FULCRUM MOMENTS

I'm working from home today, which so far means washing pillowcases and eating crisps.

I am doing some work as well, in case you're worried that I'm 'shirking from home' (boom) or anything: plenty of Japanese characters to move around a screen.

There are lots of benefits to the arrangement. I can talk to myself without my colleagues thinking I'm descending into lunacy. I can't be easily interrupted, and I can keep an eye on all the news around A Level Results Day.

Oh mercy. It's that day isn't it.

Mrs Thatcher closed the door behind her and left me alone in her office. The clock was ticking quietly and the air was still. In front of me, there on the desk of my Head of Sixth Form, was a brown envelope, already opened, and a yellow post-it note with a telephone number scribbled on it.

It felt like a fulcrum - the swinging point around which my whole life could change. There in the brown envelope were the results of the past: B,D and E. And there on the post-it was the future: the phone number for the University of Bath, where, in a few moments, the admissions director would tell me what was next and whether I had really needed three Cs to get in to study Physics. It felt enormous.

That was a fairly unbelievable twenty years ago. The children opening their results today were not even thought of then.

I wonder what it's like now. Is there still the same pressure? Does it still feel like your whole life depends on that fulcrum moment? Do you still experience that rapid succession of relief, joy, fear, shame, resilience, or whatever, as you pull those papers out of that envelope?

You know what, your life depends on a lot more than those letters and numbers. And there are hundreds of fulcrum moments ahead that you're not even going to know are that important - at least until much later.

They're things like the way someone smiles at you across the room - a simple act of kindness that cements a life-long friendship - deciding to do the right thing when everyone around you makes a different choice.

All of your life is connected. What you choose to do now will one day be your past and will one day form part of your story.

That's why I think, learning wisdom while you're young is probably better than learning politics, sociology, maths or physics.

Wisdom helps you choose well in the fulcrum-moments.

In the end of course, the physics department at the University of Bath let me in to study. I'm glad they did, but not because of physics.

I'm glad they did because of everything else I learned there through fulcrum-moments of my own.

And now, twenty years later, that beautiful city forms a key part of my past, and my memories are as pretty as the autumn leaves in Alexandra Park or the golden sunset over the Royal Crescent.

I think I'm saying that actually, life is what you make it. And even if the results of some arbitrary examinations don't open the doors you'd hoped for, that definitely does not mean that you're out of doors. This could be your fulcrum moment to build a life you'll be proud of.

And actually, even now, the same is true for me, sitting here in front of Japanese screenshots while the washing machine spins and the kettle chips crunch.

I guess we could all do with a bit of wisdom sometimes.

I have got to stop eating these crisps.