A bridge I'm glad to have crossed

After the Leaving and the obligatory celebrations, I only wanted to do one thing - absolutely nothing. I envisaged days of lounging on the couch, eating Pringles and watching MTV without having one eye glued to a list of maths formulae.

Unfortunately, I realised that I was jetting off to Canada in less than a week and had to abandon the couch for frantic packing and goodbyes. I came to Vancouver to stay with relatives, get some experience in the theatre and forget about the Leaving. Thus far the Leaving hasn't haunted me too much. Occasionally it creeps back. Like when I'm teetering across Capilano Suspension Bridge and I think of all the trouble somebody would have saved by erecting a few planks of wood across the Shannon before our (geography) exam. Or when the theatre company, where I'm managing a gift shop, announces that they are staging Macbeth (which I've now seen more often than Riverdance).

But, as I backpacked along Vancouver island, I was struck by all the little things school had not taught me, like how to tie my sleeping bag on top of my backpack so it hung in perfect equilibrium, or how to turn tinned food into a meal instead of rushing for the nearest KFC.

The island was spectacular, with acres of luscious rain-forest, sandy beaches and the unforgettable experience of whale-watching in a tiny dinghy in the open Pacific.

Hostelling was a great way of meeting people, but it was far from the comfort of my little room in Paris last summer.

Once, I got stuck in one of those small North American towns (where all the roads exude dust and the bingo hall is Saturday night entertainment). Desperate, I ended up at the local hostel (or rather the spare room of an obese man who happily showed me his catalogue of body scars).

I was sharing the room with a 30-year-old Alanis Morisette fan who recounted in detail how he assembled bombs in the army. I neglected to mention my suspicion that Alanis Morisette just isn't as good as she used to be.

Of course, only a fraction of my summer was spent travelling. I've also been experiencing that other post-Leaving must: a return to the workforce after a six-month hiatus.

Surprisingly, school had not prepared me for my fleeting cameos as potato peeler (peel several hundred potatoes to the strains of the Backstreet Boys until you start to wish you were a Backstreet Boy) and cuddly mascot (dress up as a giant pink ladybug, with Y2K wittily embroidered on your costume and stand in a sauna; get curious kids to violently assault you and inane adults to hug you; repeat until potato peeling seems a viable career alternative.)

For some reason, I thought tutoring would be easy money. I had this image of a tutor reading to nice, patient kids who cooed enthusiastically and delighted in the educational games he devised. It did not involve the tutor scream ng at the kids who booed endlessly and delighted in repeatedly bashing their tutor on the head.

Just when I decided that the working day world was too full of briars, potatoes, and screaming kids for me, I found my current job. It's pretty handy being on the fringes of the drama scene, and at the moment I'm also volunteering assistant stage manager for As You Like It for another company. The main part of my job seems to be to dress in black and repeat the line from Shakespeare in Love about everything working out all right. Of course, frequently it doesn't. Each night Rosalind struggles to get into her wedding dress in mere seconds, clouds threaten to disrupt our outdoor show and props mysteriously run off the stage.

And yet, despite the many disasters, each night is always tremendous fun. If I needed any further proof that I made the right college choice, it's provided by the numerous excuses for parties which theatre offers (opening night, closing night, Rosalind squeezing into her dress without popping a button).

As for the remainder of my stay, I'll be managing my gift tent, being an extra, scuba diving and avoiding Alanis Morisette fanatics. And hopefully, come October, I should be arriving at Trinity College. It was strange to miss out on that seminal walk to school to collect the results, and rather anti-climatic receiving them by email, but it was also nice to be detached from the hype and hysteria which is, no doubt, pervading Ireland. In the end, it's surprising how little the individual results matter - all that's important to me is whether or not I get my points, which I did.

As I scan the computer screen, I feel both relief and disbelief and just a little bit of guilt about being so mean about Michael Davitt (history). It's also strange how the results of years of schoolwork are neatly summarised in seven lines.

Before I got my results, I talked to a sweet old man at a nursing home, who offered me some perspective. He had dropped out of high school, but had succeeded as a journalist.

True, times have changed and certainly doing well in the Leaving is no harm, but a yellow bit of paper isn't going to guarantee instant success or failure.

As he said, in fifty years' time nobody will care how you did in your high-school exams. It's what you do after them that's important. And I wish everybody the best of luck with that.