EngLiish iz ovr so i cn t@Lk loiik dis nw yaaa?

No, I’m joking. Despite happily throwing away my English notes today, I wouldn’t go so far as to talk like the people on Facebook whose statuses I have to hide from my news feeds. Poor grammar is a pet peeve of mine (along with the phrase pet peeve), yet there I was this morning, drinking my cup of tea with Emily Dickinson.

I had prepared her, Boland and Frost and had no qualms about limiting prescribed poetry to those three. I knew at least one would come up and in fact, all three did. I was delighted to see Robert there, as I love his poetry and the question was really similar to the one on my mock paper (EXAMCRAFT or DEB-who cares anymore?), asking for the hidden layers of meaning in his poetry. The one I had done in February was about there being more meaning to his poetry than the theme of nature and I was actually able to quote the statement they used today. It rarely happens but the mock company was spot on.

However, the Hamlet questions were not what I wanted, although Claudius seems to have been on the tongue of a lot of people the past few weeks. You see, my English teacher is so awful that we read the play and honestly, that was it. We never touched themes so I went for the popular choice. I don’t think that was a great essay and would have liked something more vague that I could waffle about.

The unseen poem was fine and I made myself out to have a poetry fetish in my personal response. I spent too long on this and the other two questions though and left myself very little time for the comparitive. It was foolish of me because it’s worth the most marks, yet it’s famously neglected in favour of poetry, which you can actually fail and still get an A1. I had prepared General Vision and Viewpoint and Cultural Context, the latter came up. I don’t know about other people but I thought the question about values and attitudes making the reader uncomfortable had an air of Vision and Viewpoint about it? Anyway, I tried to quickly write up some nonsense but am really disappointed that I only managed three pages.

As for Paper 1, it feels like so long ago. I know I can be as long-winded as Polonius sometimes so I’ll try to keep this short. I did the comprehension on the train journey and started the Question B on the talk to the book club but after a few lines deemed it bland, so I switched to the article on a place you want to go to. I did it on Paris and in it made myself out to be a bit of a maneater. You don’t even want to know. I thought that other years the theme of the paper never had much bearing but agreed with the guy on the radio who said that they kind of forced it on us this year. I saw ‘mystery’ on every page and the word even cropped up today.

The composition choices were really nice and I went for the one on technology. I could tell straight away I would have stiff competition, as it appeals greatly to our Facebook generation. What a time for me to suffer from writer’s block, as I sat there clutching at straws for an hour. I felt like I was trying way too hard to be funny-story of my life, really. I don’t work well under time constraints or with a lack of biscuits. I glared at the supervisor as she devoured her tea and cookies in an effort to summon her over.

No such luck.

Perfect paper or what? I honestly have never been so scared for an exam in my life. At 10 to two we all had to go into our exam halls and you could cut the tension with a knife. It was terrifying. When the examiner handed me my paper I was could barely take it off him because my hand was shaking so much.
Immediately (as did everyone in the country) I turned to the poets. Dickinson, YES! Claudius, YES! Cultural Context, YES! I actually said, out loud THANK YOU SWEET JESUS. and had to read the paper a few times to stop myself from shaking. It was actually just beautiful. For those of you who are wondering
Poets: Dickinson, Boland, Frost and Yeats.
I was surprised there was no Wordsworth, considering its his last year on the course and he hasn’t been up in ages. Thank God I wasn’t banking on him.
Hamlet: Revenge, Claudius
Comparative: Cultural Context and Theme or Issue

Overall, just a gorgeous paper. Maths Paper 1 tomorrow, that should be a different story all together.
Till then,
Niamh

Well. That was a stressful weeks. Mocks suck. Remember the JC mocks that were actually a bitta craic cause you got extra long lunches and no homework, all you had to do was show up for two hours and maybe do a bit of study in between (Well that’s how it was for me anyway). Well in the LC mocks, you get shorter lunches, early mornings, late nights and a nice dollop of stress. Sounds fun, right?

I won’t go into any serious details with each exam incase someone reading this doesn’t want to cheat but here’s a basic summary of how my week went.

English Paper One Alot harder than I expected it to be. I kind of just expected it to go alright tho, but that was not the case. The three texts weren’t that straightforward but that’s nothing compared to the essays. Normally, one essay just jumps out at me. But nothing was appealing. About a page into it, I freaked and realised I had no more ideas. But I only had 40 minutes left so I had no choice but to ramble on for two and a half more pages. Not impressed by its shortness either but hey, we live and learn.

English Paper Two Was B-E-Autiful. Everything I wanted to came up so was delighted. Tough paper in so much as its 3hr20mins of solid writing. And you really do need that time. Exhausting stuff.

Maths Paper One Disaster. Epic Fail. Impossible. More depressing words. It was horrendous. Algebra was terrible and even my bankers (Q6,7 and weren’t that straightforward at all. Hopefully I scraped a pass.

Maths Paper Two Another awful paper. You’d swear they were trying to scare people into dropping to pass. You could just see all the honours students looking at the paper dumbfounded (or maybe that was just me). Was nicer than paper one, but still harder than any paper I’ve done before.

French Lovely. Easiest paper I’ve ever done. Was finished in an hour. Reading comprehensions were really easy and the questions were great too. The listening was a great deal harder but still very manageable.

Biology Another nice paper. Very manageable. No major complaints

That’s all I’ve done so far. Irish Paper One and Two, History, Physics and Applied Maths next week. History is gonna be hard. Timing is ridiculous. 2hr50 to write 4 essays. Impossible!

Then Mid-Term Excitement )

Niamh xx

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