What is in Kelvin's Head?

5 things about exams that matter more than results

04/08/2015

Today is exam results day in Scotland. Lots of young people will be getting examination results that will make a significant difference to further study.

Such public exam results carry with them a lot of stress.

I’ve sat lots of exams in my life and I think it would be fair to say that I’ve had mixed results. Some have been hugely disappointing and others have been exactly what I hoped for.

My most difficult exam results were my A levels which I got when I was 17. Oh yes, I got a bunch of science A levels but they were not the grades I was hoping for and they meant that I couldn’t get into the university course that my heart was set on. I had to go somewhere else to get a Maths and Computing degree. At the time it seemed like the end of the world. Now, I’ve lost track of the number of people who have said to me, “wow, you got a degree in maths!”

As it happens, I resat part of the middle year of that degree as I comprehensively failed some exams and had to take a year resitting. It also happens that I had rather an enjoyable time in the year I was failing exams and an even better time in the year that I eventually passed. And yes, thank you very much, I did get a maths degree. And though I don’t remember all that much of what I learned, I didn’t forget everything either.

Anyway, thinking about the exam results this morning got me thinking about a few things that are more important than exam results.

1 – I’m still in touch with friends that I sat all my exams with

I’m glad I live in the first years of the social media revolution. It makes life completely different. It means that I’m in touch with people that I sat all my exams with. Indeed, when I think back to particular periods of my studying life I tend to think of those periods as much through the lens of the friendships that I made than the things that I was actually supposed to be learning.

Friendships matter more than exam results. Some people find it difficult to make friends. Like passing exams, it is a knack that can be learned. However, I’d say that studying together with other people is one of the best ways of making friendships that last a long time. Many friendships made during study last longer than romantic entanglements. Go figure.

2 – I’ve forgotten most of what I studied for

I think it probably is the case that I’ve forgotten most of the things that I studied in order to pass examinations. I don’t think that this means that those exams were worthless – not at all. I think that eventually I learned that passing exams is about learning how to learn. I rather wish some of my teachers had been better at communicating this to me but there you go, I figured it out in the end. I struggle to conjugate French verbs and I can barely read the Hebrew characters that I once learned in order to read the book of Genesis in the original. I know I wouldn’t get very far with a calculus paper and I get frustrated that I can’t remember what I once thought I’d learned about databases. However, that’s not the point. I’ve learned how to learn and I know that I can acquire new skills when I need to. Indeed, one of the things I decided to do today was spend some time at home learning how to use a particular computer graphics package that’s going to set me free to do all kinds of tricks at work. I’ve learned how to learn and that’s more important than any number of the certificates that I have. Indeed, I go on learning with rapacious intent.

3 – I can remember more of what I studied for than I expect

When push comes to shove, as it does in life sooner or later, I find that I can actually remember all kinds of things that I thought I had forgotten. I may not be able to remember my Hebrew but if someone asks me why we pause in the middle of the psalm verses in morning prayer I’m straight off to dig out my Hebrew bible to show them. I can’t remember my French verbs but when life puts you on a sinking yacht in a canal in France and you have to call out les pompiers in french on a dodgy mobile phone, suddenly you find you can remember far more than you expect. (And you learn even more vocabulary on the way – I’ll never to my dying day forget that la grue means the crane). I don’t think I’d enjoy taking a driving test again but I get myself around without bumping into things rather efficiently. I’ll probably never sit any more music exams but they gave me enough to enjoy sitting at the piano and to my astonishment I find that I’ve become an opera critic whom some folk seem to listen to. I regret not taking more courses in English literature but I had an English teacher who gave me a love of the stage which has never done away and which has given me more delight than anyone else ever has. (And bless him, he’ll probably never know that was the gift he gave me).

4 – You can almost always resit and you can always revise your plans

So, I got disappointing A levels, I failed a year at college, I failed a driving test and when I tried the first time, the church comprehensively said I had no vocation to be a priest. In the end, none of these things defined my life. I’ve learned that you can almost always resit exams and you can always revise your plans. Things can still work out even if you get a disappointing result. Indeed, the truth is, you are going to have disappointments in life. Exams can teach you how to deal with them. Sometimes you don’t get what you want but so what? Being able to adapt and change your plans is a greater life skill than passing exams in the first place. Exam results sometimes feel like the end of the world. They never are. The trick is not to be defined by the things you have not succeeded at. An exam result is only a snapshot of how you were doing at one particular part of life. It isn’t life itself.

5 – I’m glad I sat the exams I did, even the ones I failed

It takes time to learn to be thankful for disappointment. Indeed, there’s no real point talking about it with someone who is in the first phase of coming to terms with it. However, the truth is, there are silver linings in many a cloud. The trouble is, it takes time and wisdom to be able to see them. Don’t ask what you learned in order to pass an exam – ask what you learned by getting the result you got. Don’t ask why you can’t do what you hoped to do, ask what you hope to do now.

One of the things that I’ve been getting people at St Mary’s to work towards in the next few months is a new course for people to think about their own gifts and skills. I have a hunch that people are far too much defined by the exam results and certificates that they have got when in fact they have surprisingly diverse gifts which are incapable of being examined in traditional ways which add up to all kinds of inner calls.

My congratulations go to all those rejoicing today. My commiserations to those who didn’t get what they wanted. It’s miserable. I know it is miserable but I also know it isn’t the thing that needs to define who you are.

examinations, failing exam, friendship, matter more than exams, results

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

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Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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