Hi,
I got my now current university place last year through clearing. I absolutely was not expecting to ever miss my firm (although it was high at A*AA for physics) not to talk of my insurance choice which had reasonably lower requirement i comparison. To put it simply, i (temporary) missed the grades and landed straight B's. I was really p*ssed off at that and had no doubt in my mind i couldve surely achieved my requirement because my firm was where my heart was - i realllyyy reallyy wanted to go there and no where else my insurance was just there for fun really so having my insurance say no was extremely disheartening for me i really wanted to just kms that morning of results day.
I ended up going to my college that morning to express how p*ssed off i was because surely i had performed much better than that and they calmed me down and basically said there was nothing they could do because of ongoing fiasco and the careers staff managed to convince me that there are other opportunities out there for the same course so we looked together and found the top unis for my course that i might like and called them up one by one and i managed to get maybe like 5 offers via phone call that day and like 1 or 2 more later [after like 2days i finally reached my insurance they were rude as hell and i didnt want to go anyways]
i went on an open day maybe a week later to ensure it was the place for me and loved it, added them as my clearing choice on UCAS, they confirmed that i do have an offer with them MSC Physics, it was all sorted and here we are.
Other than my insurance all the unis i spoke to were nice, they asked for grades had a discussion with me &my colleges career staff who was putting in a good word for me onbehalf of my teachers and it wasnt such a bad experience at all other than me being really madddd for not achieving the grades i know i worked hard for.
If i were to give advice, id say theres really no need to think about clearing especially if theres a place(s) you wish to go and if things dont work out, get the phone first thing in the morning and start reaching out to unis that may be able to offer you the same course starting with the ones closest in educational excellence to your firm and reallyyy argue your case. Dont beat yourself up though because it may be very heartbreaking, life happens sometimes and you can end up happier or in better place