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This year’s results day was a little bit different for me. Instead of making the trip through to Glasgow for the SQA briefing, I was scheduled to tune in on Teams. Before that, though, I was running The Herald’s live blog.

I have to say: it was stressful.

Except for the constant concern that a typo in a quickly-written update might turn 60.7% into 607%, though, the stress I felt was second-hand.

After getting a few posts out to tease what James and I would be looking for in the results data, the clock struck 8am, and I opened Twitter.

A general wasteland on its best day, Twitter is not a great place to be at 8:05am on results day.

Especially not when you have a search pinned for “SQA.”

Starting at around ten past, updates from young people started trickling onto social media.

“This is not happening.”

“15 minutes, still nothing.”

My favourite: “Even the SQA won’t text me.”

Although many learners still trust the mailman to deliver their results, an increasing number opt for digital notifications every year.

For these young people, their results arrive at 8am via text and email.

Actually, 8am is when they start arriving. The SQA releases email and text notifications in batches. Depending on networks and carriers, in a normal year, it can take up to an hour for some results to land in their target inbox.

But anxiety rules the roost on results........

© Herald Scotland