Student Diary: back to the classroom

It’s difficult to imagine that the Leaving Cert exams will go ahead after missing so much school time over the last year, but at least we finally have clarification about the matter.

The option between accredited grades and a sit down exam is one that is frustrating me at the moment though.

There’s some comfort knowing that if I sit my exams and reflect my unpreparedness in my results, I always have an accredited grade to fall back on. However, a lot of my classmates have pointed out that it’s not feasible to sit all the exams as 12 weeks just wasn’t enough time to be given to study for seven subjects.

It’d be better to focus on your worst subjects in order to bring up a potentially poor accredited grade. This of course means putting faith in your teacher’s hands and hoping they give you the grade you feel you deserve.

Returning to school was something that I was very thankful for, as I found myself losing focus the longer the home schooling dragged on.

This is, without doubt, the best thing for sixth years – being back in the classroom. And it is hopefully just what we need to get us motivated and ready for the exams.

Unfortunately, it’s looking like a graduation is too much of a stretch. The idea of recording each individual class’s part of the graduation and putting them all together was floated. I’m not thrilled at the idea but it’s better than nothing. A lot of people are still holding out hope that we’ll get a debs and I have my fingers crossed for that too.

Project deadlines have all been pushed back to allow students more time to finish them.

Orals have also gone ahead. If sixth-year students weren’t going back to school I would have been in favour of cancelling the orals; as I doubt there are many students who have an Irish, French, Spanish or German speaker in their house, which means that oral practice had most likely almost completely stopped while in lockdown.

The CAO has received a record number of applications this year. This is due to a number of last year’s sixth years sitting their exams in November 2020, and applying to the CAO now.

This of course drives up points. Another problem for sixth years, but one we’ll put on the back burner for now.

Study timetables will be hectic to say the least. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. If this saying really is true then over the coming months we’re going to find out just how tough we are.