Agh I can’t believe my time on this is almost over! I’ve been reading all the LC-ers’ blogs about finishing school and it’s crazy to think that’ll be me this time next year. Every 6th year I know has advised me to “study now. You won’t regret it!” I know I should listen but I’m far too lazy. I mean, I started my summer tests today without having done a tap of study until this morning! Every time I procrastinate, I start getting paranoid thinking I have attention disorders because I cannot focus on studying, when I know deep down I just don’t want to be stuck in my room drawing diagrams of V-shaped valleys.
Today we had the English test and the only things on it were Hamlet and studied poetry. I love English, even though I have a terrible teacher (a fact I never try to hide) and she was the one who made the test so I figured it would be easy seeing as all we did was read Hamlet, yet we were now being giving essay style questions on it. This morning, when I arrived into school, all I could hear were worried whispers of “do you think Boland will come up?” and frantic yells of “does anyone have notes on Dickinson?!” Then I started to panic, like all the other 5th years.
We study five poets out of the prescribed eight, I don’t know if other schools do the same amount? Anyway, our teacher told us that we’d have two on the test and a choice to pick one. That didn’t stop constant predictions of what was going to be coming up. A person in Class A said Frost would come up, a girl in Class B said Kavanagh would and so on… So with hints we thought the teachers were giving us, all 120 of us studied Adrienne Rich. So we were screwed if she didn’t come up. Thankfully, this afternoon a huge sigh of relief was shed when we saw her on the paper. The Hamlet questions weren’t too bad either. But next year, when we have to study all five poets, I don’t know what I’ll do. It’s so hard to study one right! And it’s not like I can leave out one because the other four could come up that we never did. Eek!
Anyways, another random thought popped up in my mind when I was reading newspaper supplements with exam hints in them. For each subject, they picked a former Leaving Cert student who got all A1’s. And it just reminded me of how, each year, the TV, radio and newspapers all interview and photograph the students who got 600 points and often, only them. Don’t get me wrong, these students totally deserve it and I know some spend every hour of the day studying and working their butts off to get those much coveted 600 points. Take that guy who got 9 A1’s though. He has to already have plenty of natural intelligence to have achieved them points because he said he didn’t spend all his time studying. I just think that there are other people who don’t get the recognition for their achievements even though they worked just as hard. What about the girl who got grinds and watched TG4 every night to secure her C2 in Honours Irish, despite the fact her teacher told her to move to Pass? What about the guy who studied instead of going clubbing at the weekends because he needed 45o to study Architecture? What about the other guy who spent all summer on his History project? Don’t these people deserve as much, if not even more, recognition than the lucky smart cookies who don’t need to put as much as an effort in? Just a thought and I don’t mean to offend any A1 students- you know I’m just jealous!
I’ll be back next week for my last post (I won’t cry if you don’t). 
