My Leaving Cert: Pat Kenny: My outstanding memory of the days running up to my Leaving Certificate is the beautiful weather. It made it extremely difficult to study, especially the weekend before the exams were due to start.

I sat at my bedroom window and gazed out at the sunshine and the beckoning freedom. The summer was so close and yet so far away. It was hell.

I was particularly worried about my Irish paper. My Irish teacher had been absent for a while that year and I was terrified about my lack of preparation. As it happens, the substitute teacher had done a perfectly fine job of preparing us for the exam and I needn't have worried at all.

Even though the paper went well, I still remember the dread I felt coming up to that exam, and I still have nightmares in which it's the morning of the Irish exam all over again. It happens about twice a year. I've no idea what triggers it but it must be buried very deeply in my subconscious.

I went to O'Connell School and they placed a lot of emphasis on academic success. There was a great deal of pressure on all of us to do well. I was one of those students looking for a scholarship to get to college, so it was crucial that I got really high marks in all my papers.

From that point of view, I think the pressure on us then was probably quite like what many students experience today. In college, however, I met boys from Blackrock and Gonzaga and they seemed to have a blast in school compared to us.

Back then there were no CAO points so we were all focused on percentages. The Brothers wouldn't be happy with less than about 95 per cent in honours maths, if you can believe that.

Subjects such as maths and science were regarded as superior to languages and arts, so if you had any aptitude in those areas you were pushed very hard.

The Brothers were always very proud of the number of their students that went on to do science. I wanted to study physics in college but my parents couldn't afford the fees. I had to do well, I had to get into the top 20 students in the country.

I don't think that kind of pressure applies to students any more, with free fees and grants and so on.

Like the grind schools today, the Brothers always seemed to be great at predicting what was coming up on the papers. They knew all the patterns from years of exam-watching. In the end, the Leaving Cert was a doddle, at least compared to what I was expecting.

My technique for getting through each paper was to start by reading carefully through the whole paper and mentally marking out the questions I knew I could do. That way I felt reassured before I started that there was enough on the paper to see me through and I didn't get bogged down or panicked by any one question.

I never got that feeling of staring disaster in the face and I was calm for most of the papers. Panic is the thing that ruins a lot of people's chances in an exam.

I always familiarised myself with the papers first. I don't remember having any horrible exams.

If the worst comes to the worst and you make a real mess of things, at least you know you're anonymous. The examiner has no idea who you are and never will.

As for the results, they're a big deal at the time but a few years down the road they're forgotten. I'm never asked how I did in the Leaving.

When I look back now, I don't use much of what I learned for the Leaving Certificate, but it did get me into college. Despite what I studied I'm not a chemical engineer. As a broadcaster I occasionally use my knowledge of science and sometimes I have to speak Irish, so that's helpful.

So many people I meet tell me that the career paths they started out on changed and that what they studied for the Leaving Cert or a college has little or nothing to do with what they are working at now.

It's an important rite of passage, though. The Leaving Certificate felt like the first grown-up thing I ever did.