Leaving Cert Diary: May
Last year missy.ie writer, Sophie Coffey, kept us up to date in the run up to her Leaving Cert exams with her Leaving Cert Diary series…we all know how that turned out now.
This year another missy.ie writer, Sorcha Kennedy, will be documenting her experience in 6th Year. With a lot still going on due to the pandemic and uncertainty over the 2021 exams, it will definitely be an interesting one to follow every month.
The end is officially in sight! This day next month (30th of June) I will be officially done my leaving cert exams, can you believe it?
I am, unfortunately, one of the unlucky few who has an exam on the last day of the exam timetable (thanks to Politics and Society) but it honestly doesn’t bother me too much. This month has been crazy to say the least.
Between final assessments for accredited grades, last days of school, an 18th birthday, and a graduation, it was all go!
The End of School
The last day of school was surreal. Anyone who knows me knows that I am most definitely not a “cryer”, especially when it comes to school. I had been extremely adamant all week that I would definitely not cry on the last day, which lasted all of 3 seconds when the day finally came. I have been really lucky that throughout secondary school I have had the best teachers, who turns out I’m super attached to.
Something about leaving the teachers who had helped and mentored me throughout the last 6 years had me in floods of tears the whole morning. It got to the point where one teacher’s name couldn’t be uttered without my friend and I beginning the waterworks again. By break at 11 o’clock I was all cried out.
The day concluded with a failed attempt at a water fight and a trip to the beach, a very cold and dull trip to the beach, but I couldn’t have asked for a better final day.
Graduation
We were one of the lucky schools who had managed to arrange a graduation ceremony, albeit a very strange graduation. The ceremony was full of songs, speeches, and memories, and of course a million pictures. We received our matching graduation necklaces and our hilarious yearbook, all while our parents watched over zoom. It was not the graduation I had imagined when I entered the school in first year but it was definitely special.
Wedged in between all the Leaving Cert and leaving school chaos I turned 18! It didn’t change me as much as I thought it would but I got my first scratch ticket (which was honestly what I was most looking forward to).
The End Is Not Near, It’s Here
Now we are 9 days away from the exams, and I’m patiently waiting for the notorious Leaving Cert stress and panic to kick in. But for some reason, it’s not coming and I have no idea why.
I’m never really the most worried about tests and school work in general, but I expected a little more panic to give me the drive to study more. Maybe it’s the safety net of the accredited grades (but how safe are they really?) or maybe it’s just that people have built the Leaving Cert up to be this huge monster but now that I’m up close it isn’t all that scary. Either way, I just cannot wait for them to be over so I can enjoy my final summer before adulthood really begins.
Congratulations to any Leaving Certs who decided not to take the exams and are officially done and good luck to all my fellow exam-sitters!