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by valerie

Are you freakin’ SRS?

January 16, 2010 in Study

Grad dates. All I have heard about since the return to school is grad dates.

“OMG did you hear Mary Kate asked JohnJoe over the Christmas!”
“I’m gonna ask Eugene guys!” “Good for you Margaret!” etc etc.

Yeah. Good for you, Margaret.
How the hell am I supposed to concentrate on my mockadoodledoos (they’re a wake up call, see! Oh I’m so clever) when I’m obsessed with finding a male type humanoid to put in a suit and stand next to me for a few hours? I suppose it’s my own fault for choosing to go to an all-girls school which, contrary to popular belief, makes girls 10 times crazier about boys. So much for the “less distractions” myth.

Also, can I ask WHY is telly getting so good just when I shouldn’t be watching it? Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, Glee, Criminal Minds…ugh. Maddening.

Must stop this from degenerating into a complete rant.
I did my CAO. It was quite scary. I put down a shedload of courses, most to do with journalism or English. Our careers guidance teacher has started pulling people out of classes, sitting them down and basically interrogating them on what they expect to get out of their Leaving, their goals for specific subjects, study plans, whatever. Now this is the absolute last thing I want to do. I understand that the school is interested in scouting out who they might be able to hype up for the 600 but…I’m gonna keep my goals to myself for now.

Everything is kind of starting to kick in now! I’m actually looking forward to the mocks, is that a bit mad? I just want to see where I stand at the moment, where I need to work more, where I can afford to ease the pressure a bit. Orals…Hm. I often wonder why, even though I have been learning it for most of my life, I struggle to string a sentence of Irish together. And then when my Irish teacher is shrieking “NA BRIATHRA NEAMHRIALTA GIRLS!” or some such at us I realise: I learned the most important structures of Irish grammar when I was in 4th class. I was 10. Now, 8 years later, I am expected to be able to just conjure it up from the foggiest of the foggy depths of my brain? Hah. Not gonna happen. What’s worse is that every teacher is absolutely shocked when we can’t remember it. Oh yes Miss, cos I go over my 4th class grammar notes daily. Sheesh.

Oh dear. This did degenerate into a complete rant. Tá brón orm.
(No really, I am sorry for this dreadfully boring post. I am currently experiencing writer’s block like you wouldn’t believe, it took me about 2 days to get this post in shape. I officially fail at blogging.)

Valerie

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by ronan

One Hundred an’ Eightyyyyyyyy.

January 3, 2010 in Study

It was very much the season. Relaxation, family, friends, enjoyment, and a suitable amount of work. However we’re hitting the spotlights now. We’ll be jumping back to our pres, C.A.O. talk, on the rebound we’ll have orals, and after that we’re on the home straight. No need to panic too much though, it may sound worrying but there’s plenty of time left!

I hope Christmas and the turn of a decade was kind to all. Mine was full of days with family, nights with friends, some success at the poker table (which is quite rare for me), and indeed what December and January are made for. Not Jesus, I’m fairly anti-religious. But darts of course! We could all learn something from the likes of Phil “The Power” Taylor. And when I say something I mean desire, drive, ambition, not diabetes or obesity.

We can pace ourselves. For those who’ve done themselves no favours so far, you should use your energy to start doing some serious work. Please. For me! I don’t want people ending up as I did last year. Ending up in McDonalds for breakfast on a May morning embarrassingly. Let’s say, three and a half hours a night? I dunno, most schools run that in-school study sort of scheme right? That should do for two hours or so. If you attend that is! So come home, feed yourself a decent dinner, watch some telly (what’s popular nowadays, Home and Away?), maybe indulge in a Red Bull and some chocolate, then feck back up the stairs for an hour and a… oh dear, I’m forgetting about The Champions League!:( Eh, hmmm, dilemma. Right maybe take ninety minutes off if your team are playing on a Tuesday or Wednesday! (Liverpool fans, The Europa League isn’t a valid excuse so just give it up. Then back down the stairs for Desperate Housewives or something light! Maybe even some Premier League darts on the occasional Thursday? Proof of success, a friend of mine, nothing until January, solid effort until crunch-time, 450 points.

For people who have been working arduously for the year or even more, keep it up. You’re doing perfect stuff. Just, as mad as it sounds, don’t do too much. You can burn out. I know of people giving up too much time (usually the delusional fantasists I’ve mentioned before and will get around to at a later date), double digit hours of each day studying. And in the end they end up disappointed. Too exhausted to study come June. Even physically they look more and more like a wreck come exam time. We’re walking into a pressure cooker environment, the last thing we want is people dying out when they must put their money where their mouth is. On the other hand people who spend a balanced amount of time working end up happy, knowing that they got what they deserved. They couldn’t have done much better for themselves.

The point is leave yourself some time to enjoy life. Work too, it’s only 180 days of your life until the end of the exams come June 25th. I think the, what should I say, unique subjects are that day, like Japanese, Unicyling and Frog Biology. One hundred and eighty days, if we can’t manage that, ehm, well we’ll end up saddened and, maybe even The R Word (rep*ating). And we don’t want that.

Anyway, apologies for this short and unimaginative post, I’m thinking darts all day. The P.D.C. World Championship Final is just about to start!:) If Stephen Fry is a fan of darts it’s good enough for me! In fact I must keep track of his Tweets throughout the game. And just as I type that, Simon Whitlock and The Power hit consecutive maximums while warming up! Let’s Play Darts and enjoy the song at the break! I’m so enthusiastic!:) ONNEE HUNDREDDDD AN’EIGHTTT-EEEEEEEE!!!

Thank you very much.

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by elizabeth

Irish and Music (and vom- Oh My!)

April 12, 2009 in Study

Whoopsies, I did mean to write about Irish and Music just after they happened (which is still technically last week, though really it feels months ago) I’m sure no one was absolutely dying to hear how it went though :P

On the Monday before the Irish Oral (which was a Tuesday) I was all ready to go out to school. I reached my front door when *BAM* waves of nausea. I had to run to the bathroom to vom. I didn’t make it.

So that left me lying on the couch all day feeling slightly worried that the examiner would go ahead of time and I’d be left either going after the top honours class and looking well thick by comparison or not being allowed to do it at all. Luckily it was only a 25 hour bug and I was ok by that night. Unluckily I couldn’t sleep due to nerves and was wrecked the next morning (I stayed up most of the night reading Fairytales Mairéad Ní Ghráda had translated into Irish- apparently the Irish for “Rumplestiltskin” is “Luidín ó Laoi”). Most of Tuesday morning was therefore spent sitting outside the examination room clutching a mug of Lemsip and sniffling sadly to myself.

When I went into the Oral room I didn’t feel as bad, the examiner asked fairly normal questions until a somewhat evil smile came over her face and she asked if I had a solution to the recession. That’s something I could barely answer in English, let alone Irish so I mumbled something about it all being the politicians’ fault and had a bit of a rant about politicians and corruption (“tá an tír seo ag titim as a chéile, agus céard atá siad ag déanamh?!”) and anything I could remember from my Irish notes. The examiner seemed happy enough with it though, even if I didn’t technically answer the question.

As Tuesday wore on my cold got worse and my nose was totally blocked. That would have been fine were it the end of all the exams but unfortunately I had my music practical on Wednesday and seeing as I wasn’t singing Sean Nós a nasal voice really wouldn’t help. Fortunately Captain Sudafed Nasal Spray with his trusty sidekick Dame Olbas Pastilles came to the rescue. When I was warming up on the Wednesday morning I almost winced at how whiny and cracky (yes, cracky) my voice sounded. But after a good warm up with the help of the decongesting powers of Team Sudafed and Olbas it sounded better than I’d thought, but worse than if I hadn’t been sick.

The examiner was really friendly (my school seems to have been blessed with nice examiners this year- let’s hope it continues through to June) and chatted between songs. She did stop me before I got to finish my last song even though we were well within our time. I’m not sure whether to be worried or not but I’ve just decided to forget about it and concentrate on not doing as badly in composition as I did in the mock (oh that shamble of a modulation..)

Looking back on the last three weeks I’m happy enough with how things went. At no point did I want a hole to appear in the floor and swallow me up, which is something. It’s a great relief to have 25% of three languages and half of music over with.

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Avatar of elizabeth

by elizabeth

2 Orals, 1 Week

March 29, 2009 in Study

I felt completey ready for French, there was nothing that could be thrown my way that I couldn’t speak about. I strode confidently into the exam, document clutched between my hands. I laid the envelope of photos on the desk when go tobann, I realised that what I had so happily carried with me was not in fact my well-prepared document, but a collection of pictures of me when I was 6 and going through my ugly-duckling phase (I’m told that some day I’ll turn into a swan…). I had to go through each one and explain it in excruciating detail to the merciless examiner, getting more and more flustered as each word of French escaped my tongue “like a butterfly, unable to alight” (thanks for that Mr. Longley). Eventually I broke down, bawling my eyes out as the merciless examiner watched me coldly.

…then I woke up and it was all a dream.

Yeah I just said that. That ending to every story that you think is the best twist since Bruce Willis Was Dead at the End of the Sixth Sense, until you’re told by your Junior Cert English teacher to never, ever use it to end a story.

It’s true though, on Wednesday night, two days before my exam I had that horrible horrible nightmare. Luckily for the real thing I brought along the right document, didn’t burst into tears and had the nicest examiner I could have hoped for. No nasty questions were asked, the strangest one I got was to talk about the Basque region which was fine as my parents do tend to go on about it to me somewhat. I was so grateful that the examiner managed to seem interested and enthusiastic even though I must have been the 110th person to speak about a music festival. There was no economy, no politics, no international relations, no health system, no environment, Just Me, Myself and I (and the Basque Region)

I even managed to throw in a cheeky little off-the-cuff subjunctive despite my nerves!

German didn’t go quite so well. The general questions were alright, though I got stuck on the question “what sort of music do you like?” which really just requires naming a load of bands, but I completely blanked and couldn’t rememver any music I liked, which was silly seeing as my Projekt was on a music festival!

The rest of the questions were fine though and I managed to stick in my little piece on how hard German is compared to French. The Projekt was fine, I remembered my big long spiel thankfully, though I did get asked “what do the girls have in their mouths?”. They had whistles, I hadn’t a clue what whistles were in German so I just admitted I didn’t know the word and tried to smile (but probably ended up grimacing)

For the roleplay I got the Fish one, the one I really really didn’t want. It was ok though, even if I forgot one of the tasks and stuck it in a minute later making the conversation go like:

“well would you like a hamburger then?”

“…besides, this fish is cold! The sauce wasn’t bad but is now also cold!”

“I understand…how ’bout that hamburger?”

I’m happy with how both orals went though and it’s such a relief to think that 25% of each exam is over and done with. I had no idea how exhausting they’d be as I’ve slept for 22 hours in total since Friday night. From now until Tuesday will be spent watching TG4 and calling it study.

To everyone else doing the orals next week- Go n-eirí an t-adh libh!/Bonne Chance!/Viel Gluck!

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by jennie

“I’m fed up”- The Rant.

March 14, 2009 in Study

6th year is a stressful time, and don’t let anyone tell you it’s not.
Words which spring to mind when I’m to describe the experience include irksome, exasperating, aggravating, disquieting, trying, irritating, maddening, taxing, and, of course, tedious.
Quite frankly, I’m sick of it.
There are days where I’d just rather stay in bed. There are days where I’d be much happier to just do nothing instead of getting up and trudging into school. In fact, there are days where I’d be only delighted to sit around discussing Jade Goody instead of  choosing that 6.45 wake up call and, trust me, that would be utter TORTURE.

I could easily be in University this year. I got enough points in my Leaving Cert last year to do almost anything, with the obvious exception of Medicine, yet I chose to come back and do the Leaving Cert for the second, painful year in a row. 550 points was a fair achievement, something which I’m eventually starting to realise. Still, months after the results, I’ll admit to being rather disappointed by what I see as something of a personal failure. I feel as though I didn’t achieve my full potential, but in comparison to most people’s expectations, my academic achievements are pretty ample.
I see my A2 in English as a meagre accomplishment and my B1 in Irish as an utter inadequacy. Admittedly, I’m an insatiable and intrepid nerd and there’s no other way to look at it. I’m not competitive in a traditional sense, and it doesn’t bother me how other people get on- be it better or worse than me- as long as I execute my own goals, which are so high that they’re practically unobtainable.

It’s not too often I get into my major reflective mode here on this very blog, but with the mock results filtering through and the Orals creeping up on us, it was inevitable.
More than anything at the moment, I want to beat the system. The Leaving Cert’s designed to work on a bell curve, I assume, with few people doing dreadfully or absolutely marvellously and most people hitting, in and around, the average.
I’m not an average person, so I don’t want an average Leaving Cert. Obviously I wouldn’t be a big fan of getting 20 points either, so I’m going to need to be as near to the top as possible, as my artwork shows:

(Talented, much?)

Last weekend, whilst procrastinating away happily, I decided that some serious knuckling down is called for. Well, I’ve decided on this numerous times to be honest, but anyway, this time I meant it.

I haven’t got very many of my mock results back yet- but an A2 in English is depressingly insufficient. Granted, it is quite difficult doing a whole English course in one year, but it wasn’t even my Paper 2 that was the problem!
In fact, I got an A1 on Paper 2, but only scraped a B1 on Paper 1, which obviously dragged me down.
I know I haven’t got a great imagination, but I find it depressing that my style of writing’s not at an A1 level, but about 10% away from it! I wrote my essay on sex and drugs, probably a little bit too daring, so it looks like I’ll have to work on being a little more examiner-friendly. I’d like to point out, whilst the opportunity has arisen, that I’m not trying to knock other people who’d see an A2 as a fair achievement. I do like it up here on my pedestal, though.

Maths, also, hasn’t been my friend. I found the Mock pretty difficult, as I mentioned HERE. I’m aiming for an A1 in June, but with my result sitting at a B1 that’s going to be quite difficult. I was delighted to see my two trigonometry questions got 50/50 each and my Integration, Complex Numbers and Algebra questions hit nearby, but 26/50 and 27/50 respectively on my probability questions doesn’t make me too happy.
For me, maths has always been a whole lot of fun. Yes, that’s right, I love maths. It can almost be like a game (Almost? Almost?) and anyone who disagrees hasn’t lived!
What do I do when bored? Trigonometry questions, that’s what. When I’m feeling a little glum, how do I pick myself up? I integrate, differentiate and solve. With the exception of the dreaded Probability questions, my Higher Level maths papers have seen me through some tough times.

I haven’t got much else back as of yet, but I’m not holding my breath after those two. My Irish Oral is in a week, which is scary, and I really need to do well.
“Is breá liom a bheith in ann cumarsáid a dhéanamh trí mheáin na gaeilge, cé nach bhfuilim líofa go fóill fós”, or something.
“An bhfuil cead agam dul amach go dtí an leithreas”, to be honest. 14 years of learning it and 3 summers in the Gaeltacht and I still struggle a little. And French to follow. “Il faut que le gouvernement prennes des measures pour ameliorer la situation avant qu’il soit trop tard”- my answer to everything.
Here’s to the week going very slowly, hopefully!

To finish up, I’d just like to say, Happy International Pi Day to everyone! I hope it’s a good one.
Until the next time – Slán agus bon chance.

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