A price that's worth paying?

I hate to sound like a douchebag, but from a young age my family made a pretty big emphasis on me being clever.

Which is why the epitome of my intelligence is compounded by the fact I'm taking a (unavoidable) gap year.

From an articulate use of a fine vernacular to a thorough understanding of modern British politics and sub-atomic particle physics, even I thought I was pretty brainy. But apparently this complacency can really bite back at you, and in quite a cruel and almost deviant nature. Anyone would realise this, of course. You can waltz through primary school without even engaging your brain. In fact, I think most children do, because the most important things there were pokemon cards and gameboys. When you enter secondary school, you think it's time to step up your game and really begin to try. And you do. For the first term of Year 7, and then you just enter the atypical entropic phase of teenagehood. Years 8 through 11 go by in a flash without even lifting a finger, and when it comes to actually taking what you conceive to be some of the most important examinations you'll ever take ("like, ever") you do little-to-no revision and just wait for the As and A*s to fall into place. And they did.

Progressing from GCSE to AS and A level was like charging head first into a wall. You try the same tricks and then don't understand why those As you're used to look suspiciously like an E.

There doesn't really need to be any further explanation. Compared to what I was used to getting and wanted to get, my results at the end of year 13 were pretty dire. I wasn't going to university, and I wasn't going to be leaving home. The two things I had longed for for over a year were not to become a reality for a further year. It added insult to injury that all of my friends were going with results that put them in the upper percentiles of the nations results. Then again, they deserved it. And I didn't.

The point of all of this? Well, earlier today - as a result of my thinly veiled attempts at righting the wrongs I did my academic self - I spent £60.60 on four exam retakes (all of which I have already taken before). This is in addition, may I add, to the nearing £90 I spent in January, of which only 2/5ths has paid off. Now, I'm not very good with money. I don't get that much per month, but what I do get I spend so fluently that it literally drains away. By the end of the month, I'm eating the moss growing in the cupboards at home and drinking 3 day old water. So to spend £60 on exam retakes is a pretty big kick in the teeth.

But that is the price I have to pay for my ineptitude, my laziness, and my desire to go where I want to go. If I want what I want I have to pay what I need to pay.

And yeah, this sort of lost its fluidity because I began watching the Big Bang Theory and played some FIFA. Sorry.