Exams are a stressful time, but I’ve done my best to stay calm and composed.
Our guidance counsellor, Alice, advised us to aim for a balance: try to go for a walk and keep up one or two hobbies as well.
I feel this advice has served us well, so I have continued to volunteer at the local stables and keep up my athletics. Although I missed athletics last Saturday, on the weekend that divided maths paper one and maths paper two, I will go again this weekend.
Everybody knows that you can cram as much as possible into every waking hour, but I feel I reached a point where I can only have faith that I have done what I can, and that our teachers have prepared us as best as they can, too.
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At Stepaside Educate Together, they really did prepare us. In English paper two, they were five for five on the poets. While there was a question on Sylvia Plath which could be considered quite difficult, I was well able to tackle the question on Seamus Heaney instead.
In Irish paper one, our teacher had prepared a question where we wrote a story about a part-time summer job. That came up too. In Irish paper two, we had been well-prepared for the poems and prose that appeared.
On Tuesday afternoon, I sat the biology paper. I was fairly happy with it. It was a bit challenging on account of the number of plant questions that appeared, with less than expected on human anatomy. But I wasn’t stuck because there were a lot of choices on the paper and, again, our teacher had prepared us well. I feel it was my best subject so far.
I have three exams remaining: Mandarin, chemistry and PE.
Mandarin and PE are two of the newer subjects available to Leaving Cert students, so people may not know a lot about them.
I chose Mandarin because, when we got to try it as a taster subject, it really caught my interest. I enjoyed it and got on well. It helps that we have a phenomenal teacher, who really could not have prepared us any better. He compiled his own aural exams, making sure to speak faster than the Leaving Cert aural comprehension would be, and he also gave us lots of class tests.
As for PE, I have always been sporty, and am involved in athletics and athletics coaching. One of the big draws of PE is that only 50 per cent of the assessment is based on a written exam, with the other 50 per cent composed of a practical exam (20 per cent) and a performance assessment (30 per cent).
From the outset, I was keen on the idea of going into the exam hall having already completed half of the assessment; essays have never been a strong suit of mine, so it’s been great to have a project to work on.
Overall, I feel it’s been a comfortable Leaving Cert so far.
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