Alex O'Connor

It means it's so low that it doesn't even register.

I actually overslept one of the exams and I got a phone call from my mum saying,

um, to waking me up being like, are you like, I've just had a call from the school and the disappointment in her voice, it was horrifying, you know, but I just, I just didn't care.

It was really only in like the last year I had to go back and redo a levels because you have to stay in education until you're 18 in the UK.

And I thought, you know what, why not?

Let's give this a crack.

So I got ABC doing humanity subjects.

I remember I had some friends who

I still have these friends who wanted to go to Oxford for the longest time, you know, since they were young and they worked really hard at school.

And I would sometimes joke, you know, about how I was going to go to Oxford too.

And then they would laugh and I'm like, okay, I am joking, but why is that so funny?

why is that so funny?

And I got a bit motivated by these friends of mine.

Seeing that ambition and drive kind of helped me in becoming their friends.

It was just a good influence in that very crucial period of sort of motivating me to get the grades, which allowed me to go to Oxford.

But then again, if you're flunking out of school right now, if you're doing your exams and you think it's like the end of the world, retake these exams.

It's not the end of the world.

And if you don't get into your dream university, there are all kinds of reasons why I might have preferred to have gone to a different university.

It's just like nice to know that there are options.

I think young people, everything's so serious when it comes to like exams and they are, you know, take them seriously.