The Leaving

not for any mere thing like a person, but for the holidays that were truly buried this morning. Halfway through double Irish, watching my breath fog before me and slowly losing feeling in my toes, I closed my eyes and could faintly hear my teacher talking about how some people think they're too good to pay attentiion in class, and it honestly felt like I'd never left.

I barely made it through the day, the only highlight being that my grinds teacher never called to say we were back, so more sleeping time for me :)

I feel really bad over my lack of work over the holidays. But, on the up side, I've topped up the old college fund (for the time being) and I got to relax. I also read "Sense and Sensibility" (which is not the second book to "Pride and Prejudice", before anyone asks!) and I really enjoyed it. I'm going to read another Austen soon, but I think I'll space them out because once I've read it for the first time, I won't be able to read it without knowing what's going to happen again!

But, that is as far as I stretched my brain these past 2 weeks. My bag stayed under the stairs until Sunday, until Mam's hints made me move it upstairs, so it would look like I was doing work. I did grinds homework and History, then I intended to study but just couldn't bring myself to do it. After 30 minutes of staring blankly at the book I re-located to the couch with my duvet and DVDs- bliss!

The most worrying thing that happened over the Christmas was that the inevitable happened- I am starting to doubt my first choice. At the moment it's Arts with Drama in NUIG, and I've wanted to do it since it started, a few years ago. But I never gave a thought to the work placement year. The third year is spent on work experience in a theatre, but I don't want to spend a year sweeping the stage, and then 4th year consists of writing two theses, in the two subjects I've kept on (at the moment- English and History/Irish) that relate to theatre/drama some way. So, on top of the stress of pres, pre orals, study, friends and the Leaving Cert in general, I now have the "Am I doing the right thing?" dilemma.

Oh, and we started a new topic today in History :) We have 5 weeks to our pres. 5 weeks to do all about Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler. And it took us a month to do the Apprentice Boys!! I'm not looking forward to the next few weeks :( And ye are all going to have to listen to me!

Cheers
Kate

By the way- kudos to whoever re-vamped the blog. Loving the new skin.

Hello, I'm Jack and I'll be giving my opinion on this whole leaving cert lark as it unfolds in front of me. I'm 17 and from Cork.

The subjects I do are English, Irish, Maths, French, DCG, History and Physics. I do all except Irish at higher level.
This year hasn't been the best for me so far. I've been in and out of hospital with a persistent eye problem. It seems to have affected me badly for my Christmas tests. Hopefully the same won't be said in June. I am hoping to study Computer Science next year. UL and UCC have caught my eye but I'm still unsure about where exactly I would like to go. Comp. Sci. is 300 points and since I'm capable of far more than that I'm confident that I will get a place in whatever course I choose. I'd love to become a successful programmer in the future.

I LOVE music. The only genres I dislike are dance, rap and R n' B. I play the guitar and I used to play the violin (I probably still can a bit). I love sport too and I'm an avid Liverpool supporter.


So, that's it really. Just a short introduction. I look forward to blogging and reading what Lawliet, Kate and Crow92 have to say also.

Jack.

I seriously can't believe it's time for the Christmas holidays already. It could have been last week that I went down to my old school to discuss repeating with the vice-principal. Everyone told me this year would fly but I always had a sneaking suspicion that they were just telling me that to make me feel a bit better about the whole situation.
I don't mean for my first post to be a total downer, but honestly my decision to repeat was wrought with misery. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if I wasn't sure I'd gotten my course. When I got my results last August I was de-lighted. I was sick a lot last year, and somewhere between all the sick days and regular hospital visits, the whole studying lark got left to the way side. The only serious study took place a couple of weeks before the exams started. No one was expecting me to do particular well, least of all me. I had tentatively aimed for 300 points, and when I realized I'd gotten 360 I spent the rest of the day grinning like an idiot. I wanted science at UCD, the points for which were 300 in 2008. 360 had to get me straight in, right?
I was obviously very wrong, the points for that particular course went up to 385. I spent a few days in denial thinking that I might have a chance of getting a second round offer before finally accepting that this was unlikely, and starting weighing up my options. After a pep talk from my older brother I decided against taking the offer of some random biochemistry course I'd only put down to fill the form, and then I swallowed my pride and rang my old school.
It was highly depressing going back and being treated like a kid again; I never thought I'd have to put up with being given out to about the state of my uniform again, or being made to stand up for being late for class. I mean honestly! I just turned nineteen, this is slightly ridiculous!
It's not all bad bad though. I do have a friend back repeating with me who shares my pain, and joins me whenever I want to rant about how stupid this year is compared to our old year (I'm just talking about sixth years at my school specifically, I'm sure the rest of you are very intelligent. Seriously though, some of these kids are so thick, this girl in my chemistry class once asked how much carbon human bodies produce. Words fail me.)
It can be a good laugh though and generally teachers seem to like repeats because we, like, know things(!) and apparently we're oh so mature now for making the tough decision to repeat. Four months in now and I can honestly say I don't regret going back, I'm learning a lot more this year than I did in the previous one and I've had time to reassess my first choice and decide that the course at TCD might be a better fit.

So anyway, I've got one full day of school left and that's it for 2009! Got an ice-skating trip planned for Tuesday and I've got some serious gift buying to do! I'll probably post again before the New Year but in case I don't enjoy your holidays everyone!