My name is Elaine Black and this is the first week of my Leaving Cert. Months in my bedroom have left me wan like a long-stay patient, sensitive to each emotional and physical development in my progress towards health.
Today I feel sunburned (sat too close to the window), terrified and not just a little exhilarated at the thought that I am finally about to leap into the abyss.
These exams will mark not just the end of my school life but the end of life on the farm, the beginning of my cosmopolitan adventures.
I have lived the life of a country girl: up at 7am, standing in the road herding cattle, catching the first bus to school, waiting in the Irish summer for the second, walking 15 minutes up the hill to school to start the day. You think commuting is hard in the city!
The buses have saved my sanity in recent weeks. The same crowd has been doing the Sligo grammar school shuffle for six years. On the first leg of the journey the atmosphere is sullen.
No one talks and there are serious repercussions for breaking the silence. By the second bus, we're starting to warm up. We do not talk about the exams - at least not openly.
The boys are especially cool about the whole business. Apparently, they don't study at all. Funny how they always seem to ace it, though.
On Tuesdays we talk about Lost. Missing an episode threatens to upset the entire balance of our survivors' community. It makes it a little difficult to get any study done because I only get home from school at 7.30pm, and by the time I've had my dinner Lost is on.
Sometimes I record it and watch in the morning before herding the cattle. No, I'm serious. Today I can't exchange Lost gossip on the bus so I'll take a little Bebo time before I hit the books.
Study these days is difficult. With only hours to go, I sit in my calming blue room and gaze at Des Bishop, dreaming of a new life in Paris, far from the farm. When Mum comes in to get peas from the freezer (I wish they'd house it somewhere else), I pretend to be seriously put out by the intrusion as I grapple with notes and pencils and other tools of deceit.
The truth is, Mum and Dad don't give me any grief about studying. In fact, it's a bit of a bone of contention around here. I ask Mum to be a bit more, you know, mumsy. "Where's all this pressure you're supposed to be putting me under? Why aren't you in a panic like the media say you are? Don't you care about me?"
She does a weak impression of a whip-cracker, I accuse her of faking it and then she takes her peas away and I return to thoughts of Des and the most romantic city in the world. He could get a little job working in McDonald's on the Champs Élysées and I could host a chat show on Left Bank Radio. I had better get the points I need for commerce and French.
I'm nervous about English. King Lear is a particular problem. Gerard Manley Hopkins is another.
Paper 1 should be okay, as I plan to write a sentimental profile of life in the country regardless of what essay titles come up. There has to be a way to deliver my rural tribute.
Last year I could have answered almost every question with a nostalgic portrait of life on the edge - this year I will find a way to wrap my goodbye to the farm around a section 2 composition as neatly as Evangeline Lilly wraps a banana leaf around Hurley's bleeding wound in Lost.
Frankly, I think a bit of fresh air and manure in my nostrils may be the best thing for me right now. I've spent two weeks straight in my bedroom, surviving on ginseng and sucking frozen corn on the cob. I don't sleep too well and I've had several sightings of Des Bishop in the dead of night. I don't think I'm finding inner strength I never had. Twenty-four hours to go - I'd better step up the search.
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