Yes, that something would be me, Jason, Mr. R.T.E.

This week began with r.t.e. filming our school, however they forget that they were supposed to be filming me, and not some first years and project maths. Like hello, the government want people for their smart economy, and look at me, I am doing all three laboratory sciences as well as honours maths and I don’t mind bragging but these are my best subjects. But then again the government wouldn’t realize a true star because they would rather appear hung over on talk shows

Anyway continuing on …. last week, I said I would be screwed if I incorrectly predicted the years of my Irish exam, and guess what ??? I correctly predicted them (I think it was the 2009 one anyway), I shockingly passed :O, oh well, I dropped down to pass Irish regardles of my Irish result. I also have been noticing that a few bloggers are shifting their views on Irish, but don’t worry I won’t be shifting at all. I really dislike the language and I’m quiet glad I dropped, like look at the pass paper, it’s so do-able (if that’s a word, I’m sure I heard a few pleasant gentlemen gazing at a magazine saying that once), but back to the point, if ye all want a person to follow the “dislike having to do Irish” club, I would be glad to join

Also next week I’m going to the UCC open day, so that shall be a much needed break from studying, but I’ll still be showing everyone I’m still focused on my goals.

Until next time

Jason

p.s. About that french blog I was going to write, I might try and write it in a few weeks, It’s just with so much studying going on I really haven’t had the time, you know what I mean fellow leaving cert-ers

I noticed from my last post that I came across as one of those ‘Why do we have to do Irish, it’s stupid’ people. I actually love Irish, I was just asking why we ignore some of the basics. Although in a way I agree with those of you who think that studying a modern European language from an early age would be of more benefit. But really, how many of us can say we haven’t been abroad and found ourselves conversing with each other in our gcúpla focail, however basic our knowledge may be? Ciúnas bóthar cailín bainne being the phrase that springs to mind. We do this for one of two reasons; to confuse the locals, or to display our pride in our country, which managed to keep the flame of our native language lit through 200 years of persecution. Now, it often is the former: ‘is fear ramhar Meiriceánach é’, but I believe that we enjoy the sense of pride we get from being able to speak in a language unique to ourselves.
I was interested to read in ‘Dréimire’ last year that according to the 2006 census, there were twice as many people without Irish unemployed as there were people with Irish. Interpret that whatever way you want, but I think having Irish will stand to you, even after the Leaving. As a good friend once told me: ‘S’fearr Gaeilge briste ná Béarla cliste!’

I did the UKCAT on Tuesday. I got an overall score of 590, 600 being the average, so I was kinda disappointed, but in fairness I’m hoping to stay in Ireland. My scores went thusly!

Verbal reasoning: 640
Quantitative reasoning: 560
Abstract reasoning: 610
Decision analysis: 550

At the end they put you in a really difficult situation, like ‘Would you embezzle money from the bank where you have been a trusted employee for twenty years to pay for cancer treatment for your partner?’ The hardest thing is trying to know what they want you to say, but I guess the nature of the test is that they want to test your character.

Musical is getting frighteningly close…

I’ve started revising! Some of you will be thinking why so soon? Others that I’m starting late. The fact is that I wish I’d touched on some subjects over summer, but the best I can do is start right now!

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.
The second best time is now.

Adam out.

After two years of preparation, hours of studying, even more hours trying to avoid it, exams and the like, yesterday finally brought some closure to the Leaving Cert. While the exams themselves seem like a distant memory, the summer has just been eaten up! With time being consumed by work over the last few weeks, results were pushed to the back and left little time for contemplating, thankfully. As a crowd of us gathered outside the school at 10am yesterday morning, the feeling of excitement and nerves was contagious. Trying to figure out what to expect was next to impossible. After each exam, I made a note of what grade I thought I may have got. The best I figured I could hope for about 510. As we queued outside the principal’s office, going in one by one to get the white envelope, I grew more and more nervous until I finally got mine. And then it stopped. Oddly followed by complete calmness. I went to a nearby classroom and opened it up there, praying there wouldn’t be the same pang of disappointment I got on getting the HPAT results. Here’s how it went (All honours… :L)

Irish B1
Maths A2
English A2
French B2
Biology A1
Chemistry A2
Economics A2

I was genuinely shocked when I saw the results. And even more so adding the points up. So much so I was convinced my adding skills weren’t the best (well only an A2 in Maths like!) When I arrived at 545 for the fifth time, I accepted I had done better than could ever be imagined. I mean Irish and English? It turned out to be a day of PB’s! Never before had I got anything great than a C2 in Irish, not even one B before in six years of class tests! Even though French didn’t count, I made and absolute hames of the oral, had a very dogey written paper, and still managed a B2. And then English, what a place to get your first ever A! Despite my bog-standard English and ropey comparative, with the help of bombastic vocab here and there I pulled out an A2! I genuinely would not have got that result without this blog. Six years on and not one class of English grammar, this finally gave me the kick in the arse needed to learn a few of the rules! The only one I wasn’t ecstatic about was Maths. I know an A2 is deadly, but I really felt if there was one paper I got the A1 in, it was Maths. I was happy too with Chem and Economics as despite not having wonderful papers, I managed to pull out the A in both. I know many regarded Biology very easy this year, but after the record I had with a spate of teachers, it was a relief to get the A1.

The results in my school were unbelievable this year. In a year of 110, at least 18 got over the 500 point mark, with one guy getting the 600, and another getting 580. Considering just 6 broke the 500 mark last year, it was a serious improvement. I have to admit the competitive nature of us all helped and was probably the reason we got on so well!

So for college, I’ve to await until Monday to find out for certain, but it looks like Actuary in UCD. It was 530 last year, so I have 15 points to spare, but applications for it increased a lot this year. Failing that, DCU seems a cert considering it was 485 in ‘09. When I look back at it now, 5 A’s and 2 B’s was quite an achievement. Despite the whole medicine thing not working out, I think I’m glad it happened. It appears far more glamorous than it actually is in my opinion. If I was to repeat the HPAT, I’d need 170+ points to get in based on last year. But we’ll see. I have the grade requirements for it in most places in the UK so it’s good to have that option open.

For the rest of you, I hope you’re all happy. They’re not the end of the world, but rather a means to an end. At the end of the day, it’s about fulfilling one’s potential. The guy who gets 360 but has been told his limit is 350 has done better in my view than the girl who could get 600, but only gets 500. That’s why it’s unfair to compare people on LC points I feel.

You’ll hear from me once more after Monday, this is the day that really matters. I hope the points don’t go up too much, for all of our sake’s!

Cillian

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.

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!

I’m sure all of you would agree with me if i were to say that our first week of exams was, while I wouldn’t go so far as to call it easy, certainly a lot less difficult than it was made out to be. After the urgent, incessant cramming we all went through, The Leaving Cert: Week One might even have been a bit of a relief to some. Well todays message was: THIS is where the going gets tough.

The first week began on a high with one of the easiest English paper ones ever seen. On the Thursday, though a lot of us were hoping for Boland/Longley(whose absenses from paper two sparked several humourous facebook groups), English paper two was still undeniably quite do able. Then on the Friday it was just maths paper one and then the weekend, unless you’re a geography student as i am. Even allowing for the fact that friday was a full day for us geography students, the actual paper itself was so simple that it hardly comes into account. So we all had a pleasant weekend, thinking that this leaving cert thing wasnt half as bad as it was made out to be. Think again.

Monday morning at nine thirty we sat in the exam hall, sitting back in our seats, relaxed into a false sense of security by the walkover of a week just gone. Maths paper two was handed out. Section A, seven long questions choose five. Section B, four long questions choose one. Bam. The gentle start was most certainly over.

Two and a half hours later we were given ninety minutes to recuperate, before being thrown into a world of Irish stories, letters and quotes. Two comprehensions, five questions on each worth ten marks. Story and letter, sixty marks each. Asked for at least three quarters of an A4 page for both the story and letter, but expected to do far more.

After just half a hours break(or only ten minutes break if you do honours Irish!!) we were given our third exam of the day; The Irish Aural. This went on for fourty minutes, with some of the most confusing accents known to man. It was generally do able, but some of the speakers(especially the last one) might have been sean nós singing their lines for all i knew.

Finally, we were allowed to stumble home to prepare for irish paper two, starting 9:30am sharp tomorrow morning. We are well and truly into it now.

Best of luck with the nightmare of exams to come, John.

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

Well, it’s officially begun.

Woke up this morning, not exactly feeling like P Diddy, but pretty darn close to it!
For two weeks i had done nothing but spend hours up in my room, desperately cramming what seemed to be an endless stream of notes into my head, and finally the moment had come for me to put them to use.
Went downstairs and had breakfast, going over and over sample essays in my head, and headed off to school.

The exam hall was threatening to say the least, but the fact that i was surrounded by nearly 200 fellow sufferers made it that much easier. After opening the paper and looking through it, i found it hard not to cry out in joy as not one, but TWO short story essay options were provided. Also, a letter was one of the part Bs! I was ecstatic.

The A question went without a hitch as expected. I did the one on text three, an extract from a novel based in a future where books and intellectual people were not allowed, and books were burnt every Monday, Wednesday and Friday by professional book-burners.

The letter was the part B of text two. I found this rather difficult as it required us to write a letter intended to be discovered in the year twenty-fifty. Therefore, I reasoned there was no need for addresses. What use would my address be to somebody fourty years from now? Who on earth would I address it to? All in all, i felt i did alright in this section. Perhaps not fifty out of fifty, but close enough.

I decided to do the first short story essay, number three; “isn’t it funny, but sad?” as it seemed a more open title than the other one, number seven(in which one had to describe two eccentrics meeting for the first time). My essay wasn’t up to my usual standard, i felt, but I’m sure i got a good few marks out of it.

I hope you all had the same experience as me, that it wasn’t the hardest exam in existence and was actually quite do-able.

Best of luck, John.

English Paper One started at 9.30 this morning and as I sat there, I worried. What if this doesn’t happen…a second time? What if I’m stuck without a college course? What if I become a failure…again?

As soon as I saw the topic of the paper (The Future) I relaxed. What a beautiful impetus for students to act upon. But I couldn’t smile just yet. Oh no, there was questions to be done and I had to do them!

I decided on doing Question B first and chose my question from Text 1: A Personal Future. I thought it went pretty well and I couldn’t stop writing until I forced myself to move on to my Question A from Text 3: An Imagined Future. I’m going out to buy Farenheit 415, by Ray Bradbury, as soon as these exams are over- what a brilliant extract!!! Captured me from the moment I read it!

My final piece was the Composing and I chose 2.:“You’re a new neighbour, aren’t you?”. I really feel my time blogging for Allhonours.ie helped me here and it wen’t according to plan. I ranted and raved about how neighbours don’t respect each other anymore and wrote it like a column article from a newspaper. It went brilliantly….I think!

All in all, a brilliant paper! And if today’s was anything to go by, I wouldn’t be worrying too much about tomorrow. I would reccommend getting a good night’s sleep though. I never slept before my exams in 2008, but this year I did (and will continue to do) and if I’m honest, I admit it really does boost performance. Try knock out the caffeinated drinks too and drink plenty of water. I’m only saying this because they seemed to work for me today. I felt like the energiser bunny- I could of gone on for hours!!!

Most importantly, please don’t worry if things went (or go) badly for you. Life is not about exams and an examiner cannot define the type of person you are by reading 10-12 pages of your work. We all know people who are successful, wealthy and have everything, but most of the time, these people tend to be unhappy with their lives. This paper, ultimately, got me thinking, “What does the future mean to me?” And my answer: I’d rather be happy with family and friends who love me than a 600 points Leaving Cert student with very little happiness!

Bonne Chance mes amis!

Ian

Here we go then, this Leaving Cert business starts today. Just a quick post to wish you all the best of luck. Stay calm, you really do know more than you think you do!
I’ll try and blog about all the lovely exams as they happen (if I don’t get distracted by last-minute cramming!) so let me know how you’re getting on!

English Paper One is in a shockingly short amount of time, so I’ll leave it at that.
Once again, good luck and see you on the other side!