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by valerie

Crying in the Art Room

May 10, 2010 in Study

(Note on title:  I’m aware that it sounds like it could have been thought up by mid-naughties emo band. hXc)

To elabourate on the title, I did actually cry during the craftwork exam. I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but as it is a blog about the Leaving Cert and the craftwork exam comes under the Leaving Cert umbrella and I am a sickeningly honest human being…yeah.
I chose the poster option which I thoroughly prepared. I entered the art room with my little preparatory sheet, covered in pictures of Alexander McQueen and Chanel collections, and got to work. The majority of the day went unexcitingly, until about 2 o’clock, when I realised I had about an hour and a half to actually make the poster and stop messing around with the lettering. I got frustrated, then panicky, then weepy.
Looking back on it now, it was lolarious. At the time, however, I was wild with terror. What if I didn’t get finished? What would happen? I’d fail my art then of course I’d fail the Leaving and then everyone would tut and then I’d cry more and then the world would explode and – well, I completely lost sight of the forest for the trees, as they say.
My project wasn’t bad, per se. It wasn’t that good either. Thankfully, the still life and life drawing went far far far better. I’m happy to have it all out of the way.
To make matters a little worse my totalitiarian dictator of an Irish teacher is “disappointed” in the Art students in the class for a) missing class and b) not getting the homework. Oh I’m sorry Miss, how could I even dream of missing your class to go to an exam worth over 50% of my Leaving Cert Art. Y’know, cos Irish is the only subject I’m really doing an exam on. All the other classes I’m doing for the craic. *shakes fist* (It is clear that the stress is beginning to affect me.)

How did everyone’s Art go? Better than mine I hope…

So we have around a month to get our shit together and make this Leaving Cert thing happen.
Some days I feel confident in my abilities, others not so much. I didn’t get accepted to English and Drama in Trinity, which was quite a knock to my positive Shiny Happy May approach, but I have to soldier on.

I love English. I like the English course, which seems to be quite unusual for a Leaving Certer. Yeah it stifles creativity, but what subject in the Leaving doesn’t? It’s fair to everyone, in my opinion. People who like poetry/theatre/novels can read up more about the poets and playwrights in their own time if they’re interested, and people who don’t just learn what they are given and do the exam. Obviously I’d love to take the question “Write a personal response to the poetry of Blah Von Blather” and tell them exactly what I think of it, but that’s not going to get us the marks. The course is the course, and it won’t change until the bigwigs in the Department deem it necessary. Though it seems if Fine Gael ever gain power in the government, they’re going to do away with the Leaving Cert altogether…can’t say I’d miss it. :)

Til next time (unless I have a complete mental breakdown during the coming week),

Valerie

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by Site Admin

2% of you faking it?

April 14, 2010 in Study

According to figures release by RTE, approximately 4% of you aren’t sitting the Irish exam this summer because of a disability… this article in The Irish Times suggests there are some of you that are cheating the system and getting out of Irish on the grounds that you have a learning disability…

Now of course there’s nothing wrong with having a learning disability… and certainly nothing wrong with getting an exemption if you have difficulty learning because of that disability…

keeping watch
Creative Commons License photo credit: theloushe

However 2% of the 4% of you that get an exemption in Irish because of a ‘learning disability’, do other languages like French and German. That disability doesn’t seem to come in to play with languages other than Irish ;-)

So the stats would suggest that 2% of you non-irish exam sitters are faking it or maybe not faking it, but certainly exaggerating it. Your disability might exist… but you’re using it as an excuse to ditch Irish. Most importantly,  you’re sitting other languages despite having a disability which prevents you from learning one particular language…

It just doesn’t add up… no doubt there are genuine cases, but over 1300 students who are exempt from Irish on the grounds of having a learning disability take other languages… figure that one out…

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by guest-blogger-aoife

Je ne comprends pas : The Leaving Cert Orals 2010

April 12, 2010 in Study

So then eight weeks and its all over, eight weeks? Thats it.A nice round two months and you’ll never have to say pardon madame, je ne comprends pas la question. Seems like yesterday I was walking the crowded hallways for the first time. I’ll be honest I’ve never been much of a worker and I’ve managed to scrap by the last five years with a lot of “not working to full potential” and “needs to concentrate”. Needless to say then Easter was what i like to call a study disaster, I left with such good intentions and arrived back with a throbbing head, several unseemly scratches and more than a few hours missing from a couple of good 18ths a colourful bank holiday and a rainy visit to dundalk racecourse.

Now then let me paint you a picture its the monday of oral week and I’ve got two days before I’m sitting in front of a examiner. Heres a little extract from a conversation me and my french teacher had today. “Aoife,tell me about your family”( obviously enough she said it french, but well frankly i dont know how too) “well j’ai un soeur and trois soeur, oh wait sorry trois frere. ma soeur s’appelle rebecca. elle et douze ans.” “Shes 12?” “oh no shes vingt sorry” (I lied shes 22)” And whats she doing at the moment aoife, working?”……..silence. Roughly 30 seconds to a minute later and I reply in English, “eh shes not doing much to be honest a lot a hanging around the place”. No doubt at that moment everyone in the room had a similar image of me and what I’d be doing come September. Thankfully my darling teacher moved on then to another student, unfortunately that student appeared to have memorized the entirity of “le francais oral”.

All the mocks arent back yet still waiting on history but so far have got some outrageously average results sum totalling 395. My mediocrity shines brightly with a lovely collection of c’s and a couple of b’s under my belt. Yet here I am, sitting here writing this when clearly my French speaking voice could do with a little work, but hey its not all doom and gloom. Two months to the exams is plenty of time and in fairness more than likely I’m gonna have a lot of fun getting there and so are you. So the next 8 weeks, sure they’re gonna be challenging and your gonna have that stage where you have a minor break down and curse the heavens for inventing pressure like the leaving cert, but for all you “can work harder” and “greater effort needed” students, hey theres light at the end of the tunnel and whenever you think “ah sure I’ll do a bit tomorrow”,try instead to say no I’ll do a bit tonight and in six months I’ll be plastered, but I’ll be plastered in the college I want doing the course i wanted.

LOVE AOIFE!

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by valerie

Ce n’est pas un blog post.

April 7, 2010 in Study

It’s the day of the French oral. I wait patiently in a small room, feeling confident. I am called into the examination chamber (I was going to just call it a room but chamber sounds nice and fancy) and, strangely, there are quite a few people in there. I am confused. I sit and the examiner starts talking to me in English.
“Talk in French! Why haven’t you put on the tape?” I cry.
“Shut up you,” she snaps back.
I make some feeble attempts at French conversation, she remains unresponsive. Eventually she turns to me and produces a packet of chewing gum from her pocket.
“Fine then. If you’re so smart, describe this chewing gum to me!”
I panic, I do not know the French word for chewing gum. Why is she doing this to me?
She puts on the tape, but music starts coming out. She starts dancing and singing along. She throws a book at me.
“Read that,” she spits.
I start to cry. My English teacher enters the room and sings at me as tears roll down my face.

I wake up whimpering and shaking my head feverishly, frozen for a few moments in utter terror. Then I realised it was only a dream, I had not just screwed up my oral over a description of chewing gum. What relief!

Thankfully, I’m not terribly worried about my French oral. The Irish oral is a different kettle of fish, however. I have an excellent Irish teacher who in her spare time must also be the totalitarian dictator of a small country as she controls every aspect of our Irish-speaking lives, including our oral material. She’s basically given us everything we know in the form of notes and handouts and while this is totally awesome in terms of the quality of the Irish and it all looks beautiful written down, not much of it is in my head. I have around two weeks to get it in there though, and some of the questions I KNOW we won’t be asked (the sheet of questions she gave us must be from 20 years ago…Example: What do you think of the situation in Ulster? She made us learn an answer to it, in the future tense. There will be peace etc etc. WTF?)

I received a letter from Trinity a while back containing a questionnaire for the English and Drama Studies course, which I filled out hurriedly and horribly while trying to prepare for History grinds and which has more tip-ex on it than actual ink. However, it seems they didn’t mind that or the hopelessly contrived answers as I now have to go to an interview/workshop thing on the 20th April. Woo, go me!
Except not really. That week happens to be the week of my Irish oral and Music practical. Yeah. I don’t know if all schools do their orals/practicals at the same time, but gosh Trinners! How am I going to work that out at all – as the French say, on verra…

I must get going and do some study. Grrr.

Valerie

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Irish increases your chances of getting a job

March 19, 2010 in Study

That’s right. Fact. A recent report shows that not being able to speak our native language means you’re twice as likely to be unemployed as someone who can speak irish.

DSC_6330
Creative Commons License photo credit: asterix611

It suggests Irish is becoming a language for the elite and employers like to see it, even if they won’t / don’t use it as part of their job.

I’ve always thought the only reason i needed Irish was to give a speech in Croke Park before i lifted the Sam Maguire. That’s the only time i ever heard Irish being spoken on telly as a child. Languages? There’s only one language – English. And then there’s all those foreign / rubbish languages.

That’s the sort of mentality that’s lingering around. Although Irish still isn’t as sexy as it’s made out to be, it is holding it’s own as a language.. it’s no longer moving backwards. Reports like this one will just add to the hype and glamorous reputation that the irish language is building for itself.

Irish language = jobs, that’s what people will begin to see. However, English is king, so we must master it first. It should in theory be much easier to pass English than Irish or get an A1 in English than in Irish but the gap isn’t that huge.

Anyway, according to that report, this new elitist Irish speaking ‘club’ seem to be hogging all of our jobs… so you better not burn those irish notes after the leaving cert. In the future, you might find yourself trying to impress an interviewer with some memorized Irish quotes ;-)

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