Leaving Cert diary: ‘After the exam, I open up TikTok’

Maths and Irish on the same day: this is one of the longest days of the Leaving Cert. I am very glad I did ordinary level Irish. It’s my only ordinary level subject, because I’ve always preferred maths to languages.

The paper itself was largely as expected but, after today, I don’t think I will ever use Irish again. I can see the arguments for and against it being a compulsory subject.

If it was not compulsory, it could die off as a language. But by making it compulsory, students who struggle have to spend a lot of time on it that they could devote to other subjects, and that could have an impact on their points.

I was happy with the maths paper this morning: it had a range of topics, although one question on where two circles hit an X and Y axis at different points did challenge me. A lot of students agreed that this maths question was tough.

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Rebel Spanish nuns split with Vatican amid property spat

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After the exam, I tend to open up TikTok and go straight to the Studyclix.ie page to see what teachers and — particularly in the comments — students thought of it.

Naturally, we are stressed about our exams and come out wondering whether we did something right or not, but seeing online that others may have struggled, or found a particular question tricky, gives a sense of relief.

After today, I have a full week before the last three exams: physics, chemistry and accounting.

Although I have touched on them in the past few days, they’ve mostly been on the back burner, so I’ll be using that week to really focus on those three.

The CAO Change of Mind deadline is looming on July 1, but I am happy with my choices and don’t think I will be changing them.

Computer science in Maynooth University is my first choice, largely because the points are lower than elsewhere.

I’m feeling reasonably confident at this stage. I went into these exams afraid of the worst-case scenario: that I would be sitting there with a blank mind, not getting the questions and writing nothing. But it has gone a lot better than I thought.

Still, I will be relieved when this is all over. We’ll all be.