Je ne comprends pas : The Leaving Cert Orals 2010

So then eight weeks and its all over, eight weeks? Thats it.A nice round two months and you’ll never have to say pardon madame, je ne comprends pas la question. Seems like yesterday I was walking the crowded hallways for the first time. I’ll be honest I’ve never been much of a worker and I’ve managed to scrap by the last five years with a lot of “not working to full potential” and “needs to concentrate”. Needless to say then Easter was what i like to call a study disaster, I left with such good intentions and arrived back with a throbbing head, several unseemly scratches and more than a few hours missing from a couple of good 18ths a colourful bank holiday and a rainy visit to dundalk racecourse.

Now then let me paint you a picture its the monday of oral week and I’ve got two days before I’m sitting in front of a examiner. Heres a little extract from a conversation me and my french teacher had today. “Aoife,tell me about your family”( obviously enough she said it french, but well frankly i dont know how too) “well j’ai un soeur and trois soeur, oh wait sorry trois frere. ma soeur s’appelle rebecca. elle et douze ans.” “Shes 12?” “oh no shes vingt sorry” (I lied shes 22)” And whats she doing at the moment aoife, working?”……..silence. Roughly 30 seconds to a minute later and I reply in English, “eh shes not doing much to be honest a lot a hanging around the place”. No doubt at that moment everyone in the room had a similar image of me and what I’d be doing come September. Thankfully my darling teacher moved on then to another student, unfortunately that student appeared to have memorized the entirity of “le francais oral”.

All the mocks arent back yet still waiting on history but so far have got some outrageously average results sum totalling 395. My mediocrity shines brightly with a lovely collection of c’s and a couple of b’s under my belt. Yet here I am, sitting here writing this when clearly my French speaking voice could do with a little work, but hey its not all doom and gloom. Two months to the exams is plenty of time and in fairness more than likely I’m gonna have a lot of fun getting there and so are you. So the next 8 weeks, sure they’re gonna be challenging and your gonna have that stage where you have a minor break down and curse the heavens for inventing pressure like the leaving cert, but for all you “can work harder” and “greater effort needed” students, hey theres light at the end of the tunnel and whenever you think “ah sure I’ll do a bit tomorrow”,try instead to say no I’ll do a bit tonight and in six months I’ll be plastered, but I’ll be plastered in the college I want doing the course i wanted.

LOVE AOIFE!

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