Real life starts here

Will it be dreaming spires, a rucksack and a Rough Guide, or a visit to the jobcentre? As the nation's school-leavers get ready for tomorrow's A-level results, Paul Vallely offers some advice

It's not for nothing that Charles Dickens called his novel Great Expectations. For most of us, its enduring image is of Miss Havisham, the mad old woman jilted at the altar who lives the rest of her days amid the crumbling ruins of her unconsumed wedding feast. (At least, she seems old, even at the outset, for the opening of the book is written from the perspective of youth.) The great expectations are those of the young hero, Pip, as the story charts his transition from boy to man.

There are great expectations fermenting violently all over Britain today as the nation's school-leavers brace themselves for tomorrow's opening of the dreaded envelopes which contain their A-level results. For the past two months they have been on a roller-coaster of emotion. First came the sheer relief of getting the exams over. Next the sense of release gave way to a brooding self-assessment far more rigorous than anything they will ever perform for the Inland Revenue. Typically it starts with what the French call pensées d'escalier, the thoughts you have afterwards on the staircase, when you know what you should have said or written. Then time assuages; confidence grows that perhaps you did better than you had initially imagined. In the final stage, as the day approaches, comes the last minute panic and the conviction of doom.

The contents of tomorrow's letters will shape the destiny of their recipients' entire future. At least, that's how it seems today. I don't suppose it is advice any of them will take, but they could do a lot worse than fill the cavernous hours by reading Dickens's great tale. It is what in lit crit is called a bildungsroman, a novel of someone's growth from childhood to maturity. Dickens's exploration of young Pip's educational and emotional journey makes excursions across the boundary between success and failure, innocence and experience. It deals with wild, unexpected good fortune and with broken hearts and broken illusions. And in the novel, as can happen in life, things are often not what they seem.

When I was a Northern grammar school boy in my last A-level year I sat the entrance exam for one of the Cambridge colleges. After going down for the interview, I received a letter which suggested that I should take a year out before going there since I was not yet sufficiently mature. I swiftly showed them how mature I was by telling them to sod off and going to Leeds instead, where I had a jolly good time in student journalism, theatre and politics and somehow managed to get a degree in Philosophy and English along the way.

For years, however, there remained the lingering thought that perhaps I had been too precipitant with Cambridge and that, if only I had had the patience to hang on for a year and go there, I would somehow have done 'better' in life. It took some time to occur to me that most of my schoolboy contemporaries who had gone to Oxbridge had ended up – admirable characters though they were and personally fulfilled though I am sure they are – in rather mundane jobs back in the provinces. By contrast, those of my era in Leeds had gone on to become members of the Cabinet, run the BBC, join the RSC, take up senior posts on national newspapers, get plays on at the National, and so on.

Last time I spoke on the subject to a friend who had gone to Oxford from a similar small-town grammar-school background he suggested why. "For the first two years I was overawed by the place and the final year was just hard work," he said. "Today I would love the Oxford experience. Then it just passed me by." This is not a universal experience; individuals like Melvyn Bragg and Joan Bakewell testify that it was possible for clever small-town Northerners to blossom and flourish. But it is easy to overlook how intimidating the Brideshead perception of dreaming spires and glittering prizes can be to those who feel cowed socially, financially or in terms of intellectual confidence. Those individuals might have done better going somewhere like Leeds and finding their confidence being built rather than undermined. But then, hindsight is always a 20/20 form of vision.

All of which is just a way of saying that when those envelopes are opened tomorrow they will not reveal simple alternatives of success and failure. Wherever their A-level results take them, the recipients will encounter snobbery and stereotyping. A young friend was taken aback when she went for an interview this year for a place to train as a teacher at Northumbria University, which has a good reputation for one of the old transmogrified polytechnics. She encountered a first-year medical student at Newcastle University next door who opined that a "Mickey Mouse college is probably the right place to go to train for a Mickey Mouse job like teaching". There's clearly some way to go to develop an pleasant bedside manner there.

But it is equally true that wherever today's A-level students end up they will have the opportunity to develop the skills and insight they need to prosper. That might simply mean enduring the process of the UCAS clearing system to find a place at a university other than the one on which hopes had been set; that can be a harrowing experience but then, as the beautiful, proud, cold-hearted anti-heroine Estella says to Pip in the last chapter of the Dickens classic: "Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching."

Or it might mean some swift planning of, or even a drift into, a gap year. "All my chips are on Plan A," as one A-leveller endearingly put it to me the other day. "If that fails, then I'll think of Plan B."

It might even mean not going to university at all. One person I know set out on an extraordinarily varied and successful career by sticking a pin in a list of courses at the local FE college and training to be a medical secretary. Within five years she was on the personal staff of the Chief of the Air Force. There are far more people in top jobs who never went to university than is generally realised.

Now may feel like a pivotal point in life, but there are always more directions in which to burgeon than we usually imagine. That may be about discovering that there are different kinds of material success than we anticipated, or about developing the kind of maturity which says 'what has happened today isn't an absolute; there's a context to all of this'.

More importantly, it is about discerning that the fulfilment of our great expectations is grounded in something about contentment, humility and friendship. There is plenty of that in Dickens, of course, as the central character comes to regret his adolescent disdain for the plain folk among whom he had his beginnings and reassesses his youthful ambitions to arrive at a kind of middle-aged wisdom.

And, of course, in the end it transpires that Pip's mysterious rich benefactor, who makes his education possible, isn't the eccentric recluse Miss Havisham – as he always assumed – but the repellent former convict, Magwitch. Sometimes it's funny how life turns out.

The students awaiting their fate

Name: Emma Prest
Age: 18
Home town: north London
Subjects: A-levels: Spanish, Chemistry, Geography; (AS-level history of art and maths)
Uni/college applied for and course: UCAS (American Studies), but dropped out after reconsidering and will reapply in September

My friends and I refer to 15 August as Doomsday. I try not to think about it, as I'm very scared. I had 14 exams over May and June and it was hell. A month before, I thought to myself, "Oh no, I'd better start revising – stop the social life and work as hard as I can." Why did I leave it till the last minute? I got away with the minimum amount of work in my GCSEs but it's not the same in A-levels. You can't bullshit your way through science. My parents are worried. They're planning to book me into a crammer. Their expectations (mainly As and Bs) are higher than mine. Being realistic, it may be ABC. I want to work for a charity, such as Amnesty International; it doesn't matter too much what my degree is in. But there is a possibility of retaking, which I really don't want. I am dreading going in and all my friends getting straight As. After this build-up of tension, I guess we'll all go out and have a good time – whatever our results. Then I am taking a gap year. I'm going to California and Belize in February. Until then I need to get a job. What I save will be for university. But my parents will pay the main bill.

Name: Philip Ortiz
Age: 18
Home town: Durham
Subjects: A-levels: Art, Biology, French; (AS-level philosophy, history, art, biology, French)
Uni/college applied for and course: UCL (Architecture), conditional offer BBC

I'm nervous. Everybody is. Nothing I can do. I was lucky with my exams. Art and French started early. By summer, I only had French and biology left. It's been three summers of GCSEs, AS-levels and A-levels. You end up suffering from exam fatigue. This new system turns schools into exam factories. It is all about making people get good grades and getting further up the league table. I will be disappointed if I get any lower than AAB. There is real pressure to do well because people say A grades are easier to get these days. I am being assessed as to whether Durham LEA will pay my tuition. Since the governmentmakes you pay for your education, it puts a huge financial burden on my parents, especially as I have a twin sister. We both want to go to university in London which is even more expensive. There are options. I get tuition fees from Durham, an interest-free overdraft and a student loan and my parents foot the bill. But as soon as I'm finished I have to pay it back. And I'll have to get a job to pay my way through university.

Name: Eve Kirby
Age: 18
Home town: Monmouth, Gwent
Subjects: A-levels: English, History, Biology; (AS-level Psychology)
Uni/college applied for and course: Leeds and Nottingham (psychology and philosophy)

When I finished I wasn't too stressed. Once you put down the pen, that was that. I just got on with enjoying my summer. Now, results are out tomorrow and I'm extremely nervous. I really can't tell how I have done. I hate the pressure of two years of study boiling down to a few three-hour exams. There's a personal pressure to perform; then, of course, there are your teachers and parents. Even if I don't get the grades I need, I can bide my time during my gap year. I'm going to Spain to learn Spanish and work. It'll give me plenty of time to think about my career plans. At the moment I am attracted to journalism. For now, though, I'm concentrating on planning the celebrations for tomorrow.

Name: Alexa Plant
Age: 17
Home town: Devizes, Wiltshire
Subjects: A-levels: general studies, business studies; geography, English; (AS-level philosophy, economics)
Uni/college applied for and course: Royal Holloway (economics and financial business)

A-levels have been hard. Nothing you've done before can prepare you. The first year counts for a lot, and I don't think this has been stressed enough. I'm unsure about tomorrow. I was ill during my exams and I'm worried this may have jeopardised my chances. It doesn't help that I expect far too much of myself. I've done lots of extra-curricular activities, such as my Duke of Edinburgh Gold, which has put a lot of pressure on my studies. I need ABB to get into the university that I want – I really don't want to go through clearing. If things don't go to plan, I'll take a gap year. I also want to make the grade because there is a lot of pressure among my friends. Hopefully, we'll all do well, as we have a well-practised drinking route to follow on Thursday. At university I'm looking forward to getting involved in lots of activities and contemplating my career, which is up in the air.