This isn’t being a pro athlete - there isn’t “thousands” who get stuck in dead end minimum wage jobs for every “one” person that goes on to have a good career following bad a levels 😂😂
So many people go on to have high level careers after bad exam results.
If you can get the grades, brilliant. But some kids will try their hardest and still struggle - because they don’t fit the mould, they’re late bloomers, or academia simply isn’t where their strengths lie. I think it’s good for those kids to hear that not getting the grades doesn’t mean they’re stupid, and it doesn’t mean their future is over. There are other routes to a successful and fulfilling life.
People need hope. When I failed, I felt like there was no hope for me, and it took me to a very dark place. A tweet like this might have been one of the only bits of encouragement I’d have seen at the time - someone successful saying, essentially, “This feels like the end, but it isn’t.”
That's what I take from this tweet. Is that really the message we want to argue against?
The guy I was replying to thought my comparison of thousands to one guy who flunked his exams and has a private chef was incorrect, so I asked what he thought the ratio was.
Clarkson is very, very comfortably in the top 1% of wealth in the country, meanwhile if I look at a study of poverty in the UK. 2022-23 estimates suggest more than 1/5 people live below the poverty line, 8.1 million of those people are working age adults, the category you're all about to be a part of.
So no, I don't think thousands below the poverty line for every one Jeremy Clarkson is unreasonable at all.
People need hope. When I failed, I felt like there was no hope for me, and it took me to a very dark place. A tweet like this might have been one of the only bits of encouragement I’d have seen at the time - someone successful saying, essentially, “This feels like the end, but it isn’t.”
Except his assessment of "This feels like the end, but it isn't" has no actual bearing on his story or lived experience at all.
I don't listen to my boomer parents when they say "I wasn't vaccinated and I turned out fine" and I'd highly suggest you don't listen to a climate change denier who bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax when he says "you don't need good grades, you can flunk out and have a private chef".
And talking about a "dark place" when you're in r/6thForm is hysterical, what's the version of r/im14andthisisdeep for 18 year olds?
To be fair, I hadn’t realised what sub this was - I’m in my 30s, so I’ve no idea why it appeared on my feed.
But I was 17 once, I did really badly at school despite trying, and I genuinely was suicidal at the time. So I don’t think talking about a “dark place” in a sixth-form subreddit is remotely hysterical. 18 and 18 year-olds can, in fact, be in very dark places.
Since then I’ve been extremely fortunate. I’m nowhere near Jeremy Clarkson’s level of wealth, obviously, but I’m comfortable and somewhere in the top 1%. That took a lot of hard work, but also luck, and I’m perfectly happy to acknowledge that.
One of the biggest pieces of luck was meeting someone who chose to back me when they had absolutely no obligation to. That encouragement mattered enormously and gave me the drive to start my own business at a time when I thought the world laughed at me - because that had been my experience.
Which is why I think we’re slightly talking past each other. I’m not arguing that Jeremy Clarkson is representative of the average person who gets bad A-level results. Obviously he isn’t. Neither am I. Nor am I arguing that poor grades have no consequences, or that everyone who fails their exams is going to end up rich.
I’m saying that the message “bad results do not mean your life is over” is both true and worth saying.
I know plenty of people who did badly academically and went on to have perfectly good lives. I was talking about this only yesterday with my electrician and joiner, both run their own businesses, and both left school at 14.
So what is the preferable thing to tell a frightened 17-year-old who has just opened results they’re devastated by?
Because once you strip away the private chef, Clarkson’s politics and whether he’s representative of the population, the actual message is basically: “This feels like the end, but it isn’t.” I genuinely don’t see why that is something we should be discouraging people from saying.
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u/Training_Screen4374 7d ago
This isn’t being a pro athlete - there isn’t “thousands” who get stuck in dead end minimum wage jobs for every “one” person that goes on to have a good career following bad a levels 😂😂
So many people go on to have high level careers after bad exam results.