Is This It?

There are now officially thirty seven days to the Leaving Cert. Thirty seven actual calendar days. If I were to revise a full chapter of biology every day until the start of the leaving I still wouldn’t get as far as viruses. I’d be completely omitting reproduction, which is almost guaranteed to feature on the paper. All things considered, I’m still not apprehensive. Nonchalant is the word I’d like to use, however ignorant, careless and perfunctory may also apply. The question remains as to whether I’m actually prepared for this thing or not, but I’m guessing that most of us are in this place at the moment. Having completed a good night’s study it’s easy to think “man, this won’t be as bad as I thought after all”. Conversely, the following night mightn’t be so great leaving said student alone to despair in a downward spiral of exam guilt. The leaving cert knows not a happy medium. Another thing the leaving doesn’t know is illness. Or weakness of any sort really. I’ve currently got the flu (no, not the swine flu) and have missed a few days of school as a result. One might think that all of these school-less hours would provide the perfect opportunity for some good undisturbed study, alas they do not. The hours and days fly by quietly, I’ve taken to waving at them as they pass. Instead I fill the hours with…I’m not sure what I fill them with, actually. I seem to be very busy for a person who doesn’t do a whole lot. Perhaps it’s the tea breaks. They’re such a chore.

One thing that I keep meaning to get round to is learning that dreadful “stair” business. It looks to me like that section of the paper started out as a good idea, a way for us to learn more about the history of our language. In reality it seems to be an inconvenient after thought, a footnote defiling the face of the Irish leaving cert paper. I got a substantial mark in the stair on my pre, which amused me as I made it all up. For “Béaloideas na Gaeilge” I paraphrased Cearrbhach Mac Caba, “An Ghaeilge sna meáin” prompted some sort of spiel on the utter importance of TG4 in our day to day lives, and so on. Such fun. If only the whole paper was like that. Is anyone else planning on relying on Cúlú Eacnamaíochta alone for the essay? I’m sure I could tweak it to fit some other topics…perhaps young people are drinking more cause they’re bummed about the recession. Spóirt? No problem! Schools are losing funding cause of the recession and so sport is falling in their list of priorities. Bochtannas sa Tríú Domhan could spur some sort of warped first world comparison. I could do this all day. Hopefully this new-found false confidence will work out for me in June.

The latest blog post just informed me that the CAO change of mind facility opens on May 5th o____O I thought all along that the date was June 1st, giving me a month long excuse to not decide on my choices. Damn.