The Leaving Cert < Everything Else

Ah, how I love Easter. There’s nothing quite like having time off school. Except, of course, having time off from school which involves daytime television, messed up sleeping patterns, alcohol almost every evening and of course, the whole chocolate aspect. (Even though absolutely nobody gave me an Easter egg this year. Not even my Mother. Thanks for that one, useless adoring fans.)

Ahhh, whoever’s in charge of setting school holidays and stuff (In this case, Jesus?)- Cheers. I salute you. I really needed a while off to vegetate a little and forget more random stuff I actually did learn earlier in the year. I needed to spend a little bit of quality time with my good friend Facebook. I needed to listen to Bat for Lashes new album around 20 times. I needed to sample a few different wine varieties.
Seriously, I really appreciate it.

Someone asked me the other night about what I did last Easter in terms of studying and how it compared to this year’s meagre attempts at getting stuff done. This got me to thinking and eventually “bhuail cúpla smaointe mé”. My effort this year, well, it’s quite similar really.
Last year, our orals were after the Easter break which, I must say, was pretty good for motivation. I do recall actually doing some work, but it was pretty much only in Irish and French- I still spent my weekends in the pub and my other evenings doing far more important things. Most of my friends were living near me at that stage (As opposed to now, where local friends have, for the most part, abandoned our lovely hometown to get some sort of a Third Level Education elsewhere) so distracting myself was much easier, but that’s not to say I haven’t managed it this year. Thank you, Internet.
Back then, I was a little more naïve.
 “Jennie”, I said to myself, “You’re going to do 10 hours of study a day for 10 of the 14 days off this Easter. That’s 100 hours, no problem!” I made myself a little chart with 100 boxes on it and told myself I’d tick off one box for every hour I got done. I think I’d be lucky if about 5 of those were ticked off in the end. Poor, naïve, foolish, younger Jennie.

Personally, I much prefer weathered Jennie. She understands how things work in reality.
Yes, I have been known to say ridiculous things like “I’m definitely going to do loads of study today!” or “I’m definitely putting the head down and working from now on! I have to reach my full potential” or “<insert ridiculous, unrealistic statement here>”, but underneath it all, I know I’ll do as little as possible, and I’m actually becoming quite cool with that. And, for the record, my hair’s much nicer these days too.

We all know of those really hard working students who put in an awful lot of effort and get everything they could ever dream of (academically only of course) and really, I’d love to be one of them, but I’m just not. I can’t fully dedicate myself to something which I’ve lost all interest in to be honest (ie, the LC).
A lot of people seem to have gotten the impression that all I do is study. Not the case, unfortunately.
I want to study medicine, yes, and I do tend to get pretty good grades, but I’m not wholly dedicated. I get really mad at myself when I don’t get top grades, but if I’m to be truly fair to myself I KNOW I don’t deserve them most of the time. This year, I’m hoping I can beat my last year’s 550… but I’m doing equally little work. Foolish Jennie.
Natural intelligence works a treat, but I’m just not THAT naturally intelligent. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve left the house with my t-shirts on backwards or inside out or something.
(Maybe that just proves I’m not able to dress myself more than anything else, but whatever. I did it again today. Again, foolish Jennie.)

So, basically, I’m destined to fail. At life.

I actually can’t remember where I wanted this blog to end up. I got off to such a good start, praising time off and so on, but now look at me, concluding that I’m a  failure. I think I’ve just undermined myself.
Bah!
Time to go have a beer, methinks. I’ll update a little bit more positively soon! Maybe I might even get back my motivation. (YAY! LEAVING CERT! I’M GOING TO BEAT YOU!!)
It’s looking doubtful though. “Meh” is the word of the moment.