Tasha Dhanraj bites her nails awaiting exam results

I’m completely free now. All of my exams are now fading into a distant memory. Yet, still niggling at the back of my mind is one date: July the sixth. July the sixth is results day. I can’t relax until then. I know there is nothing I can do about it now, but I can’t help but replay every essay I wrote and every question I answered again and again in my head.

Because the International Baccalaureate is so very…. international… it is marked all over the world, hence the results come in very quickly in comparison to A-levels. I have barely a month to wait, but that just means there is no period long enough for my brain to switch off and not have to think about it.

The problem is, none of my exams were disastrous, but I left none of them punching the air and singing ‘The World’s Greatest’ by R.Kelly. My exams could completely go either way and then my future will change depending on what is written on a piece of paper that hasn’t even been typed up yet.

“I left none of my exams punching the air, singing ‘The World’s Greatest’ by R. Kelly”

Times like this make me wonder whether I made the right decision to not apply to university until after I’d received my results for the International Baccalaureate. On the one hand, I have no offers to reach. I can just see what I get and then only apply to places I am likely to get into. On the other hand, I have no idea where I might end up going after results day. At least my university bound chums know that they will either go to their first choice or their insurance choice. We’re all suffering from the same terrifying anticipation, but at completely different stages of the process. It is like a game of Deal Or No Deal where I am just about to open the first box, and they are on the last. The only good thing is that we don’t have Noel Edmonds behind us making unhelpful and unfunny jokes.

It’s frustrating, because it is utterly pointless to bite my fingernails hoping that somehow a professor in some random country I’ve never heard of reading my philosophy essay will think “Oh, wait a minute… I have a feeling this girl really wants to do well. I’d better give her a better mark.” I just need to accept this and not let it ruin the only carefree month I have before I have to start seriously thinking about universities in lieu of my exam triumph/disaster.