Some will no doubt already have future plans in place, but those who were on tenterhooks about receiving their marks were put of their misery on Thursday, rather than having to wait until Monday.

It comes after the NSW government said markers "worked tirelessly" to get the job done earlier.

Among the city's HSC class of 2021, you'd have to imagine there'd be plenty of students who also worked tirelessly to get to the point where they were anticipating their results with quiet confidence.

The HSC class of 2020 had a pretty good claim to be hard done by as the pandemic took over Australia that year, but the class of 2021 would also be able to mount a legitimate claim for sympathy.

Last year was meant to be the year that life returned to normal in Australia, but, amid the Delta and then the Omicron outbreaks, it turned out to be far from the case.

Many aspects of society have been affected by COVID, of course, but that doesn't mean that one person's disruption or disappointments should cancel out another person's disruption or disappointments.

Year 12 is a time of high emotion even in a normal year as a student stands on the threshold of the next stage of their life.

It's a fork in the road - the point at which a group of students who may have been together since year 10 or year seven or even kindergarten will untangle themselves from each other and pursue different paths.

It's a year of rituals and rites of passage before you even get to the exams - which, the students will have been told many times, will not define their life, but which do come with a set of expectations.

So after the lockdowns of last year and the changing COVID rules, the delay to the HSC exams and everything else that 2021 brought, we ought to give a tip of the hat to Orange's most recent year 12 graduates for getting to the finish line.

They've certainly learnt some lessons in 2021 that had nothing to do with the syllabus. Now, they can finally put a full stop on the whole experience. What happens next is up to them.