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The Junior Certificate
True life: Ups and downs, ins and outs, lefts to rights, and tick the boxes.
When entering first year with over-sized school jumpers, few people could imagine that in three years time, they would be sitting in a room, with fellow students and a pair of heavy shoulders. The Junior Certificate, now having been sat, doesn’t seem like a huge deal. It was very important at the time but now that the results are in hand, was it all really worth the effort?
Most people have spent the long, dismal summer, completely forgetting about the results. But now, having returned to school and started a new cycle, they just want that sheet of paper. Well, I do anyway!
The late evenings of homework and studying, the extra classes, the grind schools, the lack of a social or sporting life, and the general shut off from the outside world in the weeks running up to the exams make us wonder why we took it as seriously as we did. Teachers want the brilliant results, the ‘A’ Grades, because they believe in their students, especially those with an interest in a particular subject. But is it really fair to expect all this from fifteen and sixteen year olds? We’re all just teenagers, so is it fair to expect so much?
The exams, as always, began with the English papers. The exams didn’t look as dismal as they once had at the start of third year. Then came the Irish paper, then the Maths, and things began to look a little fuzzy. Maybe it was the mixture of an energy drink, a bad night’s sleep and the taste of a pen in your mouth or maybe the fact that the hardest subjects all came together, slap bang, ready to frighten you at the start. There seems to be a problem with that. Why not do what they did with the Leaving Certificate this year, by separating the harder papers, and not having them all together?
Then came all the others! There was the C.S.P.E exam, with some lovely smiling pictures of ministers staring you right in the face. But is C.S.P.E. a useful subject, taught wrongly? Geography and History papers, all manageable, were followed by everything else!
Most people finished in the second week, with a cramped, blistered hand, and a bit of an empty head. I didn’t realise how much the exams took out of me, mentally and physically, until I sat down to do my last exam, German. I walked out of Room 14, at twelve o’clock with my friend; feeling freer then I had in months and ready start a sun-filled summer. Yeah right!
People often agree that the two to three weeks of the exams are probably one of the most stressful times of their lives. Studying all evening after exams, maybe getting up an hour earlier in the morning to study that extra bit, heading to school, sitting a couple more exams, and continuing the vicious cycle until the very last test paper is collected from your table.
Questions now arise, having sat the exam, to its flaws:
- Why are all the exams built up together in a power house 2/3 weeks?
- Why have outdated courses such as Business Studies Book keeping?
- Why have such high standards for Irish papers, when the majority of the country is not fluent?
- Why not create two papers in Irish, one for those fluent and another for those who are not?
- Why have mandatory subjects, if some people don’t have an interest in them?
- Why is there so much studying for an exam, which will seem almost pointless in years to come?
Having finished the exams, we have the unusual feeling of empty accomplishment, but achieved satisfaction. We’re glad we’ve done it and we’re glad it’s over!
The Junior Certificate, how was it for you?
By: Andrew Smith
Feeling stressed about results? Check out other SpunOutters' exam result advice.
