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