After the success of my French oral last week, I had my Irish one to worry about on Monday. It wasn’t quite as good as the French one, but it went fine really, the examiner was a little awkward though.
Today I was in Trinity College for a maths revision course (as I was last Saturday also). Pretty tiring, but it was pretty useful in the end, since we basically revised the entire higher level maths course over two weekends. And during lunch today I walked into the wrong shop (the one beside the shop I thought I was heading for), and for fear of looking like an idiot by walking back out immediately, I look around. Thankfully I was surrounded by dvd’s and cd’s, not some weird sex toys or something. Then I glance at the top shelf and see a Redneck Manifesto cd I’d been wanting for ages but hadn’t been able to locate. Second-hand. €10 . Fuck yes.
We also saw Dave McSavage around town, doing his little thing. While admittely I did laugh at some of the stuff he was at, I really just wanted him to shut the fuck up and get off the streets. You can tell his material is just the same stuff over and over, and he’s just irritating. I can’t quite explain it. It’s like he thinks he’s far funnier than he really is. When it comes down to it, there’s a reason why he’s selling his dvds out of a bag on the street rather than in shops. Personally I despise the whole “PC brigade” type of thing these days, but he was pretty insulting to some people, and usually I’d be pretty easy-going with that sort of thing. Moral of the story? Dave McSavage : Shut up man, you’re not that good.
On the website side of things, this blog finally reached 40 RSS subscribers. Finally! You bastards had me peaked at 39 for ages. The number tends to fluctuate, but had hit 40 a few times now, so I thank all my subscribers, and apologise for calling you bastards in the previous sentence.
Tune in on Tuesday when I’m hoping to get a decent post (or two) up here, hopefully to coincide with some exposure the site might be getting. More on that to come my friends!
Today was the day I did my Leaving Cert french oral exam. I’ve always been fair decent with the french oral, and I think it went pretty well today. Hs asked me some of the harder topics which is considered a good sign. I was asked about the celtic tiger, obesity, social problems and technology and bebo.
I produced an answer for every question, so I was happy that I didn’t resort to the “Je ne sais pas” or “Ca ne m’intresse pas” type of answers to get yourself out of jail.
The orals are in my opinion, the worst type of exam you can do. They’re so difficult to study for and very nerve-wracking. I was sitting outside waiting to be called in for ages. Then the guy comes out and tells me he’s going to get a cup of coffee and will be back in a few minutes. At this stage you really just want to go in there and get it all over with. I’d also been over-dosing on Rescue Remedy (a dropper type thing that supposedly keeps you calm) to keep the nerves at bay. I’m not too panicky usually, but when I found that stuff in the house the night before, I thought I may as well bring it in.
When I was in there the nerves didn’t affect me very much at all, I knew I was getting on well, and the examiner was a nice guy that seemed all to willing to help if I had needed.
Also, there’s been some exciting news for me of late involving a national newspaper, but I’ll keep it all under wraps for now at the risk of looking like a fool if it doesn’t all go through.
Next week I have my Irish oral, just four days after the French, boo-urns to you State Examinations Commission. There was an incident in my school with the german orals actually. The german oral examiner for our school was in a car accident and the exams had to be postponed. The thoughtful Examinations Commission suggested doing the german orals the following week (the same week as the Irish orals). Thankfully my school had enough sense to say no and do them the week after. It’s times like this I’m grateful for being a dirty, smelly, arrogant French student rather than a hardened beer guzzling German student.
Good luck to any fellow leaving certers with the orals this week and next week. Remember, your examiner is just another teacher, they want to see you do well.
That’s right, I’ve joined the world of ebay consumerism.
I’ve been browsing ebay a lot lately, and there’s really some good bargains to be had on there, and the ability to purchase using paypal is a huge advantage for me with my online income coming through there.
So today I saw something I really couldn’t resist, it was pretty pricey and I dismissed purchasing it at first, but the more I looked at it the more I realised I’d regret it if I didn’t go and buy it.
A 24″ x 36″ print, done by some eastern European artist, featuring some of my favourite movie/tv characters. Tony Soprano from the Sopranos (James Gandolfini), Tony Montana from Scarface (Al Pacino), Jimmy Conway from Goodfellas (Robert Deniro) and Don Vito Corleone from The Godfather (Marlon Brando). Behind these guys who are seated at a bar is their respective crews. There was a black and white version of it available too, but I went with the colour, it looked a bit better to me. The overall price incl. delivery was £28.00 which is around €37/$57, but I’m pleased I bought it. I have to consider getting it framed when it arrives.
Another online purchase today may interest some Leaving Cert students who read this blog. Leaving Cert Solutions.com offer books with all the Maths exam questions from previous years and the solutions combined. On one side of the page is the question, and on the other the solution, which is much handier than having to go online and find the solutions and print them off all the time or whatever. It cost €25 to order online, and though this may seem expensive, since you already have the exam papers, and get the solutions for free, I feel it’s a pretty big timesaver, and should come in handy. They do Higher and Ordinary level too, in case you’re wondering!
This is something I noticed last week when sitting my exams. Obviously there’s teachers supervising us. Then you get the one or two hot female teachers in the school supervising. In an exam hall of teenagers just bursting with hormones, this is not advised.
You hear the familiar sound of her high heels walking up the hall. Oh yeeaaah. That heavenly clip-clop mimicking the rhythmic beat of my heart.
At this point you go into some sort of Scrubs style fantasy, just like in this video.
You have to look up as she reaches your desk and begins conversing with some old hack of a colleague. The sun shines through the window highlighting the radiance of her ravishly refined body. And then, shite. Five minutes to finish this essay.
You bitch.
Also, I wonder if anyone else finds that they get ridiculous songs stuck in their head during exams. I was doing my english paper and in my head I was singing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. I mean, could there be a more ridiculous and innappropriate (on many levels) song to get into your head during an exam?
Finally, my mock exams are over. My last exam was yesterday afternoon, and having finished (a day or two before most people I might add) I enjoyed some Sopranos before it reached a somewhat acceptable time to go out to poison my liver.
A lot of my friends are still not finished, with an exam to do tomorrow, so I’ve been lucky in finishing so early.
Overall, the exams were ok. They’re 3 months or so ahead of the real exams, so it’s accepted that you’re not going to do as well as you will in the real leaving cert. Considering how little work I did overall, things went fine. My final exam, Physics was a bit of a nightmare though. I usually get an A grade in physics, and I’ll be relying on it to be a high grade in the leaving cert. The paper has a section A and a section B. Section A was beautiful, and I was cruising. But then Section B was like it was made to cover only the areas I dislike most. I expect a C (or perhaps even a D) grade, which is very disappointing. Thankfully everyone shared the opinion that it was very difficult, and even on forums people were complaining about the paper.
Tonight I’m hoping to clean up my bedroom, because when you’re studying for an intense two weeks of exams, you tend to just find the book you need to study and throw it away as soon as you’re done and begin searching for the next one. Then you have to look for a sheet of notes or something, and you end up just thrashing your room, but you haven’t got time to care for that (several nights I stayed up till 3am or so, with the aid of coffee, and got up again at 7am to study some more before going to the exam - procrastination is a terrible terrible thing!). Two weeks later you’re walking on a carpet of books and sheets. Though in the process of thrashing my room, I think I found my camera charger, so once I check that I actually did, it’ll be well worth it! Perhaps I should take some pictures of the finished product and follow in the footsteps of Jason on TUK?
Tomorrow I’m hoping to do a little work on my websites, or lack thereof. This will involve a timetable to ensure I cover all the things I need to in an organised manner. I’ll post that up here tomorrow.
I’ve got just four exams left, out of a total of ten.
On Friday I had History and my second English paper. These two exams being on the same day was pretty demanding, since there’s so much material to cover for both. I got on grand, but certainly could have done better in both.
My last exam is this Wednesday, which is the earliest anyone in my year is finishing (a lot of people are in until Friday) so that’s pretty good
I’d like to give a shout out to a new Leaving Cert blog, found at leaving-cert.net. It’s an idea I wanted to do a while ago but could never find people that seemed enthusiastic about helping me with it. It’s the blog of three LC students giving updates on how they’re getting on.
While mentioning new sites, I figured I’d go ahead and show a new site of mine. This is one I’m doing basically for my own pleasure, and not really for business purposes. I love the whole lolcats thing on the internet, so if you’re familiar with it, take a look at ShavedLittlePussy.com (I also bought the domain lolcatblog.com for it).
I’ve gotta go try study, since I haven’t managed to get anything done so far this weekend, as today I’ve had one of those hangovers you just can’t seem to shrug off. This was an excuse for me to watch Ireland in the rugby of course.
Tday, I have a day off from my exams (owing to the fact I don’t do Biology or Art).
Friday I have a tough day, with History and English Paper 2, so unfortunately there won’t be much relaxing going on today.
Today I just had Irish paper 1, which was ok, since it’s not really a difficult paper, but in terms of previous years, it was a difficult exam. Usually the comprehensions on the papers are topical and things teenagers would know about, but the stuff on this was pretty odd.
There was also a little too much time given to this paper, as literally everyone was finished early.
Also, I meant to post this earlier. On the first day of these exams I noticed there was no clock in the exam hall. So I ask one teacher and she tells me she’ll get one soon. A few minutes later I see her leave the hall and come back empty handed. This angered poor Mark who was taking a classy approach to these exams, as one of the main reasons for them is to practice time management, so with no way to tell the time in the fucking exam hall, this becomes unless you have mastered the sun’s progress as a method of telling the time. So I then ask another teacher. He comes back in a few minutes with a clock - and a cup of coffee of course.
The same thing happened in the exams we had in November, and I had to ask a teacher to get a clock then.
It’s not like this sort of thing keeps me up all night (not every night anyway) but jesus, if you teachers are going to rant and rave about preparing for our exams, for christ’s sake, do your end of the deal, and give us the few things we need. My maths test had some of us sharing log tables between two people. Surely it’s not hard to ensure there’s enough to supply us all with one (for the love of God, you’re the Maths department, ‘number of students > number of log tables’ is simply not a good equation!)
Used some variation of God’s name three times in that paragraph.
We’re two days into my mock exams ( see previous post for more info)
I’m weary of making predictions on here regarding my results, because there’s always that chance that I’ll do far worse than I thought.
On Monday, it was just English Paper 1. I feel I did well, and usually do in English, but this paper is very subjective, as much of the exam is testing your creativity and essay writing. Paper 2 examines your knowledge of poetry etc, (but that exam isn’t until Friday, so I won’t be worrying about it until much later!)
Today was a pretty tough day, with Geography (not too complicated, but there’s so much to cover) and Maths Paper 1. Geography went fine, and this would be a strong subject for me too, but it can sometimes be hit and miss. We’ve only just completed the course, so a half decent grade at this early stage would satisfy me.
Maths, higher level maths, was a freakin’ disaster! Most people shared this thought though, but a look at this old rant could put these reports into question.
Tomorrow it’s Irish paper 1, so I’m off to try learn a few essays!
My mock exams start tomorrow. These are exams organised by your own school, with the aim of completely replicating the actual leaving cert exams. Schools do them at different times, so unfortunately some of the exam papers have been leaked onto the internet. You’d think this would be good, but to cheat on the mocks completely defeats the purpose of them. I hate to sound like a teacher, but I know that I’m doing these exams for my own good, to see how I’ll cope with a full LC paper, not knowing what’s coming up, and to get an idea of what topics I need to work on etc. Unfortunately most teens are too short-sighted to see it this way, and look at the papers when they get leaked. I understand people being worried and tempted, but have some sense please. You may as well not do these fucking exams if you’re going to look at what’s coming up.
Anyway that’s the little rant out of the way! And yes, it does get rather lonely up here on my high horse sometimes.
Over the next two weeks, expect nothing but exam talk on here, as I doubt I’ll find any time between studying to work on online business.
In other news, show some sympathy for Jason, (aka The University Kid) who’s been incorrectly banned from Digital Point forums, where he’d racked up thousands of posts, a great reputation, and earned a lot of money. Full details in this post.
Also, I’ve finally won a blog contest! Profit Baron dot Com recently ran a contest and I got myself a free review on his site. Always nice to get something for nothing! I made a fairly crafty choice for the review, but it had to be done just to increase my chances of getting any sort of income this month.
Anyway lads, I’m off to get my study on. Wish me luck, and anyone who’d be willing to do a guest post on here anytime, give me a shout, I’d greatly appreciate it.
In Ireland, we make applications to colleges using a CAO form. Generally you’re accepted or rejected based on your Leaving Cert results, which go from 0-600 points. Most students do 7 subjects and are marked on their best six, with the points being 0-100 for each subject. Few few students in the country get 600 points, and getting anything over 500 is considered a huge acheivement, and this is often rewarded by colleged by a €1,000 reward for anyone who gets over 500 points and goes on to attend their college.
Today at 17:15 is the deadline for getting the discounted price on your CAO submission. I submitted mine last night, and I must say it’s a pretty odd experience. It’s like your filling out your future on the screen. We have periods later in the year during which we can change our choices, but it’s still good to try get your choices as accurate as you can. My first choice is a well known “BESS” (Business, Economics and Social Studies) course in Trinty College Dublin. Points for this last year were around 480, but not everyone who got these points actually got it. So, it’s a tough course to get into. Also, Trinity is Ireland’s most famous college, and the one with the most international recognition, so this means most of the students going there got over 500 points in their Leaving Cert, so there is no €1,000 reward.
I actually posted a while back about when I went to the open day in Trinity. That post received a recommendation for BESS from Dave Davis of Red Fly Marketing, which I was pretty happy about. Look at their RSS subscriber count to see why
Do I think I can get into BESS? If I can seriously get my head down then yeah I do think I’m capable of it, but I really will have to work, which could be difficult for me, being lazy, and combined with the fact that I’ve never had to really work that hard to succeed in school.
Below are the list of my CAO choices, I picked 9 courses, you’re allowed choose ten. My courses are chosen from just three colleges, as any other ones and I’d be getting 4 buses a day, and I know I wouldn’t want that. The three colleges are Trinity, NUI Maynooth, and DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology).
1.Â
TR081
Business, Economic and Social Studies
2.Â
TR034
Management Science and Information Systems Studies
3.Â
DT341
Marketing
4.Â
DT354
Business Computing
5.Â
MH402
Finance and Venture Management (with Bioscience or Electronic Eng or IT)
6.Â
TR085
Business Studies and French
7.Â
MH404
Business and Management
8.Â
DT365
Business and Management
9.Â
MH305
Product Design (Marketing and Innovation)
10.Â
All business related. I’d thought for a long time that Maynooth would be my first choice, but their business courses aren’t well recognised, so they feature in the fourth spot on my choices, behind both TCD and DIT.
If you haven’t filled out your CAO, you’ve got just over two hours to do so before the price goes up by €10, so go do it now and then change it at a later stage if you’ve got to! It’s also interesting to note that last year the CAO system crashed on the last day, because of so many people leaving it until the last minute.
Anyway, apologies to any Americans or whatnot who don’t know or care about all the crap in this post, but it’s a fairly big thing to fill out your CAO form, so I decided it was blog worthy.
Any folk reading this who’ve also done their CAO recently, do let me know what you’ve chosen, as I’m always curious to see what other people are picking. Just click to comment below
