I’ve been playing the clarinet since 1998 and am around grade 5 standard at the moment. I got grade 4 in 2001, but then stopped having lessons. I barely played at all until I started university last September, and I think I’m slowly improving. The more I think about it, the more I realise that I need to start the lessons again. I need something tangible to work towards.

It isn’t even that I want to actually do the exam itself. It’s just that I want to be that good at playing. Theory exams and the student budget I’m living on don’t seem to be particularly conducive to actually doing the exam any time soon.