Week two of the Leaving Certificate brought unexpected questions, challenging papers and sometimes laborious subject combinations. Something our Leaving Cert diarists are only too aware of.
“I only have two exams left, thanks be to God,” said Kayleigh Quinn, a student who left school in second year, and is aiming for the maximum Leaving Cert points.
“I’ve found everything okay so far,” she said. “I couldn’t tell you what grades I think I’m getting. The maths paper I know was very controversial this year, but I thought it was okay. I wasn’t buzzing, over the moon, ‘oh H1 in the bag’, but I don’t think I failed it. It was a force to be reckoned with.
“The wordiness of the maths exams this year were the worst part of it. You were trying to decipher hieroglyphics trying to get to the actual crux of the problem. And when you’re in an exam hall, you’re reading comprehension skills just aren’t there.”
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A mistake on the biology paper threw her, she said.
Question 16 (a), a genetics question, contained a labelling error in diagram B. The four daughter cells in diagram B were each labelled “2n”, when this should have been “n”.
The State Examinations Commission apologised for the error and said it would be considered in the marking scheme.
“Once you’re in that exam hall, it just really messes with you,” Quinn said.
She has chemistry and physics left to do.
“I’m surviving. I haven’t cried yet, which is a win and just taking it day by day. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. My routines are still there and it’s almost over. I see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.
Seventeen-year-old Momin Bari has also found actually doing the exams to be not quite as bad as the thoughts of doing them. As the first in his house to sit the Leaving Cert exams, and with high grades in his sights, he was really feeling the pressure.
“I think the lead-up to the exams was a lot more stressful than the actual exams itself,” he said.
Bari has just one exam left to do, accounting.
“For the subjects I’ve done, I think they’ve gone pretty well to be honest.”
He was worried about maths before the exam, but although there were some negative reactions to the first paper, which even left some of his friends in tears, he’s hopeful he did well. “The questions were not anything we’ve seen before,” he said.
He didn’t finish his history paper. “I’m hoping the bell curve will balance it out, because I’m missing a good few marks.” He had been hoping to get a H1 in history and said he’s a bit disappointed “but I can’t really do anything [about it]”.
“I’m really relieved it’s over. Even though I’ve one more exam, I kind of feel it’s finished already.”
“History was an absolute disaster,” Grace McNamara said. “The questions were horrendous. Nobody wanted the GAA to come up.”
Still, in spite of the challenging history paper, McNamara remains “very motivated”.
“I’ve only one left,” she said of her German exam. “One o’clock on Friday I’m done and it’s a very strange feeling. It’s very happy and sad at the same time. I’m happy because I never have to do maths again,” said McNamara, who has dyscalculia and dyslexia.
“But I’m also very sad, because I’ll never be in the same class again as most of these people. I won’t see my teachers again for a very long time. I’m dreading saying goodbye to my favourite of them.
“I’m also sad because I’ll never do home economics again. It costs a fortune to do a master’s. I’m happy, I’m sad. I’m very motivated to try and get my points. To try and do my best. I’m also so ready for it to be over.”
Danny Goff was also unimpressed with the history paper. “Every other exam went well. I’m just really excited for it to be over,” he said. But even though he’s longing for it to be over, he said he’ll miss doing the Leaving Cert. “The school environment has been so nice,” he said.
“I am keeping to my routine. My diabetes levels are really good,” said Goff, who is a Type 1 diabetic.
“Everything is going well, but then you have the question: ‘Why is it going well? Are they going to be really, really cruel with the marking scheme. Are they going to be really, really strict with the corrections?’”
Goff is trying to “avoid all the grinds school going through the answers” because it makes him worry that he may have got things wrong.
Eoin Murphy has two exams left. And there’s a week between each exam, which means he has plenty of time to study, he said.
“They have gone a bit better than I expected them to … They went faster,” he said.
“I am tired. I’ve been getting up at 6 o’clock most days to study and going into town, to the local coffee shop at 9 o’clock, even if I don’t have an exam until 2 o’clock,” Murphy, from Mayo, said. “I did put my heart and soul into these, so I do think I have done to the best of my ability.”
“Overall I found them to be fair. But some of them were quite hard. It’s almost like this year, they were trying to trick us.”
The poet he was hoping for, Bishop, came up on the English paper. “I thought maths paper one was very hard,” he said.
“I’m ready to be done. I am tired ... it does really get to you.”
