According to my latest facebook status, I’ve forgiven the SEC for their previous shortcomings.
As you may be able to tell, I’m in a particularly jovial mood. Finally, I found a paper that suited me just perfectly- Irish Paper 1. Higher Level. BEAUTIFUL.
Like most other Irish students across the country, I wrote a rote-learned essay about the recession which fitted perfectly into the title “Slán leis an Tíogar Ceilteach!” I was so excited on seeing the title that I literally couldn’t write anything for at least 5 minutes- I was grinning from ear to ear, and even chuckling under my breath about how there was actually an exclamation mark following the title- someone along the line knew there’d be a collective sigh of relief if that was to appear.
The comprehensions were a stroll in the park, and I left my exam centre in plenty of time to go outside and soak up the good vibes before the Aural.
I’d never seen quite so many gleaming faces after an Irish exam in my life- so many people had been banking on this lone essay that I can’t even begin to imagine how upset people would’ve been had it not shown up in some shape or form.
The negative aspect, of course, is that a lot of people had the essay prepared in advance, so there ought to be some very well delivered rants about the Celtic Tiger’s unfortunate disappearance and thus the marking scheme’s going to be an utter nightmare.
Personally, I’m not too worried – my teacher corrected my Recession-related essay a few weeks ago and give it a solid 100%, so I know I whooped it.
As for this morning’s Higher Level Maths Paper 2, well, it wasn’t quite as nice.
There were some pretty nasty questions, as there are every year, and what seemed to be a lack of theorems. There was one, yes, but it was pretty short. I, like many other candidates, had been really hoping for a nice 20 mark proof in Trigonometry. Instead we were asked about cheese.
I’d really rather if the little stories were kept out of the maths, to be quite honest. I like numbers- NUMBERS!
I really didn’t like the Circles question either- Earlier in the year, my Maths teacher was quoted with saying that “The problem with the circle is that you can know too much and end up going off on a tangent” (GEDDIT?!) but this really was not the case. I was kicking myself for neglecting to look over it last night.
I’ve no idea how I got on, but there were no tears or shrieks of panic. “Only okay” is how I’ve been describing my overall maths performance. I’ve no doubt that I got an honour- I just don’t think it’ll be as high as I’d have liked.
After the exam, I was chilling out in the park, Red Bull clutched in one hand, glucose sweets in the other, while I watched my many Maths sheets fly off into the wind. Let me tell you all, it felt good.
Also, today marked my last full day of exams, which felt just great.
It’s extremely difficult to concentrate on two totally different subjects when they’re grouped together as Maths and Irish were today.
I found myself thinking only trí mheáin na Gaeilge during Maths-
“x agus y = CAD? Ah, níl, ta sé sin mícheart. Oh, a Jhennie, cén fath nach dhearna tú neart stáidéar? Ionsach den scoth!” and during Irish I was still rattling off the formula for the internal division of a line segment.
I’m looking forward to Irish Paper 2 now- hopefully it’ll be quite nice and I’ll be on my way to getting the A1. As I blogged about a while ago, my Irish Oral was a resounding success- so all that’s in my way are a few dodgy old poets. Tá súil agam go mbeidh muid ceart go leor ar aon nós!
Maths-we hardly knew ye.
Thats what the feckin problem was alright!!
I think the cheese question was just pythagoras theorem a few times and area of a triangle, I’m probably wrong though..
Good to see you are as humble as ever. 🙂
yeah it was , eoin! i thought maths was a beaut, really nice questions!
Yeah? Lovely. I absolutely wrecked paper one, but I think I made up for it today. The vectors question was just easy marks the whole way through!
Srsly? Maths is my baby, but those questions put my baby in the oven An Triail style ;O
i gave up honours irish so i dont really get that reference…. babys in ovens? sounds like its only freaks that do honours irish, if you ask me….
and yes, thought maths was EXCELLENT! vectors was nice yeah, i saw q7 with five minutes to go and i got it done as a spare question (i hate probablity so i usually never glance at it, but this is one probability q with no probability!) loved it!
Eoin/ Maria- yeah. That’s essentially what I did.
I was told afterwards that what I did was perfect.. but I got an odd looking fraction so I’m a little bit “meh” about the whole cheese thing… I definitely did something wrong somewhere.
GAH! I ALWAYS get full marks in Trig, so- very annoying stuff.
Tphts-
I’m getting really annoyed by people telling me to be more humble.
WTF?
My overly confident nature’s part of my charm.
Also, whinging about maths not being perfect’s hardly that big-headed tbh.
Fizzzzzzz-
Yep, dead babies everywhere today. You’re not alone!
I thought q4 a and C were great too, but for some reason I made a complete mess of b!
And Jennie, sure what fun are exams if you can’t tell people how much better you did than them?
Q4 (c) (ii) just wasn’t my friend either.
I did that question first, but left that bit out.
Came back to it with 5 minutes to go and still couldn’t work it out.
I ALMOST had it though so I’m assuming I’ll get most of the attempt marks or something…
The more I think about it, the worse I feel…
“And Jennie, sure what fun are exams if you can’t tell people how much better you did than them?”
LOL.
This.
The most fun is when someone is all ‘omg I think I just barely scraped a pass’ and then you’re all ‘how did you do in this question?’ and THEY’RE all ‘oh I did this’. ‘Oh, you’re wrong about that. You’ve failed.’
HATE THAT.
I made my sphere/cylinder into a smiley face when my answer was the cube root of minus something ;D
The McLovin series was ace though
Say prayers to your grandparents thats all I have to say,my gran is doing wonderful work for me up there…they basically ripped off the 2002 maths paper on the circle and I did that last night,yahoo! my honour is in the bag
I got the cheese question out in literally the last ten minutes…I don’t know how many prayers I said before the divine inspiration came on…you just gotta love pythagoras’s theoram,sweet.
4)c)ii) was so hard! after much hair grabbing, it came out for me…. which proves me and trig BELONG together! hahaha!
you had to use the area from i), add it to the area of the other triangle, and let that equal the area of the whole thing, using sin2O
I got that out first time, really lucky guess! Normally I hate trig but it worked for me today! I was lucky with the graph too, looked at it this morning before I went in.
If it makes you feel any better I didn’t even attempt it.
I did however get a whole vector question out for the first time in my entire life (or, y’know, in the four weeks or so since we’ve learned what vectors are…). The last bit is possibly a bit iffy, but mneh.
My first ever attempt at a Q8 was rather hilariously bad. FFS, I completely blanked on how to integrate e^4x. I think I got it in the end, but I felt like an idiot. I didn’t even attempt the max/min, because I never learned how to do them.
But Irish was so lovely, I don’t even care. 🙂
You think the Higher level paper was easy? You should of seen the state of the Lower level.They asked us to write about a part time job that we have. I mean come on, every single Leaving Cert student in the country learns that shit for their Orals anyway. Thank you SEC, all is forgiven.
Great title choice Jennie i would just like to say! Very witty. 😀
Why in god’s name would you want a proof?
That “Cheese” question was the softest Part C i’ve ever seen in Q.5!
Come to think of it there was a lot of Stories in this years Maths, Anne and Barry had a nice story to them, and the block of Cheese with the edge taken off…. hmmm
Just saw bach’s rescue remedy on Jennie’s oral exam post. I just poured 1/8 of a bottle of vitality essence into a bottle of ballygowan (chemical ridden H2O) and well I may not see the morning. hmmm…
@Jennie “I’m getting really annoyed by people telling me to be more humble.”
Fuck the haters, fair play for being honest
I’m fucking sick to death of people trying to wreck my buzz when I tell them I know I got an A1. There’s fuck all wrong with making an honest, entirely objective assessment of how well you know you’ve done, and it’s better than the rest of these self-indulgent jerk-offs crying in your face after an exam telling you they failed and then getting straight As in the results
What we need more of is people who have the balls to publicly say they KNOW they got 500+ without this false timid “humbleness”. More power to you for keeping it real
Regarding the humility argument – I think there’s a graceful way of being quietly intelligent that in the end, can make you look much better for yourself than flaunting and consisently reinforcing past achievements, which can sort of be mis/interpreted as an insecurity, an unnatural exertion of superiority, or just plain arrogance. People will be far more dazzled by, and respectful of, intelligence if you pull it out at rare and unexpected moments…don’t reveal your tactics before the game, conceal your weapons until the battle begins…better confirm I don’t mean acting like a ditz so boyz wil thnk ur cute. I guess it’s different in writing, or even media, there’s a tone to be established and a persona to sell…like I’m sure Lady Gaga isn’t really that coy.
That’s all just my philosophy though, to do things for myself rather than so I can tell other people I did them. Each to its own. Sharp blog in general, dead on.
Anne and Barry were absolute bastards. GET OUT OF MY MATHS! I didn’t want your life story, and I certainly didn’t want to get involved in your little domestic over who’s right/closer/whatevs.
Block of cheese question just baffled me.
If you know the proofs, they’re simple marks. I only learned the angle between two lines one, and I wanted to do a little dance when I saw it there. SO easy! No work, no thinking, just slap it down. 🙂
What humility argument??? Are we reading the same blog? Oh and you misspelled consistently .
…….and Lady Gaga is shit.
……..and The Jonas Brothers
……..and Hannah Montana
……..and Tinchy Stryder
The list is endless
Ha, you are insufferable and for once don’t flatter yourself- your not charming rather pathetic
Rachel,her what is pathetic?
Well done on the maths! 😀 Irish was great,very happy with it.
This has been a pointless comment 😛
How can you say that about Hannah Montana? She’s such a cool chick..
And why do people care if Jennie says she walked an exam? It’s not harming anyone else, no need for the agro vibes.
for me it was a mess
PJ Ful, you misspellt ‘should have’, and forgot to capitalise an ‘I’, and left out the hyphen in ‘part-time’….
And given the nature of my comment, it was inevitable that I misspellt something 🙂
@kneeve
Success is built on arrogance. Unwarranted self-confidence is the greatest driving force in the human psyche. The Will to Power is the only true catalyst of all worldly success.
@kneeve
I did certainly not misspell ‘should have’, I said ‘should of’, someone needs an eye test I believe. Furthermore, rather ironically you misspelled ‘misspelled’. That has got to be the single greatest mistake anyone has ever made on this site. You don’t know how much I am laughing as I write this. It’s hilarious really when you think about it.
Oh wait you misspelled it twice actually, well done.
If empty, personally hollowing success still counts…
I’d say warranted self-confidence is a lot more of a force to be reckoned with than delusional folk thinking they’re all that, when they are, in fact, whack.
(Speaking in general terms, not directed at anyone)
Oh wait just a minute, you also spelled your name, I do believe it should be ‘Niamh’.
Emerald, Philosophy is the course for you man!
Srsly- Really agree with your points.
No point pretending to be all modest and shit when I just love myself this much.
(ROFLCOPTER!)
Sometimes I don’t even think I’m taking the piss anymore…
@Emerald
Look, my point is that everyone who is really, really GREAT at anything–and I’m talking about the cream of human civilization in terms of everything from science to art to warfare–has a massive ego and makes no secret of it. Ego is good. Dangerous, yeah, but also fundamental to all great achievement.
I’m not a big fan of Nietzsche (celibate+mental breakdown+admired by Hitler = dodgy), but he had this shit down. False modesty is a cloak for a slave mentality.
Srsly (firstly, respect for having a proper argument), you’re right, confidence is necessary to succeed. And although today moreso than ever, talent precedes ego, still I can’t deny that unwarranted self-confidence can maximise success. But (from my experience) it can easily get you labelled cocky and unbearable (maybe rooted in envy…maybe not…also NB that I’m not referring to you Jennie), so yeah, you’ll have your achievements, but will they mean so much in isolation? Example coming to my mind is Zwicky, an apparently awesome astronomer whose work is relatively unknown, or at least uncelebrated because he was an arrogant prick that few people liked.
I’m not promoting treading on eggshells or anything, just saying that I believe modesty, tact and respect can play equally important roles in success. Two different views really, deontology V utilitarianism. But it’s a hard one to argue, because isn’t it all circumstantial?
And of course PJ, if you’re going to do it, do it right. I didn’t misspell ‘misspelled’ because I didn’t try to spell ‘misspelled’. I did in fact misspell ‘misspelt’ (twice), would have been funnier if you had picked up on that.
biology anone?
biologhy anyone