I achieved a 2:1 and I'm really dissapointed because my average has been brought down by 1 exam that went wrong (got like half the marks I did in all my others ones). So I feel pretty dissapointed.
I wanted to do an MA and PhD in Modern History. Should I bother with a 2:1 or will I only get onto crappy courses? How important is extra curiccular stuff, can that make up the difference between me and another candidate with a first?
I'd love to do it for a carreer but even if a career in academic history isn't possible I'd still like to do postgrad anyway.
Basically how crap is a 2:1 and can/should I do postgrad stuff with it?
I presume you are in the UK system. Talk to your advisor of studies and the people who run your University postgraduate programmes. Usually a 2.1 is fine and many senior historians got one. A 2.1 is far from crap it is a very good grade especially if you were close to a First.
A 2.1 is fine for continuing on to postgrad research. I got a 2.1 in the Irish system (which should be pretty much the same as the UK, at college level anyway) and I'm in the final weeks of my Ph.D. now.
The only real drawback I found was that it makes getting funding a lot harder. I had to self-fund pretty much my whole thesis since many of the funding bodies prefer students who got Firsts. That said, a really good Masters can help mitigate this problem and it will also depend on how funding is allocated at your institution/in your country.
I'm not sure what a 2:1 means, but in the US a 3.1/3.2 is good enough to get into a good program IF you have excellent test scores and good letters, etc. So some things can compensate for others.