Well lads, I survived. First proper week of this Leaving Cert thingy. I’m still in one piece, the family’s still in one piece, the cat’s still strutting around on all four legs….think I can count this week as a success. And I’ve pretty much settled in now. That is to say, any novelty there ever was has completely worn off, and all my nice little resolutions went completely out the window. Oh, things were meant to be different this year. I was actually gonna start bringing pens. Yeah, seriously. I was gonna get up at a proper time in the morning, so I didn’t have to rush 5 minutes late into assembly, face red, hair in disarray, resembling an escaped mental patient pretty much. I was going to do all my homework the night I got it, and my locker wasn’t going to be an ideal nesting place for small animals. Yes, it was all well and good saying these things on the first day of 6th Year, when I was still full of vigour and optimism. But a week in, I’m just so fed up of it all that I can’t conjure up any motivation. I’m just too tired to care.
So, I thought I’d take this weekend to chillax, recharge the old batteries and what have you. But no, our unfailingly generous teachers saw to it that we had a nice healthy dose of homework to keep us going. After all, couldn’t have us enjoying ourselves, not in Leaving Cert. Oh no, that would never do. My Irish teacher saw me smiling today, and he was shocked. Yeah, actually shocked that I could find cause to be happy in this, the most miserable year of our lives. Anyway, won’t bore you with the list of all that I have to do, but I’d say I’ll probably be joining the pension queue before I’m finished.
For starters, I get to write not one, but two sample answers on Oiche Nollaig na mBan, arguably the most miserable, joyless poem in Irish literature. Not that it isn’t beating off stiff competition. You’d never think that we Irish were all about the craic by looking at our poetry. This poem makes about as much sense to me as the off-side rule but I think the gist of it is this: Storm comes. Storm scares the bejaysus out of poet, but he hopes that when he dies there’s one like it, because he doesn’t want to feel a slow painful death. Well buddy, if writing that poem was anything like reading it, you’ve already had one of those so I wouldn’t worry too much. As if the subject matter wasn’t enough fun by itself, every line has about approximately 456 meanings…..yay! ‘ Oh the candle stands for innocence, and life, and hope and Christmas and spirituality…..and the poet’s goldfish, Rover, who died when he was 7’. Thanks Sean O Riordain, you’ve done me a massive solid this weekend, I owe you one.
And once I’m done that, I get to do the same thing again for Emily Dickinson. Ugh. Of course, I get that she’s a poetic genius and all that jazz, but the woman was a FREAK. My English teacher calls it a ‘sense of the theatrical’, I call it good ol’ fashioned lunacy. And of course, she was a miserable aul goat as well. Seriously, what is it with these poetic types and death? It’s an interesting topic, sure, I enjoy a lively discussion on it myself, but come on like. It’s not the be all and end all. Well, yeah, it actually is, but I digress. There is this whole thing first that we regular folk call life, maybe get out and experience some of it. Who knows, it might give you some new material.
Anywaay, yeah, I’d better crack open my schoolbag o’ fun and get on with it.
Later kids!
It’s a depressing enough set of poetry courses altogether, isn’t it? You’d want some seriously high serotonin levels to emerge unscathed.