This one's for underperforming students, and anyone who got rubbish exam results. The rest of you can walk away. Go on. Shoo. Gone? Right. Last week was A-level judgment week, which, as per tradition, gave newspapers a brilliant excuse to run photos of attractive teenage girls leaping with delight as they receive their results, a phenomenon that has become such a cliche that pointing out its existence has become another cliche in its own right.

And the schools themselves aren't shy of using it as a PR opportunity. According to Chris Cook of the Financial Times, a press liaison officer from Badminton school in Bristol once left him an unsolicited voicemail alerting his paper to the existence of some particularly "beyootiful" girls who were due to do a bit of impromptu delighted leaping on results day, in case any of his newspaper's photographers fancied popping along for an ogle. According to the Mirror, Badminton school responded to criticism by saying: "We always do this and, to be honest, most girls are attractive at 18." So that's a school, then, talking like a dirty dad. It probably rubbed its hands on its thighs as it said it. Actually, they're missing a trick by restricting themselves to one news story per year. The school could raise its profile yet further by pimping those "beyootiful" students out for other news stories. Certainly the coverage of the shooting of Osama bin Laden could've done with more images of delighted teenage girls jumping for joy as they heard the news.

The day I got my own A-level results, the only thing leaping was the pit of my gut, as I realised I hadn't got the grades I needed. No surprise: I was lazy and easily distracted in school. I didn't read half the books I was supposed to digest for my English literature course, for instance, and instead relied on Brodie's Notes. Today I can't even remember precisely which texts I was bluffing about; I definitely read Othello, but never finished Anthony and Cleopatra (or was it Hamlet?). I think I might've pretended to read a Thomas Hardy novel too. But then English lit was easy to pass: it was a bullshitting exam in which you simply wrote what the examiner wanted to read and got away with it. A-level art – that's where I messed up my grades. You can't fake an ability to draw, and some of the work I submitted wouldn't even pass muster on moonpig.com.

But my despair was short-lived, because I somehow managed to squeak on to the course I'd chosen regardless. My academic career wasn't glittering – more "gluttering", whatever that is. Because I'm called Charlie (which people wrongly assume is short for Charles), and because I write for a broadsheet paper (even though I write gibberish), people often assume I went to private school (which I didn't), and then went on to Oxbridge (which I also didn't). I went to a fairly standard comprehensive followed by a poly-technic, which became a university during my second year, thereby making me feel like a fraud whenever I tell people I went to university.

Predictably enough, I took media studies. And I failed to graduate, thanks entirely to my decision to write a 15,000-word dissertation on the subject of videogames, without bothering to check whether that was a valid topic, which it wasn't. Forward planning isn't my strong point.

This is a long-winded way of saying I've got shit-all in the way of qualifications. Fortunately I'm lucky enough to work in a field in which a lack of certificates (and talent) hasn't been a hindrance. I'm glad I received an education, although beyond an ability to read and write I'm not sure quite what it gave me. On the one hand I'm glad I didn't go to public school, and on the other I'm jealous of the innate lifelong confidence it seems to instil in people – as though they're aware of some safety net I can't see. The most valuable thing you get from education is a space in which you can make friends, gain experience, and figure a few things out. I spent the first half of my 20s deep in debt and working in a shop, with a vague idea what I wanted to do, but no idea how to go about doing it. At the time I thought I was incredibly lazy; looking back now I realise I kept trying my hand at different things: cartooning, writing, rudimentary web design and so on, until eventually I started getting the kind of work I wanted, after which I worked my arse off out of sheer crippling guilt over the years I'd been coasting.

Today it'd be harder for a younger me to get a break. For one thing the student debt would be so huge I'd probably have to work at two jobs, thereby leaving little time or energy to dabble with articles or cartoons after-hours. And although technology has made it possible to write, direct and edit a short film on a computer the size of a teaspoon, it's also flooded the internet with competition, making it harder to stand out.

Even so, success is always possible if you forget about "success" as a concept – it's hopelessly amorphous anyway – and focus instead on doing what satisfies you, as well as you can. Cliched, bland advice, but it's true. Your grades are not your destiny: they're just letters and numbers which rate how well you performed in one artificial arena, once. And no one ever checks up on them anyway – so if in doubt, lie about your qualifications. It may be dishonest, but it's also £9,000 cheaper than any university course.