Student diary: One lesson learned is that texts really can wait

Graduation day: two weeks ago, we met our teachers in the Blackrock Inn. Not only did we not feel quite like students anymore, we felt like equals.

Since then, there’s been a fair amount of studying, and not-a-little bit of lying around like a sloth. The weather – oh, the weather – didn’t make it easy; it’s hard to look out the window at a clear blue sky and the obvious joy of 25 degree temperatures and not want to fling the book at the wall in the vain hope it crumbles.

More animal metaphors: luckily, I’ve always been a bit of a night owl, so that was my most productive time for studying. I’ve been successful in putting the phone away while I study, avoiding the temptation to check it every five minutes in case of a very-important-text. The texts, I’ve found, really can wait.

The day of the first exam arrived quicker than I expected. The atmosphere in the exam hall, where my small class of just 25 sat English paper one, was strange. The presence of the examiner brings quite a sober atmosphere to the room. Suddenly, it all felt very formal. We were so terrified that we couldn’t even look at each other.

Our English teacher wished us well on the way in, and was waiting for us when we walked out. I was happy with the higher-level paper. I answered a series of questions on US president Barack Obama’s speech about the space programme and his commitment to spend $6 billion on it.

One of the questions asked us to imagine that we were judging a poster competition for the Shakespeare play The Comedy of Errors, and to write about which of four posters we chose as the winner. I love art, so it was great to be able to write about visual communication.

I liked the essay choices and I picked the one on the useless clutter in our lives. I wrote about how our time and our daily lives are cluttered by tasks, chores and obligations, and how we can forget to live in the moment. It’s a topic that resonated with me, particularly in the midst of the Leaving Cert: bring on the summer, bring on work, bring on college, bring on freedom.