Okay Before you all give out to me for writing this post WAY before the actual exams I do apologies but its almost Christmas which means exams are coming up, then the Pre's will be there, then orals and projects due, then before you know it its June 4th and the best 2 or 3 weeks of your lives will start ( note the sarcasm). So for all you non Irish readers the leaving cert is a set of final exams we do here before going to college. They are graded on a points basis and the college place we get is determined by how many points we get in those set of exams. Some think it is a very unfair way of testing, I am one of those people and you'll soon discover why, as it only shows how well students perform on a particular day.

Okay so I'll start with the subjects and levels I took:
Irish- Higher
English- Higher
Maths- Ordinary
Spanish- Higher
Home Ec- Higher
Business- Higher
Geography- Higher
L.C.V.P- Common




So I took a wide variety of subjects as you can tell and they all branched off into many different opportunities. Since I was about 6 I always wanted to be a Primary School Teacher and that never really changed throughout my school life hence the higher level Irish and Geography. I always had my sights set on being a teacher, mainly because I absolutely love children and I have a fairly substantial experience being around them ( I have a TON of little cousins). The teaching course I wanted to do was 470 points in 2012.

So in 2011 6th year came around and as we were told on our last day of 5th year, we had 33 school weeks until the big day (no need to panic yet guys). So naturally I began to try and stay on top of things so that I wouldn't sink (as my business teacher used to say)

The year few much quicker than I expected and before I knew it the orals were beginning. My Irish one went fine (I think), as I'm quite confidant speaking in Irish. HOWEVER, my Spanish one was a disaster. The night before the exam I basically felt like I had forgotten every Spanish word I have ever learned and began to panic hugely (one of the reasons I think I suffer from anxiety). The next day I wasn't much better, I was very jittery in school and just couldn't wait for it all to be over. So I managed to pull myself together a bit and went in to do my oral. When I got in the examiner asked me what my name was in Spanish (obviously), and I answered her back in Irish.. (yeah I know stupid me) and that basically threw me for the whole thing and it was a disaster.


So the day of the exams came around (which was also my 17th birthday!! YAY for exams!!) and I was surprisingly calm considering everything. We started with English paper 1 as always which was fine, then that afternoon was Home Ec, which was possibly the most difficult paper we have ever seen (ask anyone from my year!) But I got through it and moved on. Thursday came English Paper 2, and if you live in Ireland and you know anything about school and the Leaving Cert, you should know that this was the year everyone almost died while doing the paper when we turned over the page and saw that neither Plath or Heaney came up as poets. The feeling in the exam room was kind of un-explainable, you could tell everyone's heart sank without anyone saying a word. It truly was something I had never experienced before. The rest of the exams are a bit of a blur to me as they go by so quickly once you start them.

Before I knew it, it was the 15th of August... RESULTS DAY... I remember this day quite vividly but I'm not going to go into too much detail about this but the outcome was I got 460 points. (Non-Irish readers please note that grading goes up in 5 points per grade, so I missed the 470 by 2 grades). I was devastated, I missed out on my dream course, so yeah the CAO offers came out the following Monday and I didn't get the offer I had hoped for as you can probably guess.. I was in bits, I was crushed, I felt as though everything I had worked for for the last two years was for nothing. So then I had decide what to do next.