Never in two years of Leaving Cert German had I contemplated doing Ordinary Level. But this morning I learned that several of my friends were dropping down to Ordinary level and these were people that did better than me in their mocks. Suddenly, doubts were cast in my mind but I knew that I couldn’t even contemplate dropping - I needed to pass German to get into university, but without the points of honours I wouldn’t have enough points to get a university course - so honours it would have to be!
The first of the two comprehensions was quite difficult. It was about a woman who loved the language of music. I spent close to an hour trying to decipher the meaning of the story. I was at a particular disadvantage having not looked at music vocabulary since the Junior Cert! I was only able to manipulate the text in a small number of places so I’m certainly not entitled to full marks there. The second text was much easier and I certainly made up for my lack of manipulation in the first text here as I was able to substitute words in many areas as I was well prepared in the topic.
My Ausserung Zum Thema was a hastily put together 86 word piece which is slightly shorter than the recommended amount but I was under a pit of time pressure to move on. The letter was the final task on the paper. I was asked to respond to my German penpal who was telling me all about their gap year in Africa, their class project, their “Abi Ball” and Reality TV. I enjoyed writing it and it came in at about 200 words in length although I didn’t really include any phrases that implied fluency but I’m hopeful of a good honours mark on the paper!
After a quick 5 minute break, we were subjected to the aural exam. It was generally quite easy , at times it was unbelievably easy, but there were a few difficult parts I found to Part 4 - The News Bulletins - one being a UN announcement which I now know was to do with dolphins but I wrote down that it was the “Year of the Fisherman”. Also as I’ve been doing since 5th year, I answered the only part of the exam that’s meant to be in German in English before realising my mistake upon the second listening!
Before the exams started, I was openly dismissive about being able to get my first choice in college, but now, with only one exam left, I’m starting to feel as if I may just be in with a decent shout should the points happen to drop. My remaining exam is Economics - my strongest subject. I hope to spend the next few days putting in the work required for an A1. If I manage that then who knows how my college offers will pan out…
Since last Thursday, the only thing I’ve been looking at is the blue examination papers and I was getting a bit bored of them! So I was pleased today to be sitting a higher level exam in the form of History. I said yesterday that it’s a course so vast that all you can do is pray that what topics you’ve studied come up in some shape or form on the exam! Of course you could spend the time praying doing some actual study instead. I like my way better though for today when I opened the paper I saw questions on everything I had studied… lucky me 
The documents question was based on the GAA and while I didn’t do much study on it, the questions were nice and easy and the 40 mark essay was on a nice and broad topic (how did the GAA overcome the difficulties it faced). I just waffled on for a page and a bit about how they popularised the sports and tackled the Fenian influence in the organisation. Hopefully I’ll get close to full marks for the section!
Section Two was all about Irish History which is by far my worst area because of the many similar dates that you’re required to remember and despite my last minute efforts to imprint important dates into my brain, I forgot them all when I went to answer the question on Anglo-Irish relations following the foundation of the Free State. All I could do was include rough dates but I reckon the standard of my two and half page answer was around the C level.
I must say that I loved the 2 questions I did on European History. The Dictatorship and Democracy question I did saw me explain the main characteristics of Nazi Germany prior to WWII. I was able to rant and rave about education, the economy, propaganda, religion and the persecution of the Jews for a good while and I reckon the overall answer was worthy of maybe 75/100 marks, once again dropping marks for being unable to pinpoint certain dates! The other question wasn’t on The role of women as I had hoped… instead it was on the role of women and the changes in family and marriage. I was spoilt for choice! I was able bang off facts and figures relating to 40 years of change and was able to get in 8 decently sized paragraphs all filled with scrumptuous relavent information. I’d be disappointed if I don’t get 90/100 for it
Overall I reckon it went very well and am hoping for a low B or a high C. I was very nervous about it this morning but once I started writing there was no looking back and I left the exam hall after time was up today feeling as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders! I know many have finished their exams today, but I still have two left - German and Economics. Strangely enough I can’t wait for them!
“Can I really do Higher Level?” I was saying to myself last night. I was looking at my pre paper - 32% - I didn’t study then so you’d think that it would be easy enough for me to do honours and pass but on the other hand, I hadn’t really done much work on Biology since the pre’s and I felt that my passing would have been reliant on me getting both easy questions and a sympathetic corrector!
I didn’t feel like riding my luck though and I decided to be happy with the 35-40 points I could get in Ordinary biology rather than risk failing honours for a small chance of me getting 40-50 points. So this morning when the supervisor was handing out the papers I requested to change down to pass.
I opened the paper and it did look fairly daunting but thankfully I had checked out a marking scheme the night before and realised that the marks were “top-heavy” meaning that the majority of marks were going for the initial answers and a minority of marks go for further points that you add (eg: 10 marks for first point, 5 for second, 3 for third and 2 for forth). This suited me down to the ground as Honours biology requires that you know the course in great detail whereas Ordinary allows you to get marks without this indepth knowledge. However, knowing one or two topics in great detail doesn’t get rewarded in Ordinary because of the distribution of the marks - you’re far better knowing a bit about everything than everything about a bit!
There were certainly questions that I choked on and had to take wild guesses at but I am quite confident of a good result as I did attempt every question with “educated” guesses. I’m not happy that I couldn’t remember anything about the Protein test though which formed a question on Section 2 although I did draw a nice diagram on Rhizopus which I had just revised before going into the exam
I left after 2 hours and was one of the last pass guys to leave, so I’m quite confident of a high C in it which mightn’t sound like much but by my logic it’s better than failing at honours level!
Tomorrow is History, a subject with a course so vast that you can only hope that something you study comes up! So as long as the GAA, De Valera in Power, theNazi state and The Role of Post War Women comes up then I’ll be in great shape. If only….
I had intended on doing a lot of study for this… I really did. But then I got the bright idea to go on a short cycle on Saturday which quickly turned into a 30 mile endurance test! I slept for about 15 hours and had no energy to study yesterday! So I walked into the exam hall today having only revised 2 chapters - Area and Volume and Linear Programming - and hoping that the Probability and Statistics questions would be kind to me!
I turned over the paper at 9:30 this morning and flicked straight to the Linear Programming question - my strongest question - and was immediately faced with a question that was phrased differently to those of previous years and I really choked on the question trying to figure it out for around half an hour before conceding and flicking back to the other questions in the paper.
I flew through the Area and Volume question and thankfully the probability question was simple and I reckon I got 50/50 in those two questions. I dropped a few marks in the Statistics question by mistaking the ‘median’ for the mean but I should have got around 40/50. I then attempted the rest of the paper, trying to gain as many attempt marks as possible although there were several parts to the Trigonometry and Geometry questions that I couldn’t even attempt as I didn’t know where to start!
With the rest of the paper attempted, I went back to the Linear Programming question to see if I could make heads or tails of it. I attempted it in a few different ways but just gave up - my diagram was incomplete and incorrect. I was frustrated with the question because it’s usually my “banker” question. With 3 minutes left I attempted a part C to the Further Sequences and Series question which surprisingly had a Compound Interest slant to it!
I left the exam hall a few minutes late and feeling a bit hard done by. I feel as if the phrasing of the question was more cryptic than anything else. I know that equations in disguise are a part of maths but even Sherlock Holmes would have had great difficulty in seeing through this particular guise…
For along time I wondered what the point was in studying for Irish paper II. It’s worth a mere 17% and the work that you must put in order to obtain that 17% is quite heavy! I just didn’t consider it worth my time studying when all I need is a pass in OL as it will be the subject that I’ll be discounting at the end of the Leaving Cert. Nevertheless, despite my views on this section of the exam, I put in about an hour of study last night absorbing all the information I could on “Clare sa Spéir”, “An Cearrbhach Mac Caba” and the poem “An Gealt”.
I opened the paper to see one of my worst fears… Clare sa Speir and An Cearrbhach Mac Caba were merged into the one question which meant that I had to do a question on “An Bhean Og” blindly. Thankfully if you’re ever going to do a question blindly, Irish paper II is where you want it to be with very few marks going for the moderately long answers that are expected of you. I thought that I managed to handle myself relatively well although I was annoyed that I was forgetting some shockingly simple words like “funny” but I handled that by saying “Bhí mé ag gáire nuair a….”.
So of the 17% that’s going for this OL paper, I reckon I’ll be doing well to get 11% which will hopefully supplement the marks I got in my oral, the aural, and paper 1. I have the weekend to myself now and I’ll spending that time studying Maths, Maths and more maths. And History and Biology!
After being relatively pleased with my English exam, my nerves were settled for yet another full day of exams. The night before saw some last minute preparation for the subjects with a focus on Maths as it’s my subject of the two and I’ve always been told that “you have to work hard to fail Irish”.
Maths paper one (OL) was our first exam of the day and when I turned over the paper I was relieved to see an easy Arithmetic question, its most taxing task was having to calculate the hours worked by a worker in a day. I think I spent more time being jealous over the amount of money he earned than I spent actually doing the question! There were surprisingly easy parts to some of the questions and nothing was really too complicated. A nice paper overall, I just hope Paper II will be as accessible.
Irish paper one (OL) was a a very nice paper. For the first time in a long time in a paper, I understood the comprehensions which always helps when you’re answering 10 questions on them each worth 4%! The essay titles were all nice and liberal, I chose to write about Saturday nights being my favourite night and my father winning the lottery. I managed to reach the recommended word count on each and although my standard of Irish is pretty bad in parts, I’m hopeful that I picked up marks worthy of a good C1 in the paper!
The aural directly followed the Irish paper (well, after a 1 hour lay about in the Sun) and it wasn’t too bad. The supervisor commented on there being a few difficult parts for Ordinary Level and I would have to agree. There was one question in particular that I was totally lost for, ‘Comhra Dó”. I was waiting to hear the title of a book for the 2nd question and suddenly realised that the conversation had moved onto the 4th question! Apart from that, I can’t really complain about it and I’m glad that I will never have to listen to that deplorable Ulster accent EVER again… unless I flick over to Ros na Rún that is!
It’s paper two tomorrow, the prose and poetry paper, which is worth a mere 17% of the overall exam. I’m not going to cry myself to sleep over my lack of preparation and will probably just look at “An Gealt” which is the most tipped of poems to be on the paper!
Today saw some 50,000 Leaving Certificate students pour into over 4000 exam centre’s around the country for the start of the State Exams 2007. English was the flavour of the morning and afternoon and candidates were presented with fair and topical papers which I personally found to be easy to interpret and write on.
Paper one, the comprehension and composing paper, consisted of 3 articles, one of which was looking at the impact of movies on society and another that compared old with new as we were told of the differences between London of the 1930s and modern day London. I forget what the third short article was about as I didn’t answer any question on it. The essay titles were very liberal and were designed to give us almost total freedom about what we wrote although in many cases there was specified register which may very well have caught students out.
My choices of questions to answer were Text One’s section B, where I had to write out an informative election leaflet and Text Two’s section A. My choice of essay was a short story based on an image of a ballot box, I just hope that the corrector interprets the stories sudden ending as being symbolic of the abruptly ending career of a politician who doesn’t fare well in the elections! Fingers crossed!
We returned after a short lunch for Paper II of the grueling endurance test that English is! Straightaway, all 18 students flipped to the last page to see which poets had appeared. I had studied 3 - Plath, Montague and Frost but could only answer comfortably on the first two. My eyes scanned the page… Frost, Montague and Frost were all there but now I was faced with tough decision over what question to answer for this valuable 50 marker. I eventually decided on Plath and over four pages I eloquently described how her poetry is “intense, deeply personal and disturbing”. I’d be very shocked not to get at least 45/50 for it!
The other two questions on the exam - The Comparative Study and Single Text - weren’t quite as well answered. Words weren’t flowing quite as easily from me as they were for the Poetry but I do feel as if I exploited the comparative study question and threw in plenty of comparisons and feel like I justified them adequately. My single text question was on Macbeth and I’m disappointed that I could remember so few quotes. I made certain not to make the mistake of retelling the story in my answer by discussing several key moments in the relationship of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth! I spent the last 15 minutes of the exam answering the Unseen Poetry question which I absolutely hated and will be lucky to get 10/20 for it!
So after almost 6 hours of constant writing with the constant threat of cramp, I emerged from the exam hall in a relatively happy mood. I’m disappointed with my lack of Macbeth quotes and my unseen poetry answer but I’m going to be relatively optimistic for English when the results come out on August 15th!
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