So it's the night before the Leaving Cert results come out, feelings of panic and dread are pretty strong within me right now as they probably are with the other 56,000 who sat their exams this year. My only thoughts are about passing maths or not, I had been 'strongly advised' to drop to a lower level and refused, so the fear of failing is one that might be realised at 9am tomorrow morning.
I've never been 'the academic one', I read a lot as a child so most of the content from the Junior Cycle was material that 'I just knew' so I got by very easily with no study and quickly doing my homework the morning of (with the exception of maths)
Senior Cycle was a different story, suddenly I didn't know what the teacher meant when they said 'Subjonctif' or 'Vision and Viewpoint' I definitely didn't know a word of what my maths teacher ever said. It got to the point that teachers didn't even bother to ask me for my homework cause it was seldom completed. Most people would take this as an opportunity to work incredibly hard, which I tried, I'd do a week here and there of being a diligent student. But for the most part in 5th year I was just lazy. 6th year came and I was doing as much as I could, and I started getting the worst results I had ever got. At this point every time I sat down even to do a basic homework exercise I panicked, school was the same. Of course, I wasn't the only person who was stressed, we all were. But being stressed and getting good marks and working too much is a lot different than being stressed, failing and having your entire body shake every time you looked at a book. Things turned around and I started doing better in school, not good by most people's standards, but good for me, and I was so happy.
I found myself over the moon with a C3 in Geography when others looked at their B2 papers in disgust. I cried with joy after I got a C1 in German in the pre, despite the fact it was still one of the lowest in the class.
My point is, you might have studied for three hours every night, you may have put your social life, friendships, jobs, everything on hold for the Leaving Cert and you might be get all Ds, and for you that's an amazing achievement. Meanwhile, the girl sitting behind you still has a job, plays two sports, is out every weekend and gets straight B1s and complains about not getting As. Just because tomorrow you get 250 points or 300 points that does not mean you didn't work hard, or that you didn't try, Some people work harder to get 350 points than others work to get 625 points, and that is forgotten all over the nation. The smart ones are the ones you can rote learn and regurgitate information, that fella with the big smile on his face on the cover of The Independent with 9 As, yeah he sure worked hard for it, but where's the person who got all Cs who's just as happy and who worked just as hard?
The most important thing is that you're happy. So if you get 7 D3s in Ordinary Level and you're happy, you go. If you get all As and you're happy that's great too. Exams are relative, so please just because someone gets 'low' marks that doesn't automatically mean they did badly, because for them they could be the best results they've ever gotten
Good luck everyone!!!
Laoise, Just The McGinning xx
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