So I've pretty much been a straight A*/A student throughout the year in all my subjects, earlier on getting B's but mainly A's and A*'s, I didn't care about academia as much at GCSE level or AS but this year I decided I needed to pull my weight and I did, I've always been intellectually able and have many times scored high/highest marks in exams/essays.
Come exam period, I was so stressed and worried about getting these grades in the exams and seeing all this effort go to waste, and coincidentally none of the exams went great. I don't think I had more than 5/6 hours sleep before any of my exams and I'm sure this must have had some affect on my overall performance. Furthermore, I'd never really gone through the proper exam period revision process before so it was completely overwhelming not knowing whether I was going to cover everything again (In GCSE and AS I mostly revised the day/few days before and that's what I thought was 'revision' so I was essentially re-learning all the AS content throughout the year as well). After each exam I would basically think about all the mistakes I probably made for hours/days and this was even more wasted time. But I figured maybe I was just overthinking it (for some of the exams I was, for others I wasn't, so that's that).
Then leading up to results day I kept imagining all the possible scenarios (perhaps not enough of the bad ones) so that they'd (not) come true, I was really hoping for straight A's/A*s as that's what I'm capable of and what I have gotten before, but the exam days were just bad. I didn't get what I wanted and what I deserved and now whenever I see a 'B' I feel it is actually a 'U' and when I see an 'A' I see that it is not an A* and I feel absolutely disgusted with myself and everything. I suppose I do have 'extenuating' or 'mitigating' circumstances throughout these years which I'd rather not go into detail about but despite going through all that and achieving much better than AS I am still disgusted and feel like my life and future has been tainted by these grades and will constantly be reminded that on paper my grades are 'just good/above average' or 'average' by some TSR users standards, is that what I survived hell for, to be called average? And it's the fact I know I am much better but can't do anything about it. Had I gotten straight A's even I wouldn't even feel like this, I just can't stand to see a 'B' at all and I don't know why, but I'm sure many other A grade student's probably feel the same, it's like I have some kind of grade dysmorphia and feel worthless because of it. I know resitting is an option but I'll have to put myself through that trauma and possibly failure again, I have no idea what to do.
I just know that on paper I'll never be able to compete with the A*A*A* high performing private/grammar school students even though they were better off than me, I know there grades are better than me on paper and there's no way I can show people I have the same intellectual ability, call me shallow but it's gotten to the point where I feel my grades determine my self worth (I don't generally feel this way towards other people though, only myself) and I know I am not average but how do I tell myself this and truly feel it! I know in my current situation my grades are 'good' but the fact that I'm limited on which firms/companies or grad schemes I can apply for disgusts me and makes me feel like I am worthless. I know some people are going to tell me to 'get over it' or 'that's just life' but it isn't fair and I have a right to be disappointed by this failure (which I don't entirely blame myself for, but of course I am ironically expected to take full account for). If there is anyone else who has experienced this kind of failure how did you get past it, I don't want this to haunt me but I feel it will and I am worried this mindset I have been put in is going to terribly affect me at university.