It's about one week to an exam, that will determine how much you have developed academically in your past six years - true enough, it'll be crucially important. Because any single mistake or folly that you make at this point of time (e.g. falling sick which is a utterly brilliant mistake that I have honourably committed) will deprive your own performance abilities and shortchange your own results, giving you an inaccurate and painfully unfair measure of how good you are. But apart from benchmarking your academic prowess it doesn't do anything else.

The A levels doesn't benchmark your academic progress, it's your own personal improvement that does. So if any of you are sinking into despair over the countless comparisons that you're making with the high-scorers around in school, please don't fret because ultimately it boils down to how much you've done to keep getting better, rather than how good you've always been. I've always respected the people who have experienced the struggle, more than people who've always had it going for them.

True enough, everyone's going to assess your extent of success for the past 18 years of your life - in the past eighteen years since you were born, these grades are a surrogate for their worth (well, because we aren't earning salaries yet). Hence it's no surprise and wonder why a lot of us are going into frenzies over what's to come and how well they will do. I say, fret not again. Because while the tangibles (like grades, positions, awards, grades, grades and well yes, grades) are the main things which people can and only look to, there's a lot beyond the surface that seriously really counts. Clichéd statement you might say, but in the future it's going to take a lot more than the As on your report card to decide whether you have conquered life, or not.

Behind all that relentless studying, senseless gushing over universities and our chances of getting into them, think about the defining moments where you truly felt you ever learnt something serious about life. Those times where you felt have totally transformed you, and have made you improve as a person, or developed your own individual character in a certain sort of way. I personally believe those times are more crucial than any single groundbreaking research achievement, or any single astounding essay improvement in school, or any personal best on the court or on the track.

Essentially, go ahead and strive, do the best you ever can - but don't forget to be yourself. Never ever let go of your own person and lose yourself in these cold realities. The world doesn't want puppets who chase after targets, the world wants personal heroes who chase after their dreams. And dreams aren't top colleges, or prestigious scholarships, or grand jobs. They are goals which accentuate you further as an individual person and make you proud of who you are.

All the best everyone (: this will all end before we know it.