Hey everyone. Sorry that the title sounds like a topic for a French written piece (if I see this come up on the paper in June, Department of Education, I’m suing you for stealing my ideas). I don’t have school today and was trying to plan some revision of sorts when I started thinking about revision books and podcasts, etc.*

Can I ask, how many people reading this have purchased revision material for the LC? Or are planning to? And which ones do you recommend and which ones are so unhelpful that you’ve started using them as coasters? I’ve always been a bit sceptical about these so-called revision aids but the few that I have are actually pretty good.

I remember for the Junior Cert, there was a shocking number of girls who bought ten revision books, one for every subject. Even for CSPE, of all things. I bought one Less Stress More Success book for Irish and it was so bland it bored me to tears. Although it had a good vocabulary section, it didn’t tell you how to approach or prepare for each question. I gave up on the whole idea of revision books until late last year, when a friend gave me her sister’s Revise Wise Business book and I became pretty taken with it. Last month I bought the Geography edition of the same brand, which has since become my new bible. I love how it’s student-friendly and tells you exactly what you need to be able to answer in the exam. Of course, it doesn’t have anywhere near the same amount of information as my textbooks but breaks things down into more simple terms. Before anyone gets suspicious, I’d like to clarify I don’t work for Revise Wise, I’m just a fan…But if they’re reading this, I’m currently unemployed and free after July.

I can’t do a blog post on revision aids (or often just a blog post) without mentioning Foinse, one of my great loves in life. For any Foinse virgins, it’s a newspaper supplement that comes with the Irish Independent every Wednesday. The best part? It’s totally as Gaeilge! Although it serves as a regular newspaper, it also has a section on LC Irish, with notes on each poem and story and general tips for passing the exam. We get Dréimire in school but I find it too complex most of the time. Usually after the New Year newspapers start doing supplements on each subject, which are handy to have too.

Don’t worry all you recessionistas (I’d be one of you too if  Topshop stopped getting in such pretty clothes), there are good resources which are completely free. You can get any question you have about school answered on this website and if it’s good notes you’re looking for, I like skoool.ie. Be wary of any sample answers you get by typing ‘Leaving Cert + Subject + Sample Answer’ into Google, though. If you use them in class, you’re not guaranteed to get a high grade and if someone else uses the same website, the teacher will know there’s something up. There’s a Boland answer which has been doing the rounds a lot lately and I know people (who would never write something as cheesy as it) who’ve used it in tests and gotten less than they hoped for. Now it’s my turn to be cheesy when I say, wouldn’t you rather get the grade you deserved for something you’d done yourself? Some of you may agree but others will probably leave me comments asking for a link to this Boland answer.

A good Tuesday to you all!

* When I began writing this post, I did not intend for it to sound like one giant advertisement. It just worked out that way.

First of all, hi Mog, it’s not me!

More importantly, what was up with English Paper 2? Yeats, Rich, Elliot and Kavanagh, I don’t even think God saw that one coming. Like half the country, I was praying for Longley and Boland. Ever since the Paper 1 mix up last year, I knew I would do Longley on the day, surely he had to come up? Failing that, Boland was a dead cert, seemingly. At 1:59, I could hear a faint Longley chant starting. You may now open your papers. F*@#. Plenty of gasps around the room. So I checked out my other options. We never studied Elliot in class, I decided last night that in fact I hate Yeats, so that left me with Rich or Kavanagh. Rich’s feministic views are quite insightful and inspiring….lol jk, I’m a man! So it was just me and Kavanagh. Some how I managed to remember my sample answer from Easter, and in fairness the question was okish. Elsewhere, things went from bad to worse with the comparative. Seeing as we ignored Vision and Viewpoint in class(not so clever now), literary genre was my option. Generally with it, you just go in and transcribe eight pages of pre-learned stuff and maybe refer to the question here and there. But not this year. This year you actually has to think about it. How does the “unexpected” add to good story-telling. How the hell can you do that when comparing under the headings of how the story is told and setting? Yuck.
Lear however was fine. I thought this was the only one with potential to be bad before going in, but no. Turns out we did the exact question in class last month on why the bad characters excite us more than the good ones. Quotes glaore, happy out.

Paper one was fine, Heaney comprehension, hopes for 2050 and the optimism speech, lovely. Quoted Einstein three times and finished on “Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs” by him. Sorted. 28 A4 pages and half a pen later, the first one was ok.
Maths tomorrow. There’s more riding on this than anything else. No pressure though, paper 2 isn’t until Monday! Hope it’s going well for everyone else!

Cillian

Don’t you love it when everything you predict comes up on the paper???

Woops, sorry to all you Boland-Buddies! I actually just saw my questions, then half way through the exam my humanitarian side kicked into gear and I, panic-filled, realised Boland wasn’t there- really sorry to all you guys and dolls who were convinced she was going to drop in for a few hours!

All in all, I think that paper was deadly!!!! Really happy! No longer will I have to uncover some undiscovered truth about Shakespeare that will awe my examiner (sorta sucks that I want to go into English!) and as I sit hear singing “So long, fair well…” to English Paper 2, I’m thinking I might have actually wangled a B3-B2 in it! I don’t see how I couldn’t get a B because it really went as well as possible…so if you’re my Correction Examiner, watch out! I WILL find out where you live!!! Muhahahhaahhahahaha!!!!

But it in all seriousness, I’m pleased with my performance. Everything I wanted to come up came up and that is it. We are finished!!! Hope everything went well for all of you!!!

Back on Monday with the beautiful Irish reflection! Only Ord level so not really stressing but next week is gonna be llllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggggg!

Till then,

Ian

Finally, finally, after seven long years of analysing poems, plays and novels I can safely say: I never have to sit an English Paper again!

It’s not that I don’t like English as a subject, I actually really do, but English exams can be so horrible and are definitely bad for your writing hand!

Paper one yesterday was relatively straight forward. Parts of it were a bit tricky, but luckily I could avoid those given the degree of choice we have. I did Part A from Text 2, which wasn’t the worst comprehension I’ve ever seen; Part B from Text 3, for which I wrote a not-very-exciting radio talk about books; and from the composing section, I wrote a graduation speech. It wasn’t the best paper I’ve ever done, but I was happy enough with it.

Paper two is just over and honestly, I thought it was a very nice paper. Sadly, time was against me (even though we’re given so much of it!) and I didn’t write as much as I’d have liked to. The King Lear question was very nice, quite broad too. General Vision and Viewpoint was a beautiful question, I really wish I’d done it justice! As for poetry, I instantly felt terrible for everyone who was banking on Boland to appear. Incorrect predictions are a horrible part of the Leaving Cert; it happened to me last year with Longley. Thankfully, this year I knew more than one poet and I had a choice between questions as opposed to no question at all! I thought the Kavanagh question was quite nice and I hope I answered it ok. The unseen poem wasn’t especially complex. I came up with some sort of interpretation of it and threw it down as a “personal response”.

I’ve put all my English notes into a pile and while I’ll refrain from burning them for now, I don’t want to look at them for a very long time!

Time to get stuck into some maths now. Hope everything is going ok for you so far. Good luck tomorrow with maths and geography if you do it!

Don’t worry guys, despite the title, this post will be a little more upbeat- and more sane- than my previous one!

I’m right in the middle of the Christmas tests, well two down and five to go! I had Irish and Geography on Friday, which went pretty well I think. We hadn’t done a lot in Geography for the test to have a lot of variety, so the whole thing was basically about regions, which I like! Unfortunately, there was a map of Ireland above my head and although everyone else thought Christmas had come early copying down the towns, rivers, etc. from the poster, I was at a loss. Oh well, I think I did okay anyway!

For Irish, an essay on the recession came up, thankfully! I’d already prepared one and even managed to include John and Edward into my introductory paragraph (have pity on me). I was saying how everything was gone wrong for the country, i.e., them getting voted off, the World Cup, floods and so on… you get the idea. Oh and anyone out there stuck inside because of floods, you have my full sympathy, luckily my house is on a hill but the images on the news are scary!

Friday night I watched…*drumroll*…The Late Late Toy Show! Not a year has gone past when I haven’t watched it, probably like most of you out there. I thought Tubridy was good, better than Pat Kenny but not as unreal as Gay Byrne. The kids were hilarious- Junior Culchie of the Year and of course, John Joe! Aww it really marked the start of Christmas.

And as for other distractions, now that John and Edward are gone from the X Factor, I’ve remembered how much I dislike the show. Seriously, I just watched the final last year and that was only because I wanted to know what everyone was on about. But now I feel I better finish the series, although I didn’t even bother watching The Xtra Factor last night! Sorry Holly Willoughby!

Aoiffe is gone from The Apprentice at last, Hallelujah! Finally some justice has been brought to reality TV. All we need to do now is get rid of Lloyd Daniels.

I have Business and English tests tomorrow. Eavan Boland, I’m sorry but I really dislike your poetry. Robert Frost all the way! I totally underestimated how much theory is involved in Business but I’m just going to do some past exam questions on what we’ve done and hope they come up.