Crammmmming!!

Last night. It’s almost exciting isn’t it? Only one day left and I’ll never have to think about English Paper 1 again. No more reading comprehensions to be done in half an hour, no more personal essays to be hashed together in less than one hour while writing so fast that it eventually becomes illegible. But tonight, however, I’m thinking about it more than ever. What last minute preparations can I make to improve my writing just by even a little bit? What divine inspiration can I get so I can predict what will come up so I can start my planning now? Well I thought I’d write a blog. This is technically English right? I swear I’ll come out laughing if a part B question asking something like; 
“Imagine your writing a blog post for a website aimed at Leaving Cert. students. What advice would would you give them as they prepare for the exams?”
That’s possible! I think. Well one can dream, can’t they? But in all seriousness I think I’m definitely going for the article type questions. That’s just the register I’m used to. 
So this blog is as much for you (the reader) as it is for me (the crammer) as I am going to lay down my thoughts as they come to me:
1. Don’t just write down your thoughts as they come to you. That’s bad. Plan your writing or else you’ll f*** it up and resort to using swear words to cover up your lack of planning. 
2. Cram the night before. Literally just go through the text books cover to cover in one last final attempt to actually remember something! Something you might feel useful is reading the index of the textbooks (sciences and geography) and just look up the terms/ people you didn’t know. 
3. As a part of cramming for English paper 2 I’m just going to go over quotes from poetry and hamlet. For example, I’m relying on Emily Dickinson to come up so I’ll revise three quotes from each poem. So that’s 18 quotes. If I’m smart, I’ll do the same for Boland as a back up!
4. Back to paper 1 for a moment, plan out some general essays that may come up tomorrow; the future, the environment, the leaving cert. Etc…. you know, stuff we like to give out about. 
5. Anyone got folens maths exam papers? Well if you do look up the first couple of pages and you’ll see a decent enough summary of everything on the course. For example I hope everyone remembers summation formulae. If I wasn’t typing this all on my itouch I’d paste them here. Look them up! ( also I’m sure edco give a similar summary)
6. Stop writing!! If your like me than you’re used to studying by writing out notes and rewriting stuff you’ve written. It’s time to give that up. You’ll cram must faster by just reading and/or highlighting. I’m not sure how highlighting makes sense since your never gonna read that book ever again but I think it helps.
7. Cramming is what the Leaving Cert. is all about. I call it the final part of studying. It makes up for the middle part of studying, which occurred between Sept. 2010 and June 2011 and was practically non-existent!

Finally I’d like to conclude by wishing everyone good luck in the exams. I know it’s going to be tough for us for the next two and a half weeks. I’d also like to congratulate anyone who made to the end of this blog and for wasting precious crammmmming minutes! If anyone wants to adopt this style of article writing I would be quite flattered but also very disappointed……. by your lack of taste! Please don’t copy me. I need this for my C!

6 thoughts on “Crammmmming!!”

    1. Yeah, I love the way maths is just really straight forward when it comes to revision and it can be done quickly. Unlike English where practically anything can come up. I just know I’m gonna write something completely rubbish tomorrow. Let’s just hope the examiner likes it anyway!

    1. I’d blame spell-check but I guess I should know better. Thanks for the correction. As regards the yet to be approved comment you left on a different blog; some people take pride in doing higher level Irish even if they know that they would not do well enough to count it in their points. It’s not that foolish.

    2. Such a thing simply makes no logical sense to me. People take pride in increasing their workload for absolutely nothing at all? See, if these people did a 7th subject that was actually useful and could help them progress with their course choice then I’m all for it. But Irish? I can’t fathom why someone would choose a language that is not dying, but dead. The Irish leaving cert exam is like taking a defibrillator to a dead corpse – nothing good will come of it, except you will expend a lot of energy and wish you never bothered.

      Honestly, this is coming from a fella doing Latin, as dead a language you can imagine, and even then at least it has some use medically etc. Irish is not a heritage – it was a language spoken by some barbaric Celts, a pagan language. Why can’t we move on and accept that? English is desirable when you want to get a job – Irish? Sure who gives a damn unless you’re going to be a teacher.

      To summarize, it’s not taking on a 7th honours subject that I have objection to, but taking one up that is essentially a deadweight around your neck. Look at this coming Monday. Maths paper 2, which is going to be just as hard if not harder than the 1st, and this is knowing its going to be completely different to every other previous maths exam. Personally I’m working hard on it, and others are too (at least those that don’t want to fail and repeat). But wait, isn’t there Irish P1+2 on Monday and Tuesday as well? Yeah, that heap of learning, and I’m talking HEAP of learning, on top of an already stressful prospect of tackling Maths paper 2?

      I see just how enjoyable that is.

    3. Okay….??! What can I say? You make some good (/long) points. If you don’t see the sense in irish, that’s fine but I just wouldn’t say that it’s foolish. I have counted Irish as one of my best subjects and I admit that it can be a pain in the neck. But I’m the guy doing 10 higher level subjects. To be brutally honest I couldn’t let something like pass Irish get the better of me.
      Also Irish can be inspiring sometimes. It can be interesting. Like Latin I suppose, although I wouldn’t know.
      I agree that maths was challenging and definitely that hardest paper in years but I thought it was manageable. I won’t be studying for paper 2. I will concentrate on Irish.

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