Yes, the Higher School Certificate has rolled around and our latest crop of Year 12 students are putting the results of two years of hard yakka to the test.

Some will do better than others.

Some will not do as well as they had hoped.

Others will be pleasantly surprised and some will just be happy to have this part of their lives behind them.

The important thing to remember is that at the end of the day the HSC is just an exam – it is a step along the pathway of life and not an end in itself.

It is important to study hard, to stay focused and to be the best you can be – but if at the end of the day the result is not what you needed to do the course of your dreams, then there is always next year.

The reason we write this is that young people appear to be placed under an ever-increasing degree of pressure to perform.

The job market has contracted due to tougher economic times; courses are harder and harder to get into with more and more people going to university and colleges and family expectations – often fuelled by thousands of dollars spent on private education and tuition – appear to rise every year.

While it is important that all students enrolled in the HSC give it their best shot it is equally important that they realise that not everybody is going to walk away with a perfect result.

Working through the aftermath of a less than perfect HSC result can, in fact, be a much better test of a person’s ability to cope in life than the exam could ever be.