Atmosphere of relief as students celebrate results

DUBLIN:THE DRAMA of results day tends to affect students in different ways. Some tear open the envelopes, like ravenous hounds, eager to end the weeks of nervous anticipation.

Others retreat to secluded corners to quietly contemplate their flimsy white grade sheets, the culmination of some 14 years of schooling.

At Sion Hill in Blackrock yesterday, several students chose the tranquil setting of a small pond to the rear of the main school building to finally end their anxious wait.

A short-lived silence reigned while the envelopes were opened and flushed faces surveyed the grades. Fortunately for this group of students, anxiety gave way to delight, yelps of delight, and to frequent exclamations of “Oh, my god!”

“I’m a little concerned I might be hallucinating,” said Alice Moynihan, from Blackrock, after achieving a whopping 575 points, the best in the school and well over the requirement for medicine at UCD.

Her teacher Ciara Reid said there was nothing hallucinatory about it. “She worked extremely hard, and I’m not surprised she did so well.”

A jubilant Gillian Brett, also from Blackrock, said she was “ecstatic” after getting 525 points, including an A1 in business, which should comfortably secure a place in commerce at UCD. For most, however, there was simply, the relief that it was all over.

Siobhán Jackson said her daughter, Olivia, had been extremely worried in the days leading up to the results. “The nightmares were there, but thankfully they didn’t happen,” she said. “She did fine.”

At St Andrew’s College, off Booterstown Avenue, some students hid away from the general melee outside the main school building, with forlorn looking faces. Some had tears in their eyes.

Headmaster Arthur Godsil acknowledged it was a “very emotional time” for students. “We have a wide academic range in the school,” he said. “So you’ve got children who get 250 points and are absolutely delighted, while others have tears in their eyes with 500 points.”

Aifric McMahon, from Bray, stood nonchalantly among her classmates with her unopened results envelope clutched tightly to her chest. “I thought I’d know what to do when I got the envelope but I just don’t.”

One of the main controversies in this year’s exams centred on the higher level accounting paper, where a distribution blunder left dozens of students at 16 Dublin schools, including St Andrew’s, temporarily without the full exam paper in June.

Chris Rooke, from Dalkey, who secured enough points for business and politics at Trinity, said he didn’t feel the blunder affected his overall mark too much. But David Martin, from Blackrock, said he had not done as well as expected in the exam. “I did badly in accounting but I didn’t end up counting it, so I’m okay.”

Overall the atmosphere was one of relief as students appeared happy. When asked what his plans were for the night, one cheeky chap, grinning mischievously, said he was planning “a quiet night in with the parents”.