A Level Results day & University Freshers advice video!

A terrifying day for hundreds of thousands of 18 year olds today, who find out if they have got into the university that they have been pining over for the past 8 months at least.

I was in the same position myself last year and results day for me was an utterly traumatising experience, to think of it now makes me feel a bit nauseous in my stomach. I wish I could go back in time to hug my past self and reassure them that things would turn out okay in the end.

I won't go into the too grim and technical details, as you will probably fall asleep on the keyboard. However, I will say that I was horrifyingly rejected by my first and second choice universities (If you don't know how the system works... there is no third choice, you get a first and second choice and that is your lot!) So I was then thrust into a process in the UK called 'Clearing' which is sort of how it sounds, but if you're still confused then Google can enlighten you on that. It was a huge rush of urgent and frantic telephone calls, waiting on hold, keeling over the toilet bowl with nerves, loss of appetite, begging universities shamelessly, breaking down in tears at any given moment, refreshing my email every 10 seconds and a general feeling of being an absolute failure. However, 36 hours after everyone else, I was accepted by my second choice university who had decided that it wouldn't be so bad to have me on board after all. After initial apprehension at not being at my favorite university like I had expected, I just begun to get very excited. That is where my story ends and this video will be able to fill in all the gaps from that point onwards...

If things haven't gone the way that you expected today, and you're perhaps feeling like your life plans have fallen off the tracks, I plead you not to get disheartened. Life has a wonderful way of springing us away from what we think we want to a place that is even better than we could have ever imagined. I am so unbelievably thankful that I was steered away slightly from what I thought I wanted a year ago, now I have ended up in the place that I am supposed to be.

The cards we're dealt in life

This is the way that I like to look at things, when it seems as though everything is turning horrible and into mulchy goo on the ground.

I think of the ups and downs we handle, like a pack of cards.
When we were born we were handed a pack of cards- bigger than the 52-deck-kind that we get on Earth, some cards immediately make us happy, like the Aces- but in a pack of cards so big they can't all be Aces!
You've got to deal with the less great cards too, like the 2 of Spades.

And sometimes it seems like we've been handed a lot of successive rubbish cards, but that streak is going to end sooner or later- then we get back to the wonderful cards, like Queens, Kings, Aces.

You have some cards that are great and impact your whole life forever, long after that part of your life is over and the card has been tossed away: Like getting your dream job!

But of course, some cards impact your life forever for the worse long after they're gone too: Like someone you care dearly about no longer being part of your life.

But the great thing about cards is that it's all down to chance! You choose how you play your cards.
So you're faced with a four of clubs, and you're here thinking -what am I going to do with THIS? You can make whatever you want of it, but are you going to bail out of playing?
No Sir-ee!
You're going to keep on playing and make the best of what cards you do have!

So you might be thinking 'But I know people who seem to have only been dealt Kings and Aces'
This is another concept in card playing known as 'bluffing' no one, but no one is dealt a whole deck of the best cards, you best believe everyone is dealing with crummy cards because there's no avoiding it in a pack of cards so big. Perhaps they've just played their cards right, and made the best of the rubbish ones to prolong the effects of the 'best' cards

Mid weeks are hard, Mondays are hard- Every day is hard!
But just keep playing, just keep dealing with the card in front of you treasure the lucky streaks and persevere with the unlucky ones.