MY TY:Congratulations to Stephen Carroll, Salesian College, Celbridge, Co Kildare, for winning the 'My TY' competition with the following entry

FOR THE PAST three years and, indeed, for several years before that, I have been led by fellow students, parents, alumni and teachers (albeit more subtly than the rest) to believe that my fourth year in secondary school, Transition Year, would be a "doss".

I was told that I would have more days off, half days and days without homework than I would know what to do with.

Apart from a couple of half-hearted projects and three weeks' work experience, we would sail through the year. As I come to the end of my third week in this "doss year", I can say that I am busier than I have ever been.

First, let us look at work experience. Far more work and effort goes in to its organisation than simply phoning the local shop and asking them can you stock their shelves. We have to write formal application letters and convince our employers that we are perfect for the job - even though we have no expertise - and then we have to complete a project on the experience.

Unless we are lucky enough to have a single bus route that suits our location, we have to trek from place to place at hours of the morning none of us have ever seen before. One student in particular had to get two buses and a train to his workplace - not to mention the 20-minute walk at both ends of his journey. I understand this is daily routine for most adults, but they get paid.

The "couple of projects throughout the year" turn out to be a couple of projects a month. These are accompanied, of course, by the mandatory warnings from teachers about deadlines.

These projects are not the copy-and-paste-the-night-before-the-deadline projects we knew and loved in primary school. No, these are real 20-or-more-page comprehensive reports on subjects from semi-dead religions to Italian culture.

Now, most of the people in my year, including myself, would not be lazy or strangers to work, but we take offence to having been told by former TY students that we would need nothing more than Google to do our homework.

The homework has been the most unwelcome surprise of them all. Having been told that homework would be replaced by projects, I was willing to accept the detail required - it would have given me more flexibility with my time to work guitar lessons and such things into my schedule. But many teachers have been giving us mini-project homework assignments several nights a week.

This was particularly shocking, as we had been told teachers would just give us a few simple questions once a week to keep us "ticking over".

So, to any and all who are considering taking Transition Year - don't be prepared for a year off. Be ready to work hard.