Yep, and a cup of warm milk, bit of vanilla essence if you have it. Helps you sleep.

Too true, I had a dismal leaving cert (less than 200 points…..) and have just been accepted to do a masters in DIT after going to university for the last 3 years.

Congrats Ross

Thanks :)

thanks for the tips mark!

No worries Sean. Very best of luck.

For once I agree with David.

So do I.

Me too.

See David? We do like you… sometimes anyway… :P

Was just about to type “None as they would see the advice and if they are on the Internet browsing thejournal.ie then they don’t need advice at this stage”

Never hear of taking 5?

Yeah Stephen, it was the five minutes you took to eat and hydrate before going back to the books.
It’s two weeks of effort, not ten years. You can stay off twitter for a fortnight when doing the most important exams of your life so far.

Or, you know, get screwed over in the middle of a recession, when even the ditch-digging jobs have vanished. All this touchy-feely stuff about how “oh, it doesn’t matter, lots of people did well after bad exams” is crap. Lots of people win lotteries too; doesn’t mean it’s a good plan for your financial security. Screw up these exams and your life gets harder than it would be if you didn’t, that’s just how it is.

Are your ages, you shouldn’t be on here. You should be on “other” sites learning about the birds and the bees.

Im sorry mark but are you for real, i have studied non stop for the past two years and will continue to do so for the next two weeks but how dare you criticise me when you have no idea how much work i have done. You are clearly so knowlageable on the on the leaving cert, you must be a 600 pointer. If not pi*s off.

PS i am taking another 5 minute break as is advised by all study skills course upon many of which i have sat. And also while i want to do well in my leaving cert and progress to third level, your comment is an insult to working, and unemployed pele up and down the country who despite not having a leaving cert work bloody hard for anything they have.

Oddly enough Stephen, you’re not the first person to do the Leaving, nor the first to take study skills courses. We’ve all been there, we’ve all heard the advice, we all went through the stress, we all sat through well-meaning gits telling us that the exams didn’t matter so much and it wasn’t the end of the world if we fluffed them, that there were a myriad of ways to get what you want and all would be sunshine and rainbows.

It was bullshit then and it’s bullshit now, for two main reasons:

1. If the exam results don’t matter, why would every university want to know how you did in them? Why would the CAO system be how we decided who got to go and who didn’t? Yes, mature students can come in with more latitude on their results, but they (a) generally have to apply individually and work harder to get in; and (b) get their results looked at as part of the process anyway.. If the results don’t matter, why did we spend years of our lives working towards them? Why does half the country put up with the stress of holding them? Why are they managed on a national level?

2. What they’re really saying is “we think you should manage your stress, but we also think you’re too dumb to know how, so we’ll tell you to do something in the hope that it’ll manage your stress for you without you knowing about it”. And that approach has a habit of backfiring.

Simple fact is, if you fluff the exams, your life gets harder. No, it doesn’t end. No, you don’t get automatically blackballed from ever achieving a happy life. Yes, you should manage your stress. But none of that makes it any less true that your life will get harder and you will have to work more and longer to get what you want, all because this society is set up that way, and opting out isn’t really an option you’re encouraged to take. And in the middle of a recession, that road gets even harder than normal.

tl;dr : What you’re doing matters and it’s important; more so than anything else you’ve done so far, even if it shouldn’t be. So focus on it for a fortnight, and let everything else wait and don’t listen to anyone telling you to slack off this close to the finish line — they won’t be around to do the extra work you’ll need to do if you take their advice.

Ps. those five minute breaks are to hydrate, eat, use the bathroom, and generally pause the studying; not to dump all the state in your head by going off surfing the net. There are a few hundred studies showing that five minutes spent pausing and looking after your nutrition and so forth is beneficial, but five minutes spent on the net is definitely not helping.

Stephen – pay no heed to Mark. Some people had to study more because they are not as academicaly gifted as others. My advice, eat well, sleep well and above all else dont take on anyone elses negativity. My biggest tip, dont walk out of your exams and start discussing your answers with your friends. If 2 or 3 of them get the same answer but its not the same as yours, dont rush to believe that yours is the wrong one. Others are not always right. Best of luck and I hope they all go well for you.

Spending your 5 minutes disagreeing with Mark on the internet is probably not the best thing for your mental health right now. ;-)

Ann – please tell me that you’re not referring to Mark in that “not as academically gifted” comment. He is one of the most academically gifted people I have ever known… now granted, i’ve only known him for 18 years now so I could be wrong on that one

Mark, relax! Yes, when we did the leaving, it was pretty much the be all and end all, but a lot of the pressure we were under were from our parents, pushing us to avail of opportunities that may not have been available for them. there are many more options open to school leavers now, more ways of getting to a degree – assuming that’s where they want to go. You have to accept that academia is not everyones idea of what to do after school (and stop reading this with that one eyebrow raised mister, don’t think I don’t know that’s what you’re doing!)

Oh, and Stephen, something everyone else has forgotten to say – GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR EXAMS!

Fiona

Yes my comment was about Mark. Just because you think he is intelligent doesnt necessarily make it so. Anyone with an ounce of inteligence would not have left that comment for a 17 year old who is currently sitting his LC. Shame on Mark for doing that. Also, you should have read all my comment as it ended with
” Best of luck and I hope they all go well for you.” Maybe your inability to digest what I have written is the anwer to why you think Mark is so intelligent.

In maths, label each question (Q1 a etc.) clearly with red pen. Put each answer in a red box and use a yellow highlighter at the end to highlight your answers. The examiner will love for making their life easy.

ha ha ha, good man, made me laugh ya did, sound advice for anyone who’s stressed oot! :-)

You go right ahead and slack off in the last ten feet before the finish line Paddy, those of us who push harder for that last ten feet, we don’t mind you doing that at all.

Jesus Mark, you need to go and take 5, eat and hydrate and come back to the conversation when you’ve had a chance to calm down…..

Really, Mark, you do give achievement a bad name.

Well hope you enjoyed Ferrer’s win over Murray. Now back to your books!!

Susie, delighted to see you didn’t encourage him to boycott exams and picket outside or simply write NO on all his papers :)

Oh really O’Reilly is that the best you can do ? You are not funny ! However , I always took education very seriously and even if I have not (yet) made it to college my children will. I am very proud of my children’s education and theie subsequent achievements .It is through education and open and sincere dialogue (ie..NO lying) that success can be achieved.
But , O’Reilly you can slag me off all you want but NEVER my children !

Sincerely, the very best of luck to him!

O’Reilly
Sincerely . Thank you.

Wish him the best of luck from all here on TheJournal. I’m sure he will be grand.
Taking a sip of water after finishing each question was something I used to during during the exams to keep calm and stay stress free.

Dave Harris
O’Reilly is funny and I am not really offended:) Thank you too for the good wishes . I will get him( my son) sorted and then I hope to enroll next year .

Some kids retain info better just cramming it in, others have to be well versed and know things by heart, either way Keep Studying!!

i beg to differ

I was a crammer and did very well in my LC and at uni. What works for one person doesnt necessarily work for another.

I used that reasoning just after my finals.

A mate still had one exam left to go and I pointed out that if he didn’t know it by then he never would, so he might as well go and play golf with me.

I won too (and he got a 2:1 as expected).

Such crap. Never too late. Study till they grab the notes off ya at your desk. You’ll remember enough to get at some marks. 2 weeks of hell but it pays dividends !!!

Cramming never really worked for me. I just remembered the last few points that I’d studied, and forgot the rest.

Have you ever felt that MAYBE, just MAYBE some people don’t do things your way?

Cram like the bejaysus!