I had finally gathered enough eyes of ender to activate the end portal and I go in and fight the dragon. I died a couple of times due to its dragonbreath catching me off guard. Anyways, I shot out most of the crystals except for one and decided to just crit out the dragon with Sharp 5 and strength 2 whenever it got to the pedestal. I managed to defeat it and it dropped the dragon egg, spawned an end gateway and the portal back home opened but not a single drop of XP to be found. I checked the overworld and looked around the island and nothing. Obviously I can't be "refunded" for it, but I wouldn't want to go through all that dying and not get to level 62 again. This world is purely survival and in normal mode.

UPDATE: Searched overworld again and found all the XP in one pile on the world spawn point.