It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Now I have to go and find out my students' results. I've been looking after about a fifth of my department this year, and vicariously caring about their results has given me nasty flashbacks to my own results experiences. First year wasn't fun because my boyfriend got a 2.i not a first, which made him grumpy. I bought him a nice runny camembert, but somehow this failed to make it all OK. My whole second year was unpleasant, and I just stayed in bed until someone phoned me to tell me the results at about half past two, and then I went back to bed again. This worked well: I would recommend it as a strategy. But in my third year I went down to the boards alone, feeling as pressured as I ever have in my life, because unless I got a first I was not ever going to get funding to do an MPhil. I had to recite poetry in my mind to stop it exploding -- as I recall it was Strange Meeting by Wilfrid Owen as I was walking past WHSmith's. If my mind had exploded I don't know what I would have done -- run about the streets waving my arms shouting The horror! The horror! perhaps -- I'm amazed one doesn't see more students doing that at this time of year. Anyway I got the first, so it was OK, but the sheer terror of the whole thing is still vivid in my memory ten years later.

It would have made a big difference to my life. Most likely I would then have become an actuary. Although they like you to have a scientific degree I had looked into it and some firms would be happy with my predominantly-science A-levels. It's about seven years' training, so I don't feel it's really an option at my age, but by now I would have been qualified, established, earning pretty large amounts of money... I'm sure I would have regretted not knowing more about medieval manuscripts, but I'm also sure I would have been quite fine. I would probably have eventually done some evening classes, like the ones run by the wonderful Michelle Brown in London, and by now I might have been looking into a career-break self-funded masters. Or maybe I would have gone another direction -- hieroglyphs or cuneiform, perhaps.

I know with complete certainty that I would have been alright -- maybe even better because of not being exposed to the particular unhealthy neuroses of academia. That's a good thing to bear in mind when I check my students' results, I think. It makes me sad to think of all the stress we put the students through here, to drive them on to achieve things which are good but not of overriding importance.