EXAM DIARY:HELLO IRELAND! My name is Jessica, and here's my chance to let you all into my little world for a while.
I’m 19 years old and I go to Christ King Girls’ School in Cork. I’m a busy person, like all Leaving Cert students, but over the last year I’ve spent a lot of study time doing things that unfortunately won’t come up in the exams this summer, like writing songs and becoming a regular friend of YouTube.
The whole world, or at least the nine people who viewed my vids, now know what my bedroom looks like, what I look like, and how suspiciously dusty my desk is. However, over the past few weeks things have changed – the guitar’s been strangely silent.
I’m looking for at least 400 points in the Leaving Cert because I want to study English in UCC, but really I would love to hit that 500 mark, and you won’t get that singing Katy Perry songs and eating crisps.
I want to go to college for sensible reasons – that is, to have something to fall back on in the future . . . because I don’t really have a sensible career in mind. Drama and theatre are my first loves and I know I’m not cut out for a 9-to-5 for the rest of my life, and so I’ll just keep being stubborn until I get there, hopefully. It’s not about the high life, that doesn’t matter to me in the slightest, I just believe that people should never fear the “what ifs”, “buts” and “maybes”. Whatever it is that makes you happy, just go for it.
Well . . . within legal reason like! OK, enough with the national pep talk. Although I’m finding it hard to resist the platform.
As a greedy reader of news, writing in the paper is a dream come true for me – now I get to be the news, and I’m hoping to get more hits here than on YouTube.
Don’t get too excited about those videos, by the way – mostly it’s just me sitting on my bed, although there was one very creative one when I sat in an empty room in the house, mid-renovation. Loaded with allegory and symbolism, that one (see what I did there, Yeats – I’m in the zone).
So, if my music videos don't catch the eye of Mr Cowell and my Irish Timescolumn falls on deaf eyes, then I may have to resort to infamy instead. I've always loved English in school, and I'd like to get a BA under my belt and possibly put it to good use, you know, become a teacher, go on strike . . . JOKE, I joke, although I'm laughing, I do apologise to all the teachers that once liked me and now don't.
I’m still having withdrawal symptoms from my English classes that only came to an end a couple of weeks ago. It was the only class of the day I looked forward to, and I made sure I got my money’s worth!
I’ll either take history or French with it in college so I can go teaching. Both subjects have their perks really – history would involve lots of movie nights, and French, well nothing wrong with a croissant like!
But enough about me. The star of this column is of course the Leaving Cert. Much-maligned, slagged for its lack of pzazz, dissed by Enda Kenny and Google and not exactly top of the old Christmas list. But look, she’s all we’ve got and for the next three weeks she’s in charge. And while you’re reading this she’s looking over your shoulder and mine.
No pressure. She's been stalking me all year, following one step behind as the dark cloud that rains down on everything from Desperate Housewivesto Facebook (the reason we will all fail if there is any). And in these final weeks there's no unadulterated joy in anything – she's always there, wagging her finger, injecting guilt into all of us. But in a few weeks, my friends, the clouds will clear and the sun will come out smiling in harmony with us scholars.
That would be metaphorically speaking though – what will actually happen is that the sun will go in and the reliable Irish monsoon will hammer down until our first year summer exams start next year. Pathetic fallacy only happens in poetry books.
Good luck, people. We can’t do any more now, except spew it all out for the last time.
Over the next few weeks we’ll write enough words to fill a chick-lit novel, so at least we know we’re capable of a career in failed publishing if nothing else works out. Otherwise, like Belgium in the Eurovision, it’s just me and my guitar.
The diary will continue throughout the exams
