Séamus Conboy, who wrote a Leaving Cert diary for The Irish Times last year, wonders why he bought into exam pressure.
As I sit here pondering the meaning of life, as all good college boys do between reading FHM and eating cold spaghetti hoops out of the can, I look back at the Leaving Cert and wonder: what was all the fuss about? Having made it through in one piece and, thankfully, having got enough points for my chosen course, I can now look back at it with a feeling of detachment.
Last week I finished my first-year college exams in history and political science at Trinity. They involved the odd moment of panic and physically tough essay-based papers, but that's where the similarities with the Leaving end. Months on end were not spent preparing for the exams, weekends were not wasted studying, parental pressure and crying girls were almost non-existent (and far easier to ignore), and there was absolutely no sense that if I fail these exams my life is over.
Why are all these things inevitably associated with the Leaving Cert? Why are they necessary? And, most importantly, why did I buy into them so readily this time last year?
In retrospect, it seems ridiculous the amount of effort I put in, and the amount of pressure I put myself under in the run-up to the exams. It felt as if the pressure of 14 years of formal education was culminating in this one huge exam.
Probably because it was.
During the last two months before the Leaving Cert, a large portion of my life was put on hold. I gave up swimming and refereeing, halved my hurling training schedule and sacrificed my Saturday morning lie-in, all in the name of study. Sunny afternoons were spent locked up in my attic, working my way through French grammar, integration and Hitler's foreign policy. In the week before the college exams, on the other hand, even the slightest hint of sunlight creeping out from behind the clouds was enough to have half the college outside, in shorts and short skirts, playing frisbee, or hurling, or anything else.
In college, three weeks (almost completely) off the beer with the telly unplugged and the head down is enough to squeeze through exams that are arguably no easier than the Leaving. At least I hope that's enough, because that's exactly what I did.
One of the main reasons for this is the lack of pressure. Lecturers mention exams in passing, the focus of the lectures being to learn, not just to learn how to pass an exam. There is no big media hype surrounding the exams, no big countdown, no annoying Junior Freshman Trinity Term Examination columnist in the newspaper and no CAO points to be worrying about. A nice II.2 or even a II.1 is all any of us want, and even more than we need.
Another major factor is that in college you're studying, for the most part (don't get me started on sociology!), what interests you. Paddy Kavanagh's poetry and Newton's theory of universal gravitation are not forced down your throat, unless you consciously decide to punish yourself by putting English or Science on your CAO form, and even then it's probably still possible to avoid them.
All in all, this leads to reduced pressure, and lots of smiling happy people sitting outside the Pav, drinking cans on a sunny summer's afternoon, possibly even watching cricket if they're that way inclined.
If there is anything that has stood to me from the Leaving over the past few weeks of intensive study it has been the organisational skills that I learned. Colour-coded folders, checklists of topics to be covered and well-structured essay plans are allies that I will take with me into any battlefield, examination hall or other academic environment. They may have seemed like minor details at the time, but the little titbits of advice from teachers are as important as anything you learn in school.
Going to college has given me a new perspective, and has allowed me to figure out my priorities. It has helped me realise that certain sacrifices must be made in the name of education, but that there is most definitely a limit. So many things are more important, like "networking", sleeping and learning how to juggle (literally, not figuratively).
You have your whole life ahead of you with nothing to do but work. College is a time to enjoy life, without the pressures of the big, bad world. Why shouldn't your last year in school be the same? According to sociology, education is part of the process of socialisation, preparing young people for their entry into adult society. Why have we deviated so far from this definition? Why has education become a non-stop competition where those who sacrifice the most succeed?
What do I know now, with one year in college under my belt, that I didn't know this time last year? Until you get there, college is nothing like you think it is. Political science isn't really a science, even if the lecturer thinks it is. Medieval history is far more interesting than you probably think it is. Bertie isn't a socialist, even if he thinks he is, and the Leaving Cert is definitely not as big a deal as everybody seems to think it is.