Maths can cause emotion sickness

Maths was almost like an emotional rollercoaster - it's hard to describe maths as emotional, but that what's it was.

First there's the feeling of absolute elation when you work out a proof and get it right, followed by the feeling of utter despair when you get to the next question and it's just not happening.

The whole scene was very, very different from what surrounded Wednesday's English papers. There was a different approach - for maths the whole class was busy cramming formulae at the last minute. And the maths teacher, a flame-haired woman from Connemara, was running from person to person answering questions.

Once we got inside, the examiner was extremely cautious with us, checking that everyone had a calculator and that it was working. We had to write the make and model of the calculator on the front of the answer book. Then at the end of the paper she reminded us about a hundred times to put in all the bits of paper - the graphs, the sketches, the notes, as much as possible.

My obligatory disaster: there was a question on logs that would have been an easy one for me, so I left it for last. But then I forgot it and only came back to it with six minutes left, then I flew through it and my handwriting was all over the place. When I should have been relaxing and congratulating myself, I was in a panic.

The paper was reasonable. Like good films, there was a twist at the end of some of the questions - with section C always requiring more thought.

My brother John is doing the Junior Cert, and from borrowing his paper on the way home on Wednesday I noticed that the Junior Cert English paper warned that anyone answering in a language other than English would get nought. We didn't have that for the Leaving Cert paper - I assume we're all too mature at this stage to try to answer in Serbo-Croat or Yiddish.

Maths is one of the subjects I'm hoping to get a high grade in, so roll on paper 2.

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