Results day - failure

So, results day. Not for us thank god, but good news for many people they we know- including the son of a neighbour and the children of good friends. But, I imagine, a fairly devastating day for many. I'm one of the many people who find the whole transfer test thing difficult, if only because I went through it myself and faced the horrible sinking feeling of a G (when a G was the lowest grade you could get). I well remember the corrosive feeling of failure, of knowing that you weren't good enough, and spending the next ten years trying to prove you were. That happened literally ten years later when I was the only one in my year of grammar school graduates who got a first class honours degree. I remember my own elation and my fathers tears. That bloody menace of the 11plus hurt him too.

But here we are. And just when I thought the thing was finished, thanks to the incompetence of Ruane and the intransigence of those who refuse to understand that the transfer as it sits is a stupendous waste of talent, my 8 year old P5 boy is set to face the same nonsense.

In a few weeks I'll to into a room, probably very nervous, to do my PhD viva. Me, my draft thesis, and my G. I'm so glad my examiners only see me and a hundred thousand words.