So exams are over, well, GCSEs – the appetisers, put in place just to whet the appetite for the half-decade or so of main courses I have yet to come. Just entering the exam era or not, the first course has come to an end: the tedious routine of eat, sleep, revise, repeat has been broken and twelve weeks of pure, unadulterated freedom is upon me.

I should really be planning to live these three months in teen rebellion: drink at an endless stream of parties, run away abroad – generally drive my parents to the brink of collapse.

Instead, I’m planning on feasting on the TV series haven that is Netflix, and still trying to overcome the paranoia of “I should be revising” and ignoring the automatic guilt that has been programmed whenever I start to relax.

What have I actually learnt from this exam experience?

Cramming: when you have 21 exams it is practically mandatory. That revision timetable, the colour coded one you made back in January will most likely never see the light of day – nice try.

In truth, no 16-year-old starts revising six months in advance. The information needs to go in, and fast.

Stress will become your new- found adrenalin, maybe resulting in frequent mood swings and occasional tearful breakdowns – embrace these, for as the number of tears rise, as will the amount of times your parents do the washing up.

In the pre-exam debriefing from your peers, never let on really how much revision you’ve done.

No one wants to hear how prepared you are, you will thrive on hearing how unprepared your friend is, it will ease your conscience about waking up at 4am on the day of the exam to start revising. This can happen.

Remember to milk a bad exam as much as possible, you’ll want that pity from your parents, you’ll need that pity food to fuel you through.

Using the excuse “my coursework will make up for it” doesn’t quite cut it for every exam, nor does “it probably won’t come up”.

You’ll most likely be left staring accusingly at your paper, feeling personally victimised by your exam board.

In all seriousness the most useful thing I’ve taken away from this battlefield is: exams aren’t everything.

It is something that schools fail to tell us.

For many, our teen and early adolescent lives revolve around exams, but after that education turns into work and all of those exams that you toiled endlessly over, are rendered fairly insignificant.

Learning and exam preparation are actually two very different things and if I were to have any regrets during these two years of GCSEs, it would be to have missed just enjoying learning more.

It’s too easy to get completely fixated on getting through exams, learning the bare minimum to get the grade.

I hated subjects way too easily and I believe I suffered as a result.

For all those embarking on the first round of exams, don’t fret, enjoy the process and they really won’t be so bad.