Relief the exams are finally under way

SION HILL:THE LEAVING Cert does strange things to people. Sion Hill student Anja Geraghty was wide awake at 3.45am yesterday, twiddling her thumbs.

“I woke up on the dot of a quarter to four and I was like, ‘What the hell am I doing awake?’ At four o’clock I decided to study for an hour. Then I listened to my iPod and went to sleep again.”

She was one of the first Honours English students out of the exam hall at the south Dublin school yesterday. Despite the nocturnal interruption, she was happy with her first exam.

“I was expecting to look at the paper and be like ‘aargh’, but I flew through it,” she said.

“But I’m dreading ‘Home Ec’. and I’m dreading English Paper II. It’s going to be much harder.”

Most Sion Hill students who spoke to The Irish Times were happy with their first Leaving Cert paper, and relieved that the exams were finally under way. Their school is close to the heart of Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin, who taught Irish and History there before taking a diversion into politics.

Maeve Murphy said the first exam wasn’t as bad as she expected, but she faced a dilemma over which part to choose in one of the questions. She wrote a diary of a day in the life of a celebrity and was happy with it, but was already thinking of the afternoon. “Home Economics is going to be really hard. English is grand but Home Ec is another story.”

Her friend Shénagh Fennell was carrying two exam-related injuries. Her finger had a blister after three hours of writing, and she had sunburn on her leg from studying outside the previous day. She was happy to have finished one exam. “I was, like, stressed and I was shaking before I went in, but then I looked at it and was like ‘God, I’m grand’,” she said.

Shauna Twanley thought the exam was fair. She opted for a question on what it’s like to be a teenager. “It was grand because you could bring anything into that, peer pressure, everything, you could list them off and talk about them. It was better than what I expected.”

Hannah O’Keeffe said the questions were so vague that students had great scope to write about almost any topic. “It’s a good start anyway.”

They were all happy to see the weather was slightly duller when they came out of the exam. “I tried studying in the sun and it wasn’t happening at all,” said Hannah. “I kept falling asleep.”

Niamh Ní Aonghusa and Maeve Byrne came out of the exam with broad smiles. “I’m happy enough, I think it went OK,” said Niamh.

Maeve thought it wasn’t too hard, “but Paper I isn’t the worst anyway. Paper II will be worse. There’s a lot of memorising. And with Paper I you don’t really know how you’ve done until you get the results.” Both girls were already thinking about English Paper II, and hoping Bishop and Longley would come up in the poetry.

Asked what they were dreading, both said “pretty much everything”. “History and Irish I suppose,” said Niamh, while Maeve wasn’t looking forward to Geography. They were longing for the mandatory post-Leaving Cert holidays. “Dying for that,” said Maeve. “We can’t wait.”