset,
on how you learn.
That's what is more important,
that's what actually, as you get older,
and into higher education, that's what they're looking for.
- Persevere, my friends.
It is not the end of the world.
- Yeah. - Buh-bye friends.
- Buh-bye. - Mwah.
I hope you were able to take something from this video
and that it helped you feel better
and less alone if you too had a wonky education.
Please do forgive us if we rambled a bit.
I was not feeling my best, as you can tell from the voice.
My next video will be about migraines,
but I'd love to continue the conversation about schooling
when you're dealing with a disability or a chronic illness
and make a video of maybe some tips
on how I made it through alive.
Remember to subscribe if you haven't already
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I'll see you in my next video.