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Tomorrow, 57,000 students will receive their Leaving Cert results. Shelley Stafford is one of them. Here she describes how it feels.
I MEASURE life in Wednesdays. An unusual little habit, I’m sure, but one I firmly believe I’m not alone in. At present, I suspect that the vast majority of the 57,000 Leaving Certificate students awaiting results might admit to sharing my unconventional calendar.
In only a matter of days, the eyes and expectations of the nation will fall once again upon our shoulders. The concept of results has haunted us from the very moment we sealed shut our last answer booklet. Ever since then, it has been a constant visitor in our day-to-day thoughts, occupying more and more of our headspace with each passing Wednesday.
Now, we’re standing in the looming shadow of the sheet of paper that will determine our immediate fate – what course we’ll get, what college we’ll go to and whether or not we might have to repeat. Its long-reaching arms sink deep into our consciousness, agitating our dreams and perpetrating nervous nightmares. (Tell me I’m not the only one who has dreamt about being trapped in a gargantuan brown envelope.) We will be the subject of the country’s fleeting obsession – newspaper headlines, radio debates and over-the-counter chit chat will all centre around us. Every student’s individual sweeping of letters and numbers will cumulate to form this years’ pointillistic Leaving Cert masterpiece. (Or minefield, depending on which way you look at it.)
Don’t think for even a moment that this sudden gush of attention doesn’t weigh heavily upon our weary hearts. Inevitably, there are people who’ll bask and shimmer in the glow of the momentary spot-light, who feel important, and encouraged as a facet of their lives is discussed at length by the entire population. Then there’s the likes of me, who wince and feel personally affrighted every time the dreaded “LC” words rear their head in wider conversation or in the media. Our achievements and our grades will be categorised and show-cased as varying degrees of appalling failure or blinding success. But statistics, as we learnt this year as part of the new Project Maths course, are pesky little divils who cannot, and must not be trusted entirely.
But let’s backtrack a bit. I remember vividly the first Wednesday I adorned with the honour of being the ending/beginning of my week. Two weeks before D-Day, on the day I graduated from secondary school. It struck me quite suddenly then that weekends, and Mondays were quite, quite irrelevant when the summer was rolled out in front of me – my mid-week stepping stones leading the way to my future.
The exams themselves stretched across three weeks, languishing and hesitant to pass too quickly. For all the lead up, the mounds of exam advice and exam strategy, rarely does anyone comment on what it actually feels like to be sitting in that exam hall. The tick-tick-tick of beating clocks and watches. The hollow thud of ball-point pens on cold tables and, when Pleaney* didn’t come up in English Paper 2, the anguished sobs and disgruntled sighs amidst the frantic paper thunder as students ferociously combed through the pink pages.
Exhaustion and immense, all-encompassing and overwhelming pressure saturated the atmosphere, and sparked a sudden spike in the sales of chocolate bars and isotonic drinks in shops surrounding examination centres. (If I get as many points as I ate squares of chocolate during the Leaving Cert, I shall be a very happy lady.) Eventually, the Leaving Cert tossed our expended heads asunder and handed our hard work to the hoards of red and green pen fanatics – The Examiners. (Any group of people with the ability to inflict such terror into the hearts of its subjects deserves capital letters, surely?)
We are now caught in a bizarre kind of limbo, walking slowly down the centre of each week. Nerves gradually mount in the corner of our minds as we live our lives away from the books that were our companions and acquaintances for two years, the occasional shudder creeping down our spines as the seal on our answer booklets were ripped open. But mostly, we’ve just been trying to get on with things. Celebrate a little bit after all the stress, try to scrape together a few euros and ponder how we’ll actually be able to fund college, if we manage to get in. We’ve been caught up in a strange little world where the days drag out to infinity and weeks pass in a heartbeat. Our final, momentous Wednesday is fast approaching.
What exactly comes after this in-between summer, in which the middle of the week is the most important? I’m not sure. None of us can be 100 per cent certain at this point. I’m wary of casting my mind much farther out than August 15. Fearful, really, if I’m being honest with myself. Who’s to say that dreaming too big and hoping too hard at this point wouldn’t be just the foundation for disappointment?
What’s most agonising, for me in any case, is the thought, and the fear of failing other people’s expectations. Falling short of your goals, the conformation of slipping at the final hurdle – these are the thoughts that form a mental barricade only a Wednesday away from here.
I know the Leaving Certificate isn’t the be-all and end-all of your education, even if, sometimes, that’s the way it likes to flaunt itself. I’m assured, over and over, that by the time the offers are done and dusted the results will be completely forgotten. These results do not define you as a person. You will never ever be classified as an A2 Sister, or a B3 Son. I think maybe that’s the most important thing to remember when you’re handed that fated envelope.
And so here we are, tantalisingly close to the end of my quirky calendar year. Twelve weeks of Wednesdays, that’s all it is in reality. We’ve almost made it through the whole Leaving Cert, from beginning to end. There were nerves, tears, tantrums, laughter, screams and almost every emotion under the sun.
But if there’s one thing, one solitary complaint that I harbour about the Leaving Cert and all its assorted controversy and media madness, let it be this: we are taught, our whole lives, not to compare ourselves to other people. We learn from the time we can first write our own names to ‘strive to be the best version of yourself that you can be’. Yet the basis of the most colossal written examination we ever take undermines this fundamental life lesson. The bell-curve results system that we’re all going to be slotted into works entirely on comparison, it doesn’t have any room under its umbrella to measure your individuality.
I don’t know about anyone else, but that just seems a little bit off to me. It’s too late for me and my 57,000 peers at this stage. Oh, and don’t ask me how to fix it. I’m far too busy counting my Wednesdays.
Shelley Stafford will be getting her Leaving Cert results tomorrow.
*Pleaney = Plath and Heaney
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Angela Kerins, the reason I no longer donate money to charity.
@David Oppenshore: Well said sir. Money only going to pay CEO salary and outrageous expenses.
No charity, sporting or other such organisation should be given public money unless they first waive any ‘rights’ to protect themselves from public scrutiny of their finances. They can carry on freely without that money if they chose. Take it or leave it.
@Sega Yolo: totally agree
@Sega Yolo: perfectly said.
Imagine that. Kerins took home a ludicrous salary whilst miserably mismanaging the running of a charity and somehow is managing to outdo herself and create a lasting damage on the public’s ability to hold future disasters to account…
Just when you think you know the limits of someone’s toxicity to society, she goes and out does herself once more without even being in the room.
The Irish charity industry is destroyed by the greed of the few!
Vote with your feet,
Don’t give a penny to them!
@Niall Power: will never give a penny to any charity that pays their CEO and subordinates excessive salaries.
The pac committee full of incompetent politicians is not fit for purpose. The questioning of the fai officials the other day was very weak, pure amateurish, they really didn’t know their brief, what questions to ask.
@Adrian: they could have asked what day it was and still not received a straight answer.
@Dave O’Keeffe: they’re not legal experts, they were afraid to ask the questions the other day because of the potential legal repercussions, hence the farce that it was. They need legal experts on those committees, they should be able to come to some arrangement without turning them into tribunals. A bunch of incompetent politicians protecting their own interests, paying themselves 15k fees while asking stupid questions like “how many bank accounts do you have?”, turns the whole process into a joke and achieves nothing.
@Adrian: the questions were 100%. The problem was the FAI officials refused to answer. Nothing the pac can do about that.
@Adrian: They were told what they could ask “legally”. The law seems to protect the wealthy wrongdoers.
People in high positions have to be held accountable in public. However I struggle with the idea of giving the likes of Ruth Coppinger and others the power to carry out public investigations and give them compellabilty. If that became the case I could see people’s good name and reputation coming second to political point scoring.
Totally irrelevant nothing to do with FAI. The FAI is not a charity – it is a business and why they kept quoting the Kerins case is s mystery to me.
Looking at some of the motley members of various committees one would have to be dubious. Some are up to the task but many others fail miserably. Some are rude, arrogant, ill-informed and totally oblivious to their briefs. If they are that determined to cross the line then they should be open to full retribution in the courts. The verdict in the Angela Kearns case was spot on!!
@Chris Gaffney: I don’t know about that, why should good TDs and Senators who ask the difficult questions be muzzled by a ruling like that? I do get that there are some clowns on these committees, and they say things for headlines and there 30 seconds on sixone so the voters back home can see them sticking up to the dubs, but the real nature of these committees should be open, honest and sometimes difficult conversations with people like Delaney.
Lawmakers unhappy that the have to work within the law, my heart goes out to them.
Even if there was no Kerins ruling the public voted to reduce the powers of the committee so they are limited from the offset .
Kerins is looking for and going to get a multi million damages award for her suffering at PAC ..this is the biggest joke of all.
Delaney puffed and bluffed and ran circles round the PAC the Kearins judgment rules thst the PAC cannor go outside its remit or in other words tits terms of reference. Once the PAC keep within its remit lile asking questions on the €1000 loan then it would not fall foul on the Supreme Courts judgement.
Who can afford to bring a case to the High Court or Supreme Court ?
The Courts and Judges are only there to interpret the Law and ensure it is upheld. They do no make law.
If the PAC feel that the ‘Laws’ of our land are not sufficient, then it is up to them as legislators to change the ‘Laws’, so that their tongues are not tied when questioning individuals and agencies about their conduct. They have no one to blame but themselves for the situation the PAC finds themselves in.
1/ The Kerins issue is not case law yet, is awaiting determination on appeal, & is not relevant. Mr. D used the pending determination to ward off awkward questions, left them hanging out there, & thereby damaged his public standing.
2/ The committee did not need to subject anyone, including Mr. Delaney, to interrogation on their income or expenses, & just stay on track about the application of public funds & FAI corporate management. The investigative journalists have put these questions out, the public are expecting the FAI to provide the answers.
3/ Sport Ireland can with hold funding, insist on a forensic audit of the FAI accounts for the years when public funding was drawn down, & require appropriate governance structures, in accordance with the separate reviews already commissioned.
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