I got up this morning and relectantly checked my e-mail for the dreaded (in my eyes) HPAT result. Okay so i thought the exam was alright in general,i did a prep course that didnt really do much but i guess helped with time and strategy. My overall score was 124/300,,0-20%. If im being honest i didnt expect a high mark,i know myself i was never too strong with the HPAT. Im dissapointed though,,i did get a very low mark in my eyes..*sigh* oh well. So now i need about 550+ LC points to even get an offer for medicine,odds are i wont. one cant help but feel pessimistic at this moment in time:( I guess since im moving to Canada ill have to do science for 4 years then do another HPAT type exam and hope that i get into medicine that way.. if i stay in Ireland ill prob end up doing science aswell,then try get into post grad medicine.

Well..what else can i say. Im sure at this stage were all relaxing catching up on whatever we shoved aside until after the exams. I have to agree with Cillian,the hype kind of died down, it was hectic during the first week but then we kind of eased into it! It wasnt as bad as we thought, none of us died or had panic attacks because Boland didnt come up,,,we pulled through and made it out the other end…stronger..and im sure we’ve all learned a thing or two about ourselves because of this whole process! i sure did…i may be a procrastinator but i can really commit to something once i put my head to it.

For all of us now, whether we performed as we wanted in the HPAT or not, whether we get the points we need, whether we get into the college we want or get the career of our wildest dreams or end up repeating i hope we can ALL say “atleast i gave it my all,,,i tried my best”. Because that’s all that matters,everything else will move into place if it is to be.

Fifth years who are soon to be 6th years, if your reading this…the Leaving cert isnt a big deal. well okay,in one sense it is..but i mean dont kill yourself about it! If your a student who always does their homework, is on top of weekly revision and wants to do well then dont worry. Early revision is key but dont morph into a studious zombie and become a recluse who doesnt want to see the light of day or hang out with their friends for  a while,,,thats important too. All ill say is just keep in mind what you want to acheive,, always remind yourself of what you want and try your best to achieve it.

I cant thank Patrick Barry enough for allowing us to vent our feelings online! Thanks Patrick, you run an amazing site that really helped me a year ago exactly when i was looking for answers on medicine,,the new HPAT, asking for subjects and college choices,all honours allowed me to get the answers i wanted from the huge community of students who were just like me! I also found out about my saturday grinds from allhonours. So without this site and Patrick’s ongoing work (searching for bloggers,updating the site and the likes!) it wouldnt be as succesful so I think from all the bloggers we just wanted to say thanks Patrick and we wish you ongoing success with this brilliant site! I highly recommend signing up for this blogging thing,,its a great excercise to have throughout the studying year!

All ill say is best of luck to everyone this august,i hope you all get what you want. Thanks for reading my blogs, i really appreciate it,you all make it worthwhile. Ill be back, like Cillian, when the results are out,,i may be in Canada at that stage or i may still be here. untill then, enjoy your break,,,you deserve it!!

au revoir mes amis!!!!!!!!! xx

-Ally

Well The Leaving Cert 2010 is finally over, so i just thought I’d make my last post short and sweet.

Good luck to everyone who read these blogs and to everyone who sat the leaving cert this year. I hope you all do great at every subject you took (and judging on the blogs I’ve read on this site, we’re all heading towards A1s in English :L)

And thank you to Patrick Barry, who gave us all the chance to blog our leaving cert fears, panics and hopes. Without which some of us may have had panic attacks. People need to vent!

Good luck everyone, all the best, John.

Firstly, apologise for leaving it until now to blog, but oh well! I’ll go through each of them since I was on last.

Irish: In fairness, I thought it was a relatively predictable and straight forward paper, especially after last year. The essay titles might have been a bit specific and bland in that they didn’t suit people with learned-off material, but that suited me down to the ground, considering I’d nothing prepared bar a few phrases. I managed to write an absolute shed load for paper 2, the same as English paper 2 in fact! Somehow I managed a full page on Bealoideas, even though the notes in our book cover less than half of one! Just God help whoever has to correct it, for I’ve no concept of Irish grammar whatsoever!

French: Going into this on the back of an incredibly dodgy oral, the expectations were quite low. I reckon I’m possibly the only one who used the full allotted time, serious lack of time management on the comprehensions left me with forty minutes to do the written part. I spent the first twenty or so minutes writing out three pages of French expressions at the beginning, only later to use four of them, a bit of a regret to say the least, my seventh subject, or so I hope.

Biology: Despite being messed about with teachers over the past two years, the exam proved to be very simple. I did every question on the paper bar the one on Plant Reproduction, and fairly confident I did well. Everyone else I spoke to had the same reaction so I reckon they’ll kill us with the marking scheme.

Chemistry: I always imagined to become an absolute genius over the five days between this and Biology, but no, the World Cup proved far more interesting! Whatever hopes I had for an A have disappeared. I spent the first twenty minutes reading over the paper, only to end up doing ten questions anyway. Every single question seemed to have six marks where you’d feel even with the book open, you wouldn’t get the answers. I mean the IUPAC name for glycerol? It’s actually not mentioned anywhere in our book. Trying to apply what I knew, I stuck down 1,2,3 trihyrdoxylpentane thinking that sounded fairly logical, but no. On wikipedia it says that it’s another name for it, but propan-1,2,3-triol was what they were looking for. I thought the question on Equilibrium was grand, except for the Kc bit. I originally got 0.0225 and thought that was way too low for something that had a 75% disassociation, so I didn’t divide by 100, only later to find out I was originally right. Sickening.

Economics: Ah Economics, always something I thought I was guaranteed and A1 in, until the night before the test. Like Chemistry, I stopped studying for it a week before the LC began, major regret now of course. Looking over the course, I realise I’d forgotten almost everything. The only saving grace was that it was fairly topical. The whole “Rent of Ability” thing kind of threw me, and no Oligopoly? Or NAMA? Odd to say the least. I did a fifth question, something our teacher always advised against, but me being an insecure rebel, I had to rush Q1 on demand, and made a pig’s ear of it. Oh well…

It feels weird to say it’s over. No big bang at the end, it just slowly faded out. The ending for me definitely was an anti-climax to the whole thing. While things started off nicely with the three core ones being simple for a change, they lulled me into a false confidence for the last two. The whole build up and suspense for the exams was simply destroyed by the time Irish was finished. I can’t honestly say how the results will go, I’d be delighted to break 500, but I’d swap any number of points just for a place in college. Speaking off that, the ole CAO could probably do with a shake up. I have managed to find one course that is basically “me”, Maths and Economics in Trinity! It was 475 last year, and only 15 points up from the mocks, so provided it doesn’t rise too much, I wouldn’t mind that!

The HPAT results are out Monday, and to be honest, they’ll count for little at the end of the day. Still, I’m dying to see the percentile score and break down of the result, better be worth getting up at five on Monday for! I know most are finished at this stage, and the sites gone quite, but I hope y’all have a good summer! I’ll be back for the results!

Cillian

I was pleasantly surprised with this year’s chemistry paper. I was really dreading going into this exam…i thought it would be horrible,me sitting there not knowing a single thing,my hard studying gone to waste…but i found the paper to be very do-able,nothing to catch you out, if anything i thought it was easier than previous years. I was happy leaving the paper and who knows i might just have gotton a low B!

Q1,2 and 3 were lovely! Total hardness in water, prep of soap and rates of reaction with Na2S2O3 and HCL. I did Q’s 1&2.

I then did Qs 4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10parts a) and c). Q4 was lovely again, mostly simple definitions..Q5 was on Dalton’s theory and Bohr’s theory,Q6 was organic ..7 was equilibrium-beautiful question!! Q8 was acid-base,,lovely again..Q9 organic and Q10electronegativity and ethanol/ethanal.

Overall, i did like the paper this year even if i forgot a few things. I guess ill just have to wait…i never thought id be saying this but…I actually liked that chemistry paper!!!

im finished now but ill wait till friday to post my final blog:( :(

good luck to everyone still doing exams,,your almost there

bonne chance!!!!

Chemistry: not as impossible as it could have been!

I can hardly believe it, the exam I’ve been dreading for two years is finally over. Never again will I have to read over chemistry notes, never again will I have to study theorems and definitions for hours on end. It’s finally over. Anyway, for those of you who don’t do chemistry and wouldn’t be able to pick it out of a police line-up, here’s a brief layout of the paper:

The chemistry leaving cert exam paper is composed of two sections, A and B. In part A, there are three questions, of which two must be answered. In part B, there are eight questions, the amount of which are compulsory depending on how many questions you answered in part A. Eight questions must be answered overall.

In part A I answered all Three questions. The first one was easy, a simple titration, exactly the same one that came up the last three or four years. Question two was difficult enough, but I gave it my best shot. Question three wasn’t as easy as question one, but not as hard as question two. The reason I answered all three questions in this part of the exam was to leave more options open for me in part B.

Question four in part B was a series of eleven short questions, of which we had to answer around eight. I’m not entirely sure how many are compulsory as I always answer all of them to be on the safe side. questions five to eight were hard enough, but not impossible. After I had finished question eight I relaxed and sailed through questions nine to eleven, as they were just extra.

I’m still in shock that I managed to answer everything on the paper. I was expecting a C out of this exam but now I think I might have achieved more out of it.

For all the build up and tension not only I, but most Irish chemistry students have had over the past two years, it wasn’t nearly as impossible as I had expected. In fact, I might even go so far as to say it was (dare I say it?) easy. now it’s just music to go and then freedom!

Good luck with your remaining exams (if you have any), John.

Post-mortem starting from Monday

I thought Maths P2 (OL) was really nice=D No surprises! No tricks! Nothing out of the ordinary! The only complaint I heard was that the Q sin2θ wasn’t actually on the course, but it was in the tables… (I had it drilled into my head by my honours maths teacher “sin2A=2sinAcosA”)

Irish P1 (HL):The titles were quite specific and left little room for regurgitating essays! I don’t understand the thinking behind the course at all! One minute they’re telling us we need an in-depth knowledge of the language, its literary content, and its history. The next were given a paper which “encourages spontaneity!” Bhuel, ar mhiste libh insint dom conas gur feidir dalta A1 i nGaeilge a fháil gan aistí nó píosaí eile a bheith ar eolas acu de ghlan mheabhair?? Hummmph!! Despite all my griping, I was quite happy with my paper. I found the comprehensions tough, especially the first, and the end of the second.

The tape was tricky in places…and I thought they played the first section three times… but otherwise twas ok!! EXCEPT the 2nd section (I think) kinda confused me!! Was it just me or did Síle say they had good facilities at Oxygen?? Clean toilets?? A wide range of shops (unless the choice between Bud and Bulmers is what she meant??) A BATHROOM??? Lol!

Paper 2 was another story altogether…. mainly because of that horror of an An Trial question….. Ok, So I did the Stair first – seemed to go ok – then the pros. Clare sa Spéir had a lovely Q, I just ran out of time a little though!! F.B.F was fine too, just didn’t leave the time for it! Then the fun began: I opened An Trial and automatically looked to the 2nd part to see what characters had come up…. dramatic effects?? What?? That was out since I hadn’t the slightest idea of what it included…. I started reading question 1 and, about half way through, the panic set in…. grow?…main conflicts?…blame?… seemingness of love??? WTF??? Still haven’t a clue what it means.

With that note of panic firming in my mind, I started scribbling down whatever I knew on the first poem I saw – Jack – realised after half a page (sound familiar) that I couldn’t answer any more =( so I started Níl aon Ní which had a lovely question!!

So that was fine, eventually, and so was An Chéad Dráma. I then had 30mins to decipher and tackle An trial. I got 2 and a half pages about not very much. Absolutely gutted because it was my best question in the mocks – I wrote 4 pages and got 38/40!! Ah well shit happens…

French (HL) yesterday was nice. I found the second comprehension quite difficult but otherwise grand. I wrote about a driving test in a car that made a funny noise when it stopped, and wouldn’t go into reverse!! Then I did the e-mail because I knew all the words so hopefully I’ll have scored well on that…. then the question on male/female fashion…. after the exam my friend told me she had pretended to be a boy and just used all her oral material, saying how important fashion was to her /him!! GENIUS!! I found the aural grand, a little tricky in places, but overall fine…

Our biology paper was a beaut!! Couldn’t have asked for anything nicer really… Most predictions made an appearance and there wasn’t anything too awkward. Q12 and 14 were really nice… I didn’t answer very well on protein synthesis, but did an extra Q in case.

8 down, 2 to go.

Accounting and chemistry next Monday and Tuesday so we’ll see how that goes =D

Congrats to anyone already finished… have one for me this weekend =P

Good Luck
Ta ta
Katie

I’m just going to get this over with..

French: I thought it was actually a hard enough paper. Well hard as in the comprehensions were fine bar one or two questions but the written pieces left me hanging! I ended up doing the fast food one &the diary entry( which was grand). I did Q1 the one about emigration which was ok..overall i thought the paper was harder in comparison to last year, i did fine but defo didn’t get my A…:( maybe a low B??? The listening was a tad awkward at times especially the last section on tourism. I was really let down by the paper and felt i could have done better..

Biology: What a beauty of a paper! I loved it! I thought it was easy enough,,i didnt like the genetic cross questions though.Protein Synthesis came up..ha..hate that too but did it anyway. Other than than…lovely paper good start to the day!

Art: It was probably the most nervous i was before any of the exams but it was a grand old paper! I ended up doing Q1 in Irish art-lunula and the brighter collar,easy enough..for European art i did Raphael..which i also did in the mock and for appreciation i did the gallery question although the graffiti one was more popular. I wasn’t surprised by anything on the paper so it was all good. oh and i cant believe Francis Bacon came up!! We went to see his exhibition last December the same day we went to the IMMA.

Those two weeks actually flew by! I just have chemistry to do now for next week…i have no idea what that’s going to be like…kind of dreading it actually.

for those of you who finished the exams WHOOOO!!! well done! see..it wasn’t so bad right?? its over now so go and celebrate you earned it…and if your a  fellow blogger keep in touch! It’d be really interesting to see how everything turns out add me on msn: aaleen92@hotmail.com….as for the rest of us get into those books (for the last time hopefully)!!  lol

bonne chance mes amis!

-Ally

Well, that’s all of the mandatory exams out of the way! All that’s left now are the option ones(e.g. sciences, music etc.) and I for one feel that we were given one of the easiest leaving certs ever given, and that we are extremely lucky to have been given the amount of walkovers and do able exams that we were.

While I havent done all of the exams so far which a lot of people do, I’ve certainly done most of them and the ones I didn’t take, I heard about from my over-talkative friends. So here’s how the mandatory exams have gone, as I see it:

English Paper One (H): A very easy exam overall. Interesting extracts(the one I answered on, Farenheit 451, was so interesting that i’m buying the book when all this is over!), good choice of part A’s and B’s, and as for the essay titles we were spoilt for choice.

English Paper Two (H): This paper was do able, but not the walkover that paper one was. The King Lear question was thankfully quite easy. The Literary Genre question was not the best question in the world, but not impossible. As for the poetry section, I know that most of us were hoping for Boland or Longley in the seen poetry question but thankfully I had Kavanagh prepared so I was happy enough. The unseen poetry was easy, as we all expected.

Geography (H): This paper was a complete walkover. The short questions were simple, as was every part A question. The part C of my regional geography was identical to my final question, I answered both on Belgium as a cultural region affected by language. Overall, no real problems.

Maths Paper One (O): This was hard for me, as I’m not exactly brilliant at maths. I know I passed, but I’m not too sure whether I achieved my (albeit red) honour or not. I heard that the honours paper was extremely easy compared to previous years.

Maths Paper Two (O): This was definitely easier than paper one, but still no walk in the park. Questions one, five, six and seven were easy. In part B, my class prepared question eleven but I went for question ten on the day as it just needed common sense and a bit of logic to solve. I probably did manage to get my honour, but we’ll see come August.

Irish Paper One (O): I was very happy with this paper as the scéal and litir which I learnt off fit perfectly into the titles given to us (regretting bringing your friend on holiday for the scéal, offering your friend a job in your parents “teach ósta” for the litir). The comprehensions were simple. After all, it’s only ordinary level.

Irish Paper Two (O): When I saw that An Bhean Óg and Clare Sa Spéir came up, I was ecstatic. Then completely ignored Clare Sa Spéir and answered on An Cearrbhách Mac Cába instead, still have no idea why. Then I looked at the poems on offer. Jack and Faoiseamh A Gheobhadsa. Of course I was going to answer on Jack, who wouldn’t? After reading over the questions on Jack however, I realised I didn’t understand them so i had to write about how your man from the Aran Islands hated Dublin. Since I’m from Dublin, i was overjoyed to explain why it’s a migraine-inducing hole. :/ the compulsory poem, Gealt, was incidentally the only compulsory poem I prepared so I guess I was lucky there. (Hopefully) heading towards a red B in this exam.

French (H): This was the easiest paper I’ve ever taken. Everything tipped came up and I shocked myself by nearly running out of room in each long question I answered. The comprehensions were an utter walkover, real junior-cert pass standard here. The listening exam was easy enough too, the only section giving me any trouble being section three. (And for section five, question three, “why is a french toy company taking a toy off the market”, the answer was because the remote control didnt work. I said it was because they were infected. I’ve been watching too many horror films before bed it seems.)

Business: While I don’t do business, I’ve heard from other students that it was impossible, nothing they’d prepared came up. Glad I don’t do it

History: This exam still isn’t finished, but I imagine it’s the usual history story; topics nobody had ever heard of came up and many a tear was shed. Honestly, why anyone would take this subject by choice is beyond me.

So, that’s it! I’ll be on after chemistry next week to have a big mope about how impossible it was. Until then, good luck with whatever options you have chosen(and if you do biology, I’m looking forward to my lie in tomorrow morning ).

So after a week of exams, I’m officially completely tired out. Thankfully, after biology tomorrow I have a very long weekend until the next Tuesday for Spanish.

It all feels so surreal that I’m doing my Leaving Cert.

English Paper 2 was a hard pill to swallow, as my two favourites weren’t there, but Yeats made an appearance so I was happy enough.

Maths Paper 1 and 2 OL were a bit tricky in my opinion, I found some of the part C’s quite difficult. And Q3 b) and c) in Paper 2 was the one that caught me out the most.

Thankfully, Irish complied with the predictions! An essay that I could fit polaiteoiri into and fiche blian ag fas, cearrbhach mac caba and Jack came up, thank god

However, today I had my first exam that wasn’t Irish/English/Maths. All my option subjects seem to be waiting til later on in the LC to show their faces.

I did the early modern history course today at 2pm. All I could comfort myself with was a big mug of coffee this morning as I wondered what in the name of God I was going to do. I always liked history, but it had fallen by the way-side since I did my research topic and after promising to revise everything I wanted to do for European Topics last night, I failed. This morning I studied 6 topics that I actually enjoyed. And it’s either the candles lit for me back in Galway, the heavy amount of praying and promising to go to mass I did or just the luck of the Irish: women in Gaelic Ireland came up as a documents question, there was an essay on Shane AND Hugh O’Neill so I had a choice. In the European topics I had lovely choices too but chose to go with The Role of Calvin in the Reformation, which was such a lovely and broad essay and then a comparison essay between Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici to discuss which one was more successful in the tackling of the religious problems in their country. Clearly Elizabeth I, considering the chapter which Catherine de Medici features in is entitled “The French Wars of Religion”

I came out grinning and laughing, which was a first time ever because normally I am far too tired or disappointed to smile and be cheerful at everyone. My giddy excitedness could have had something to do with the coffee and the lucozade sweets I was eating before I went in. However, I am so satisfied with that paper, now I just have to wait for the results, and I’ll let you know how satisfied I am then hahaha

Anyhow, it is going to be a very, very long night with Biology. Thankfully, it is one of my favourite subjects and I have a few predictions for tomorrow:

Genetics/DNA, Ecology, Human Reproduction always feature in the Biology Paper

The first question in section A is usually in regard to food.

My teacher said to never ever leave a blank in section A, because it is definitely worth the guess.

Over the years: either photosynthesis or respiration or both have featured on the paper.

There is usually a question regarding micro-organisms. Some people are predicting viruses due to swine flu last year, and other people are predicting bacteria.

Of human reproduction, my teacher said that she reckoned the male reproductive system or the embryo, but I’d have a general knowledge of the female, just in case.

I also found a link to this man’s youtube page. He is doing predictions for every leaving cert subject. He has apparently been bang on for irish and home economics, and did a very good job with my history (pretty much everything he predicted came up on the paper )

http://www.youtube.com/user/LeavingCertificate

he’s predicted topics for biology and experiments that he feels will come up

Happy Studying and Good Luck to Everyone!

Aims

xoxox

Dear State Examinations Commission,

Thank you so much for putting the French paper the day after Irish. It wasn’t confusing in the least. I also must express my joy at being able to spend around six hours today writing until my hand was very sore indeed. History right after French – who’s genius idea was that? Thanks, though. Seriously, it was just great.

Sincerely,

Annoyed Leaving Cert student.

On a non-sarcastic note: French was harder than last year! Not fair! Hah. History, by comparison, was a lot nicer than last year’s hideous paper. It wasn’t perfect, but at least they finally put up Church/State relations! I cobbled together something on each section, so we’ll see what happens. I was delighted that the Apprentice Boys didn’t come up like some folks thought it might. I can’t imagine trying to get 1.5/2 pages on that!

Et alors, French I will keep up with in some way or another, because I love the language; history, on the otherhand, well all I can say is see you later cramming dates and names of boring events! I can pick and choose the interesting stuff from now on.

Five subjects down; two to go. At last, the end is near!

Good luck if you’re sitting anymore exams this week. Four day break for me!