Imagine there's no Leaving... it's easy if you try

Roisin Ingle, now a journalist with The Irish Times, recalls the trials and tribulations of her Leaving Certificate days when desperation drove her to the Ouija board

I have to confess first off that I don't really remember much about my Leaving Cert. I know it happened in 1989. I know that I didn't study much. I know that at the time I was fully aware that the farce would have little bearing on The Rest Of My Life. And, what do you know, it didn't.

I do remember spending a few weeks before the exam learning history essays off by heart. Two hours after finishing the paper I wouldn't have been able to tell you a single thing about it. But then regurgitating information you won't recall afterwards is exactly what the Leaving Cert is all about.

I also remember consulting a Ouija board one night, asking John Lennon what themes we would be asked to explore in the Shakespare play. Lennon was a fine songwriter but as it turns out he knows little or nothing about King Lear.

A friend took pity on me and dragged me down to Pembroke Library in Ballsbridge, Dublin, to study. My well-meaning friend eventually gave up.

I spent most of the time watching the ants file through the cracks in the pavement outside thinking how uncomplicated their life must be.

I remember it was very sunny that year. Girls in short grey skirts sunned themselves between exams. They looked so cool perusing their colour coded notes. Some had been getting grinds at the Instituteof Education. Some of them knew exactly what they wanted to be. I suppose I envied them, wished I had everything mapped out the way they seemed to. But the sane part of me knew there was something very weird about planning the rest of your life when you are only 17.

It didn't go unnoticed in the blazing heat that I was wearing black opaque tights. There was a good reason for this. A last minute panic attack meant I had written half the home-economics course in black pen on my thighs.

Actually, the plan was to go to the bathroom and consult my legs in the middle of the exam.

As I said, it was sunny. By the time I put my plan into action the writing had melted clean away.

English turned out okay. There was an essay on "What it means to be Irish" or something. I wrote the kind of thing I thought the examiners wanted me to write. Ah, sure aren't we a great little nation all the same. Pity about the exam system.

I have to thank my sister for the fact that I passed maths, a subject that remains a complete mystery to me. I had done nothing. (And I don't mean nothing in the way all those swots used to say "Ohmigawd, I have done nothing", when what they really meant was "Yah, theorems rule".)

The day before the exam my sister spent a few hours with me explaining the basics of the maths papers. I passed, which was I all I really wanted. I was so glad I hadn't spent two years on it when it only took an afternoon.

I repeated the Leaving Cert a year later and remember even less about that. It was the summer of Italia 90 and I know I had at least one World Cup party so I can't have been taking it very seriously.

But I wish you good luck over the coming weeks. Just remember, while it might not feel like it now, there really are a lot more important things in life.