At this stage I’m under the impression that we are all deeply embedded into our new leaving cert course, after a full week being officially conformed to the cult I have a new profound admiration for all of those who’ve already managed to sit the exam, cos it turns out this whole leaving cert thing, is really fricken hard!
Not trying to get caught up in the formal introduction of the first blog (primarily because I’ve jumped in a little late with the whole blog writing thing) (and also cos this was written freshly after the first week of school, its borderline between a blog and your average ‘back to school’ rant) but basically I’m Laura, hailing from the roughed depths of the Kerry countryside and currently clueless as to what exactly to do after the actual Leaving Cert so if anyone has any suggestions in the world feel free to throw them out there cos at the moment its leaning towards jar making on the aran islands if nothing else pops up…
So first week back at school, and the teachers were defiantly not taking the ‘ease the poor craters back into the workload’ approach. It took us about 5 minutes to come to the fully formed conclusion that this was inevitably the end. Not to be melodramatic, but it was definitely a dead end of an era of being a laid back, happy go lucky kind of teenager. At first, most of us held on to the firm belief that ‘if they want to take my social life from me they will have to prise it from our unyielding claws’ but slowly one by one as the week progressed our spirits were unavoidably crushed.
First day back at school looked a little like this:
- English
- Business
- Maths (project maths)
- Maths
- Chemistry
- Irish
- Irish
- French
- French
(all honours)
I honestly thought this was just a threat to scare us.
But no, not only were they absolutely serious, it’s also apparently perfectly legal to give 2 double language classes in a row…
Aside from the intensive languages, if double maths won’t drill a hole through your head I honestly don’t know what will. If ever again in life one found themselves in a situation whereby they needed to be able to ream off a full blown explanation of Isaac Newton’s laws of differentiation you might actually bother to learn them, but chances are 99.99999% of us will never again hear of them outside of the 4 walls of the exam centre, so it’s clear already at this point that this year is going to severely try our patience…
So realistically, how best to approach this 9 month educational pregnancy??
1) Switch to a strict diet of Barocca and coffee, because there is no other way i see this work load as actually being physically achievable
1) NO MORE FACEBOOK! Ok, realistically I’m pretty sure my addiction could be considered a substance abuse problem at this stage, as well as being the downfall of all of last year’s test scores. Has to go!
2) STOP watching re-runs of Friends. If you can quote the episodes word for word, you know them too well
3) Go to bed early!
4) Get up early!
5) Basically, discard all things fun for the year…
And if the sacrifice proves too difficult to make, just take the fast-pass route to college and switch the CAO course from medicine to arts – that little safety net that will always be there as a back up to catch us if all else goes wrong in the exam.
I think that given it’s the end of the first week back at school, that’s all the Leaving Cert talk I can motivate myself to write about at this hour. A laaaaaarge mug of tea is due, placed lovingly beside warm toast caressed with butter.
(You know your life is officially sad when the highlight of your day is the salivating thoughts of tea and food 😛 but from this point on I guess c’est la vie)
And if anyone feels completely adrift and unable to cope with the work load so far, fear not! Listowel races will guarantee a banging social experience for this weekend, temporary and all as it is. Come down, get the last of the party spirit out of you system once and for all! (or at least to soak up the north kerry experience) 😀
Anyways, anois a dhaoine uaisle, sin e an sceal!
Happy blogging! 😀
How come your doing project maths? Are you in one of the pilot schools? What’s it like??
what do you think of project maths??
My friend was doing it for part of 5th yr and then moved schools.
So much for keeping it anonymous laura.. ;D and project maths is a balls. the same as “normal” maths would be..
Shut up Maria! 😛
And no, its not like the regular course. You can definatly see that its going to be benificial in the long run, but i think introducing it in 5th year was the wrong way to go about it. There’s too much to catch up on in too little time, so its essential to have a good maths teacher, which fortunatly i do.
I’ll probably be writing a blog about what you actually do in it in the near future if theres anyting you want to know about it anyways.