I decided it was about time I updated this blog, considering the orals are over and the Easter “holidays” have started, so really I’ve no excuse not to drop by and keep you all posted

News? Well, the orals are over (in case you didn’t guess from the title….) and I still can’t fathom the fact that they’ve already finished. It’s unbelievable to think that one moment they’re weeks away and next thing they’re a thing of the past. I’m saying it again for sheer emphasis – the orals are OVER. Finished. Done. The relief, as I’m sure you can all relate to, is immense.

From this moment on, I need never speak Irish or French ever again.. It’s yet another chapter in the Leaving Cert cycle closed. And how’d they go? Well, pretty much as expected. French was basic enough, all text book, nothing random, but Irish was a little challenging. I didn’t get asked anything related to the Lottery or Taoiseach.. but merely to describe the weather, the room I was in and to talk about my family and friends. The questions were ridiculously basic – which of course then had me on nerves waiting for something drastic to happen.  I couldn’t believe that the examiner wouldn’t throw me a curve ball, so as a result I spent the whole 15 mins waiting for a bomb to hit. It didn’t really come. Lesson? If something’s working in your favour, just let it go. Enjoy it. Don’t always expect the worse – you’ll just stress yourself. I came out of the room absolutely delighted with myself but also partially on edge thinking I didn’t get a chance to “show off” everything I’d learnt. Truth is, I doubt anybody went in there and got everything they wanted said. It’s all a load of improvisation. Oh and a little bit of an act too! A teacher of mine described the experience as a performance.. and she was completely right. Dramatise everything. Be an actor; add emotion, expression, even just a smile – it makes the whole thing so much easier. Trust me (It’s a bit late for me to be saying that now, granted, but maybe someone from class of 2012 will pick up on it ). So yeah, that was my orals in a nutshell, a pleasant surprise if anything. Though I can’t be cocky either – I was extremely lucky with my examiners. They were brilliant and did everything to help me instead of catch me out. I can only imagine the horrors of a bad examiner, and so I express my deepest sympathy with everyone on that front. Moving on…I don’t believe I recorded my mocks results on this blog yet… have I?

Well in brief, I got 505. A1 in Biology, B1 in Irish, B2 in English, B2 in Business, B1 in French, B1 in Home Ec, A1 in (pass) maths and distinction in LCVP. I’ve no idea how I managed to get that B1 in Irish, so I’m knocking myself back 10 points for realistic purposes. Sounds stupid, but I don’t want to set myself up for something that won’t be attained in June… still, I’m working on it  I’m delighted all round, though I know I made some stupid mistakes in English and Business around timing. They’re the typical exams where knowledge isn’t enough to win out – it’s all about the hackneyed “exam technique” these days. You either have it or you don’t. Again, I’m working on it guys.

Anyhu, the easter holidays are some light relief too. I took this weekend off just coz’. To be honest, I felt I deserved it. All work and no play makes Sorcha a very dull girl indeed… you physics students should know better than the rest of us that it’s all about the equilibrium between study and the social life. I’m happy with the way thing are playing themselves out too.

Til next time,

Sorcha x

The ‘How Many Days Until’ Calculator that I lazily Googled has just informed me that there are twelve days until the French orals start in my school. And what am I doing? Revising tenses, learning vocabulary, preparing my document? No, I’m playing air guitar to French songs that I found on Youtube.

Today my English teacher was stressing the importance of anecdotes in our writing so I’d like to share one with you. I discovered a charming little French song in an episode of Gossip Girl that I proceeded to look up online. I have listened to the song over twenty times since then and only recently did I venture to look up the translation. I thought that if I sung along and knew what the words meant in French it was bound to help me in the oral. However, to my utmost surprise, the song’s title actually translated into a dirty word. A dirty word which, if I were to use in the oral or any French class, would get me thrown out of the room. Well done Ciara, you sure know how to pick them. The song is called ‘Petite Pute’ by Austine – I think I’ll let you Google translate that in your own time.

I might as well touch on the mocks while I’m here, as they seem to be as talked about as Rebecca Black’s song ‘Friday’. I had a pretty generic experience of the exams and have gotten all of the results except for History. We did it on the 10th February, there are only twenty people in the class and yet, it’s the 23rd March and they’re still not back. What’s up with that? I was satisfied with my results but know there’s still room for improvement. The award for Most Pleasantly Surprised Result goes to Irish with 84%. Most Disappointing was Business at 57% (so much for being my best subject), while the award for Percentage That Made Me Laugh Immaturely was 69% in French.

I did nothing for St.Patrick’s day, in keeping with my reputation as a Leaving Cert recluse. It usually rains, the parade contains one million brass bands and you can’t walk without getting glass in your shoe that day, so I wasn’t too bothered. I actually got a bit of study done over the long weekend, although it’s gone down the drain this week as I’ve been continuously exhausted since Monday. The hardcore party animals that went out for the four days know how I feel, except at least they have an excuse.

In other news, if my Maths class gets one more person seeking refuge from the horrors of Higher Level, we have to move classroom. Just another part of the exciting tale that is my life.

Sorry that this post lacks any structure and is really just a flow of random thoughts. Also, please forgive me if I seem alarmingly bland and pessimistic today, I’m tired and wanted to clear my mind.

Clock ticks. Pen down. Silence.

Then its all over.  I could almost feel all the definitions, diagrams, quotes and experiments spilling out from memory as I left my script on the desk and headed into mid-term. The feeling of being finished was absolutely surreal.

I made the decision not to study over the break and to be honest, it was the best thing I could’ve done for myself.  For the first time since September, I had the chance to properly relax without the twinging guilt that I should be studying. See I figured that being through the wars was enough, the brain needed “me” time. So yeah, midterm consisted of lie-ins and socialising, nights in and nights out.. reading for the sake of reading (something I’d missed more than I had thought!), etc. The thing I enjoyed most though was simply the opportunity to switch off. I allowed myself to be bored for the first time since God knows when! I can only imagine how good June 17th will feel – I can’t wait!

Naturally, it flew in. A blink, and suddenly we’re back to normal. Mocks are now unfashionable, orals are this seasons must-have. I’m not too worried as of yet, but since these are the first brush we’ll all have with the “real deal” I’m predicting some sorta panic attack between now and April. Whats left, four weeks or so? I’ll take bets for the 3 week breakdown. Probability means its more than likely gonna be a Monday. Just sayin’

And to distract us from this oral pressure, we have the return of the mock papers flying round. In some cases, they even provided a little comic relief, but that aspect of things is definitely best left behind us.

I’m still waiting on a few, but I’m pretty pleased all round. A1 in Biology, B1 (84%) in Home Ec, B2 in Business and English, Distinction in LCVP. I’m still awaiting Irish, French and Maths, which are the ones I’m most interested in… but I’ll keep you posted.

I know I made some stupid mistakes in the mocks, timing being one of them, but I guess that’s the whole point of them in the first place – its a clock based race, so we need to pace ourselves.  The teachers kept telling us all that for ages remember? Lesson learnt. They must love this smug time of year where their cautionary speeches come back to haunt us. But don’t worry, we’ll have our moment soon enough!

Best get back to the desk .. I’ve Irish notes to do. If anyone has suggestions for what they would do if they were Minister for Education/Finance/Taoiseach, it would definitely be appreciated. Can’t get any more topical than that guys.. It’s oral gold.

Sorcha x

Hey everyone

Mid-Term is finally here and I hope everyone reading this is finished their Mocks, and if not I pity you, I truly do. I remember thinking when we found out when our Mocks were that I would have preferred them after the mid-term. But now I couldn’t be happier to have them finished

Here’s a quick breakdown of how they went

Irish Paper One After doing Honours for 5 years, it was a bit of a doddle. That’s no disrespect to anyone doing Pass but its just how I feel.

History Oh Dear Lord. My hand after that exam was in bits. Everything I wanted came up but it didn’t make it any less difficult. The timing in it was just impossible.

Irish Paper 2 Again, quite easy.  Probably should have studied a little but meh.

Physics Could have went better. Could have went a hell of a lot worse. Tricky but nothing I shouldn’t have been able to handle.

Applied Maths Bahahahaha. Ha. That’s all I could do during this exam. It was impossible. I almost certainly failed. Better now than in June tho.

Hope everyone enjoys their mid-term
Next stop, Orals

Niamh xx

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

It’s because they are MOCKING you. Believe me, whether you’re completely relaxed about them, crying yourself to sleep about them, or forgot that they existed.. They are not nice. They’re like that friend. The one you’re not actually sure why you’re friends with them. The one that just bobs about inconsequently, until you’re starting to get worried, and then BAM! They decide to turn into Ultra-Subtle-Bitch who comments on the fact that yes, you did just eat an entire five pack of Galaxies. And you can deal with this in a few ways.

1. Be the positive person who bounces around, squealing “It’s only the mocks! They don’t matter! We’re all going to be fiiiiiiiiiine and I’m going to bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone will eat it and be happy!” There is only one outcome to this outlook. Every non-positive, non-cake-eating person in your year will get sick of you and poison your cake. Whoops, your mocks definitely don’t matter, because you’re busy vomiting rainbow cake.
2. You can be the negative person who boo-hoos about the mocks and takes them very, very seriously. This results in you doing amazingly, so god-damn amazingly, that you decide you are a GOD. Everyone should worship you, because you passed your mocks. Actually, you did so damn well, you don’t need to study for the LC! Everyone says the mocks are harder than the real thing, so your results will be off the wall! Don’t worry, you’ll be welcomed back to reality when you mess up your exams because you’ve forgotten anything and everything from the mocks.

So really guys, the mocks are no big deal. There’s no point in freaking out, and trying to cheat – Just give them a go. They don’t mean a thing! Good luck to everyone doing/ starting/ getting results from their mocks. Mine don’t start for another three weeks, so I have a while to wait. Maybe I should study for them rather than writing horribly off-putting blogs..
Chloe

AllHonours.ie has seen an increase of over 300% in traffic since we relaunched the site as a social Q&A.  In true exam season style, activity has exploded and we are confidently heading towards an exciting milestone of an estimated 20,000 registered users and over 100,000 Q&A’s for the end of February.  Yesterday alone (7th Feb 2011) we had over 45,000 unique users visiting AllHonours as students prepare for their mocks.  We are certainly on target to reach over 1,000,000 visits for the 2010/2011 school year, making us one of the busiest and most visited dedicated Leaving Cert and Junior Cert websites in Ireland.  Keep spreading the word and best of luck to everyone in the mocks.

Update: 61,000+ unique visits to AllHonours.ie yesterday, Tuesday 8th Feb.  Busiest day yet!

Update: 75,000 unique users yesterday, Wednesday 9th Feb!

Hello

Once again it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged but getting my thoughts out is just not happening lately :L Such a busy month. Finally, I fully realise why people in Leaving Cert always gave out about the Leaving Cert. It’s awful. And for all you people out there who are like “It can’t be that bad” I mean this from the bottom of my heart, it is. And for anyone who tells you otherwise, they’re either lying or superhuman. Everything you do, you feel like you should either be studying or sleeping. But when you’re studying you want to sleep, and when you actually go to bed, your brain is too jumbled with information to calm down. It’s a never ending cycle. Just crap. Thank God It’s only one year. And for anyone who repeats, you’re a better person than I. Under no circumstances will I be doing this again next year. I’m actually lucky that the things i genuinely want to do aren’t the most popular. Physics FTW

Speaking of courses, what did everyone put on the aul CAO?

Very very happy with mine. Number 1 is Science in Galway and 2 is Science in Maynooth After that it’s just random Physics and Biotechnology Courses around the country But I really want to get Galway. I love the city. I love the College, the course. Everything. So excited. Just to get through this flipping LC first.

Mocks start Monday. I’m nervous. Today was so stressful because the more teacher’s wished us luck, the more nervous I got. Still it’ll be an experience.

Anyone who does history will understand the serious lack of time in the exam. Why we get 3 hrs for science subjects where answers are rarely more than a paragraph and in history we have to write 3 full essays and 1 half essay in 10 minutes less is beyond me. Even that extra 10 minutes would make such a difference. Ridiculous.

Anyways Good luck to everyone doing their mocks

Niamh

With little over a week until the Mocks start, the panic has swept in. The annoying thing is that I wasn’t even worried about these insignificant, poorly corrected exams until teachers and fellow students drilled the panic into my head. Of course, the issuing of Leaving Cert exam numbers during the week didn’t help my state of mind. In addition to all relevant exam material, I now have to learn a six-digit number off by heart.

I also had a CAO crisis during the week. They seem to be en vogue among my peers for the past month or so and I was almost getting concerned about my laid-back attitude towards my chosen courses. I eventually caught on to the craze last week when I realised Arts with Film Studies just wasn’t for me. The more I thought about doing it, the less I wanted to do it. My previous ‘certainty’ that it was the course for me quickly faded away and I rooted out all the prospectuses once again. I narrowed the decision down to General Arts and Commerce, both in NUIG. General Arts triumphed (for now) because the maths and accounting side to Commerce is pretty unappealing to me. However, I don’t like the common perception of Arts students- you know, that they’re a lazy, boring shower of so-and-so’s who don’t know what they want to do in life. Okay, I am exceptionally lazy but even that statement is a bit harsh. I’d still like to branch out into Journalism if that’s what I want in three years time.

Anyway, to cheer myself up I decided to fill up the blank spaces on my CAO with some ‘funny courses’. Yes I know, how original… Maybe I’ll just become a professional comedian instead of taking the college path. I reworked my application to include Baking and Pastry Management (I’m not laughing at anyone who actually wants to do this, if you saw my attempts at baking a sponge cake you’d understand the joke) but as it’s ten points higher than General Arts, I guess the joke is on me. I also added some construction courses, inspired by my favourite TV show to make fun of, Fade Street. If that Vogue can get an internship at Stellar from working on a building site, then why can’t I? If it’s hard to picture her bricklaying and mixing cement, it must be ten times harder to picture me, the girl always picked last in PE, doing it.

As for the Mocks timetable, it’s not the worst. We had a thorough dissection of it at lunch and after listening to comments such as “I wish French was on the Monday morning” and “I’d love to swap Tuesday’s tests with Friday’s tests”, I realised that it will make little difference to us. Either way we won’t have a large amount of time to cram but that’s okay. No don’t worry, I haven’t gone insane. I think the results will give me the kick I need to focus on the topics/subjects that need to be focused on, which I can’t seem to identify at the moment.

I must say I don’t know what I would do without my Starbucks mug these days. Its size can hold twice the amount of tea/coffee as your typical mug and it adds an air of glamour to the very unglamorous task of studying. It’s one of the only things getting me through Sixth Year. See also: Large amounts of food.

Hello:)

I’ve officially signed up for CAO. Things just got real. Something about clicking that apply button has made me think “Oh wait. This is actually gonna happen” Scared me silly. But in a good way if that’s possible? I’ve also come to realize that I am my worst enemy. After great intentions of studying all last week and this week a huge part of it has been spent on Facebook/Twitter/Watching Season One of Skins. But today it hit me hard. I’ve only myself to blame. Its only me I’m lying to when I say I’m gonna be off the computer in 5 minutes and am still online half an hour later. It’s me who changes my study timetable to accommodate an extra hour in bed. And with 4 and a half weeks till the mocks it’s gone beyond a joke.

Me and my friend Ali are kidnapping each other’s twitter for the weekdays. Almost willingly. We did say it to each other so technically it was our own idea.

How was everyone’s Christmas? Mine was lovely Few nights out. Since when is it okay to not accept passports into nightclubs though? Grrrrrrr >:( Hope Santy brought ye lovely things. I got Glee tickets!! XD Verrrrry Excited

Anyone else find that their Christmas report meant nothing to them though? I got mine and was like Oh. Even the comments which would have usually got my attention, I just couldn’t care. Because at the end of the day, as much as they try, teachers don’t know everything. They say you have no interest when really you do, but they have just pushed you past the point of trying to communicate with them. I really do like Applied Maths. The subject is really interesting and engaging but I’ve just lost my confidence, I guess. Not the interest tho.

So only 4 and a half weeks to the mocks. Scary stuff. Dates differ from school to school but I think I’d prefer it our way. At least we have an actual mid-term. Where we can sleep/go out/ de-stress after the mocks. I’m terrified for Maths. I love love love love love Maths atm but I don’t think I’m ready to sit a full paper. Everything else should be okayish. Actually no, wait. History. Eeeek. How I’m gonna cram all that into my head in 4 weeks is beyond me.

And this History project. Oh my god. Even thinking about it sends me into a cold sweat. I’ve left Friday and Monday (We have Monday off because of a parent-teacher meeting) to the project and hopefully I can get some sort of rough draft drawn up. Hopefully.I’m doing mine on Lord Haw- Haw. He was a Nazi propagandist from Galway Also worked with the Black and Tans so he really interested me. That’s why I’m doing it on him.

Sorry I’m not blogging as much as I should. I do sit down to blog and then I never really know what to say

But after Christmas they say the s**t really hits the fan so I suppose I’ll have loads to talk about (LC related) then

A bientot,

Niamh

xx