A 200 minutes almost too much to endure

There was only one Monday paper for me - I didn't do geography - but it was still tough. The women's mini-marathon was on Sunday, but that's nothing compared to what we had to go through.

This year many papers have been even longer than in the past, thanks to the addition of 20 minutes to each of them. The jury is still out as to whether this has been of benefit or not - presumably we'll find out in August.

For now it's really hard to tell if it's time to express extra ideas or just a chance to re-read over the answer book one more time.

This paper, probably one of the longest of the whole lot, covered almost every aspect of Irish literature. We had Sean O Riordain's philosophical look at life, along with Cathal Bui Mac Giolla Gunna's philosophical look at drink.

Most of the topics we expected to come up did, but that still didn't make it any easier. I think for this exam the objective is not to answer well, but to answer everything, in time.

I had set aside 10 minutes to proof-read the paper at the end, but by the time I got that far I was just too exhausted to do much of anything. I did have time to make a feeble attempt, but I was just going through the motions.

Thankfully I now have a few days off in which I can spend time trying to find a job. I'll be finished exams on the 23rd and our class have already started talking about what we're going to do with the rest of the summer.

It's not over yet though. All the "minority" subjects such as physics, German and even Greek (I'm only doing the first two of those) are still to come over the next two weeks.

But I'll be doing those papers a bit more quietly. As this is my last exam diary, I'd like to thank the readers of The Irish Times for not complaining to the editor, and also to wish good luck to the 59,999 Leaving Cert students who didn't get to moan in public.

Daithi Mac Sithigh, a student at Colaiste Rathin, Bray, Co Wicklow, was in conversation with Harry Browne.