A three-hour maths exam is looming, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Then there’s French, and geography and English literature – and I haven’t even read the set text yet.

With exams just around the corner, my nerves are shot to pieces. My sleep is broken by the nagging feeling clawing away at me – why didn’t I start revising weeks ago? Why have I left it too late? I am going to fail my exams and there is no-one to blame but myself.

For anyone who has endured the stress of exams, this may be a familiar scenario. It is a scenario that continues to haunt me, even though it is a good 20 years since I last took an exam.

I still have regular dreams that I have exams coming up – proper school exams, like French, maths and chemistry – and I am in a state of blind panic because I haven’t done any revision. When I wake up to discover it is only a dream the relief is overwhelming, but even though I know I never have to take another exam again, there’s still a niggle about it in the back of my mind that I think will always be there.

I was consumed with exam stress throughout my teens and well into my 20s and the anxiety must be buried deep in my subconscious, emerging to haunt me in dreams, or nightmares as they invariably become.

Like the teeth-falling-out dream I used to get when I was actually sitting exams, it is a recurring dream that I have become quite used to. It may be particularly prevalent at this time of year because I remember with a shudder that weird limbo between the intense exam season and the dreaded results.

This week is a big one for teenagers anxiously awaiting their A-level grades. I opened my A-level results after a shift at Seabrook Crisps , where I had a summer holiday job. I stood at the factory gates, stinking of cheese and onion, and discovered I hadn’t got the grades for my university of choice. It felt like the bottom had fallen out of my world.

It took a few frantic days of ringing round and reapplying to get a place elsewhere.

This Thursday there will be the usual scenes of jubilant teenagers leaping for joy, clutching slips of paper covered in triple A stars. My heart goes out to the ones who don’t get the grades they hoped for.

For them it is time to take stock and decide what they really want to do. University isn’t for everyone, especially these days, and while A-level disappointment can be bitter, it can be an opportunity to consider alternatives.

For some youngsters taking that alternative route could be the best decision they ever make.