I did my Irish Oral today, and I’m absolutely delighted with myself. It really couldn’t have been better! Seriously, it was amazing, to say the least! I’m amazing. Amazing.
At the end of the exam, when the tape was switched off, the examiner asked me if I speak Irish at home or went to a Gaelscoil before I came to my current school as a repeat. The answer to both was no- I don’t think I’ve ever even switched on TG4 to be honest- which seemed to impress her all the more. “Ach, tá tú líofa go fóill!” Basically, I charmed the pants off the woman- who could blame her for falling into the Jennie-trap. I guess I am quite pleasant. Quite lovely. Quite amazing.
So anyway, I was asked (or brought up in some cases) absolutely everything I could’ve been asked.
The Health System, Education System, The Points System, The Transport System, the Irish language, Tourism, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, unemployment, the recession, politics- everything! Apart from the basics of course. Hobbies? Nope. Why I’m blatantly female yet attending an all boy’s school? Nothing.
But these lovely topics were not just in passing, not just in vague detail- the health system, for example, was a perfect recital of 2 A4 pages of wonderful stuff I wrote up last week. All about investments and waiting lists and administration and-oh- it was marvellous. Well delivered too, I might add, none of that “am, eh, like, tá, much?” crap some people come out with. If the medicine thing doesn’t work out for me I should consider some sort of stage-related course. I displayed genuine (well, fake) emotion and all. “Action is called for immediately- for the benefit of lives” *Insert stern facial expression here*. Bang!
Also, her appreciative facial expression when I went on about the recession- well, that was heart-warming. “The Celtic Tiger retreated back into the Arabic Mist from which he once appeared”, apparently. Oh, she liked that one.
I used the conditional tense constantly… and every other tense going, including the bad oul’ subjunctive. Nobody’s even aware of the fact that there’s one of those in Irish, but the examiners grin and slight nod said it all.
Lucky woman, my examiner. I noticed she had to change her pants after that oral.
I think it went well anyway, something which I gladly celebrated with some ice cream afterwards.
I was so nervous beforehand that my hands started to turn purple (Yes, we all have our individual responses). I downed pretty much an entire bottle of Bach’s rescue remedy- which contains a fair bit of alcohol. I walked into that oral reeking of a whiskey-like beverage, swaying from side to side and laughing uncontrollably at the patterns on the carpet. Well, not really. I’m pretty sure I was indeed reeking of alcohol though.
Sitting in the career’s library in the build up to it didn’t exactly help- my fellow 6th years who were also waiting to be led into the oral rooms of doom felt it more important to discuss methods of doing the worst oral possible instead of letting me do some last minute cramming:
“Just answer everything by saying capaill”
“Feet up on the desk, bag’a cans. Few smokes. She’ll love it”.
My French oral’s on Wednesday. I’m not looking forward to it in the least. I pwn at Irish, but me and French shall never be friends. And the 71% I got in my mock Oral doesn’t exactly fill me with hope either. Eugh.
It literally can’t be worse than last year’s attempt. As I mentioned in previous posts, the examiner was far from lovely last year- and after I told her I do threesomes with my mother, by mistake, (I’d like to point out that I engage in no acts of a sexual nature with my mother- unfortunately the term for threesome is all too similar to the word for “housework”) well, it all went downhill from there.
It looks like I best get off this beautiful, wonderful, distracting internet and stick the head into the French books.
Not tonight though, the Skins finale’s in half an hour… I have my priorities.
Jennie Parker, well done 😀 🙂
I take it it went well then? 😛 Congrats!! Et bien fait mon amie. 🙂
( French rocks! 😛 ;))
tags: JENNIE IS AMAZING!, modesty
lol, fair play! Irish ftw! An Irish blog post would have been super impressive!
Thanks Donna!
Oh, and Colin- haha, yeah. My modesty is always pretty evident, one of my more obvious characteristics.
I was going to do an all-irish post, but then i realised that that would take a fair bit of effort. Maybe another time!
nach bhfuil aon chroi agat?? is oth liom a ra go bhfuil moran modhúlacht agat. smaoineamh ar na daltai a nach raibh sasta leis a scrudu beal.
tu a la grande tete je dois avouer
vous avez une tres grande tete, a vrai dire
Er in the actual Oral You cant be asked about Topics such as the recession healt system etc. You have to bring it in yourself
daithi/ kim (I include you as one seeing as those 3 above comments come from the same IP address and show profound similarities)
This blog details the experiences of leaving cert students.
Now, my experience of the Irish Oral was a very good one, so of course I’m going to speak of it like this.
Thanks for your concern.
You are a shining wit.
Hahahahaha, flawless delivery Liam…
Bah, nothing like a post from Jennie to strip away all confidence in one’s competency as a human being. I mean, one person should not be extremely smart, charming and confident. It’s against the rules. You’re cheating somehow. At life.
Either that or you’ve got a deep, dark, compensatory secret…
(See, Daithi, now Jennie has me as a cynical foil to her narcissistic tendencies. ;P So anyone who feels bad can write her off as a freak of nature.
Anyway, I find it somewhat hypocritical of you to criticise Ms. Parker for gloating while simultaneously showing off your own linguistic abilities… At least I have enough finesse to occlude whether I’m insulting or flirting with her…)
(Ya’ll have no idea the amount of finesse goes into these scribblings. For example, the amusing irony of criticising someone for criticising someone for gloating hypocritically, while hypocritically gloating. I almost tangle my OWN mind. Moreso.)
(That run-on sentence made sense. Read it again. Keeping in mind ‘criticising someone for gloating’ is being described as hypocritical, not just the gloating part.)
(I can’t decide what disturbs me more; that all this makes perfect sense to me, or that I’m actually writing it all down. I think I have consumed too much caffeine today…)
Last one:
(AHHHA! I just got the title reference. Good old Barry Scott…
I believe it’s spelled ‘Jonathon Woss’
No no, you must mean “Wibble Wobble, Johnathon Woss”
Love him.
Bla: Not necessarily true.
I got asked about the Health system, for example, when I said I wanted to do medicine. I got asked about the transport system when I said I come to school by bus. I didn’t necessarily introduce the topics. For the recession-speak, that came about when I mentionned University Fees.
Liam: I’m quite the lolcano alright.
Emerald: Aha, ha. Those comments combined were longer than most of my posts I’d imagine 😛
Nice!
Bang!
All Johnathon Ross-isms accepted.
Love how they targeted Jennie’s post with “vaginal dryness” spam.
This is a complete joke. Can’t believe someone has the nerve to be this cocky, After repeating and all. Just shows a huge lack of compassiion for those who didnt learn everything off by heart
The dude that commented trying to imply he was some sort of linguistic genius who is a step above the rest of us, the Albert Einstein of his time or something, is a loser. His post is littered with arrogance which he tries to gloss over with humour it is pathetic and I would enjoy meeting him on a night out to give him something.
Hi, congrats on doing well in your oral. I was just wondering if you could tell me what “the Celtic Tiger retreated into the Arabic Mist which he once appeared” translates to also I was wondering if you had any other helpful phases or tips in general for the oral. Any help would be very much appreciated.