Leaving Cert diary: “I thought the maths paper itself was quite doable”

The last week has been hectic. As the days grew closer, I started to feel more and more dread, particularly as we were kicking off with English - which is not my favourite subject.

A lot of us were expecting descriptive essays to appear, as they haven’t for a few years, so there was some disappointment there.

Paper two was nice, and I loved the questions on Othello: I had practised a few essays on relationships, a question which did appear.

I’m just out of the maths exam now and I felt there was a lot of calculus. There was no financial maths question, which a lot of us were expecting, while some trigonometry - normally a paper two staple - appeared instead.

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There has been a trend in recent years to mix up the topics that appear on maths papers one and two. I feel this is really unfair: we have so much to study and such a large course to get through, that the whole point of splitting up the papers - or so we thought - was that you can focus and prepare the right questions for the right exam.

That said, I thought the maths paper itself was quite doable and there wasn’t anything that really threw me. You always know it’s a good sign where your classmates are happier coming out of the exam than they were going in.

There are six papers left for me, and I feel very lucky that my exams are so well spaced out.

When it is all over, I am so looking forward to taking some time out. I’m off to India to visit family for a month. When I get back, I hope to get a part-time job, but at the same time, I will be looking for a place to live in Dublin - quite the chore, given the state of the rental market at the moment.

But really what I am most excited about is just waking up this summer with no exams or study to do, and spending the last few months with my friends before we all go our separate ways.