Exam Diary: Miroslawa Gorekagets ready for a six-hour challenge in Leaving Cert English, followed by tomorrow's examination in her native Polish
Today, I will spend six hours writing thousands of words in a language I've only been learning for a few years. I envy the Irish students who only have to worry about what poets are coming up - they can write about them in their native tongue!
I've had a year and a half to learn a lot about English and Irish poets, drama and fiction. It has been exciting and interesting but also very frustrating. When I needed to be learning grammar and vocabulary I was struggling to understand the ideas of TS Eliot and Emily Dickinson. That's tough in any language. However, it's true that learning a language by studying its poets and writers is an interesting experience. It's different from the way I used to learn English in Poland - all verbs and grammar rules. I'll soon start talking like Shakespeare.
Like most students, I'm hoping the "right" poets come up. Yeats is my favourite of the Irish poets, but the ones I'm hoping to see tomorrow are Plath, Bishop and Frost. My novel is the Girl with the Pearl Earring, which I'm comfortable with.
The scary part will be Paper 1. If I was a fluent English speaker, it would be no problem to invent so many words in three hours, but I just don't think I have enough vocabulary to get through it!
I'm hoping for an essay question that allows me to talk about philosophy and the meaning of life. I have spent the last few months without a television, radio or computer, so I've had plenty of time to think about these things. I also care about justice and human rights, so perhaps I could write an essay about that. I could also write plenty on the Irish. I've made some good friends here, but I find that the Irish have a different way of making friends than I am used to.
Irish people are very welcoming, always happy to talk to you and have fun, but it's hard to get really close - my closest friends here are from other countries.
However, Ireland is an easier place to live in than Poland. It's more relaxed and the people accept you for who you are.
It's strange, there are supposed be thousands of Polish people living in Ireland - there's a Polish newspaper here and a Polish school, but I only have one Polish friend here, and she lives in Cork. I'll be thinking of her today as I take on the six-hour challenge.
Tomorrow, I'll be taking the Polish exam as the rest of the country sits down to do Irish. I sat in on some Irish classes last year and I'm very glad that I didn't have to study it. It sounded like Slovakian.
The Polish exam should be so easy for me, shouldn't it? Not so. I haven't written a word in Polish for nearly two years and I've been so busy trying to practise my English I haven't read anything in Polish. I need an A1 in everything to get medicine. Wouldn't it be terrible if I missed out on my first choice because I didn't get top marks in Polish!
There are 52 students sitting the Polish exam around the country. I wonder if any of them are Irish? The language is not taught in the schools, you have to study it yourself.
There are also Leaving exams in other languages that aren't taught in schools - Bulgarian, Czech, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovakian, Swedish, Hungarian and more.
More than 250 students are taking exams in these subjects, so I am not alone. Romanian was only introduced for the first time this year so the 24 students sitting that exam haven't even seen a past paper.
I can't start thinking in Polish yet. This morning, I'll watch the clock ticking with the words of Macbeth ringing in my ears, because this is how I speak! This quote, changed a little, is a good description of what today might be like.
'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time . . . Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his three hours upon the page, And then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Miroslawa Goreka is a student at Drogheda Grammar School
