Junior Certificate Maths Paper 1
Joe - Higher Level 
Kate - Higher Level 
Philip - Higher Level 
Shane - Higher Level 
Chloe - Higher Level 
Going in to this exam I was so nervous as maths is by far my weakest subject. I looked through the paper and decided to tackle question 11 first as it looked like a few relatively straight forward factorisations. I was into it now and I turned back to question 1. I should be ashamed here as I couldn’t remember how to get the percentage decrease but other than that q1 was quite simple, surprisingly as q1 in the mocks was nothing short of mind boggling. I continued on anyway with one question after the other and I couldn’t believe how much function work was involved. I’m not sure if I tackled them all correctly but my graphs looked reasonably okay so I was using that as reassurance! Maybe it was just me but q12 which was about the bags had a very large working out space for the method I used, this was quite off putting as I don’t know if I went about it the right way, I just subbed in numbers and worked it out like that, but I could have been very wrong!After the exam, media was preaching the statement ‘everything was fine till q8’ which I don’t necessarily agree with as some of my better questions came after this and honestly some of my worst before.Overall I don’t know whether I hated or loved paper 1, some questions were nice and others were horrible, definitely a mixed bag in my opinion! Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union. Blogs are updated daily by 6.30 pm on scheduled examination dates.Zeminar is an event for Generation Z, particularly those aged between 15 and 19, and their parents, teachers, mentors and coaches. It will take place from 11th - 13th of October 2016. For more information see www.zeminar.ie
Junior Certificate Geography, Environmental & Social Studies
Joe - Higher Level
I have done consistently well with geography through out the junior cert cycle so was confident about this exam.The exam went very well. I started on the short questions and had them done in less then 20 minutes. I then did question 5 on the ordinance survey map. I spent a long time drawing the sketch map and doing the question but I gave a solid answer. I then did the question on limestone , underground feature of a karst landscape and peat. It was straight forward and I felt like I answered well. My final question was question two on ocean currents, irrigation and desertification. I was a small bit rushed to complete it but finished just in time.I feel the exam went well and it was a fairly easy paper!
Kate - Higher Level
Geography went great! I answered all the short questions with ease and moved on to the long questions. The long questions were good. I answered question one, question two and question five. Question one focused on karst landscapes, limestone and peat. I found this question manageable but the question about technology and peat was unusual. The second question I answered was on irrigation, desertification and ocean currents. I loved this section as it was simple and I thoroughly enjoy the section on ocean currents.Finally I answered the OS Map. I originally did not plan to answer this question but I had no choice. The map was odd and I found it tricky to draw what was required to scale, but the questions were great. A question about traffic congestion and tourism. Overall I think the exam went well for me. The questions were quite broad and I'm optimistic about how it went!
Luke - Higher Level 
Initially I was quite nervous going into the exam because I have quite high expectations for myself when it comes to this subject. I was worried population would come up because I hadn't studied them in depth. Once I got into the exam and opened the paper I gave the long questions a quick read through and I realised that it was grand. The short questions... Easy. Blew through them. 60/60.I did long questions 1,2 and 5. I dodged the population questions! I hear a lot of people were thrown by the question on Irish bogs. I manged to cram fishing, bogs, and the karst landscape before I went into the exam and thank God. The OR map was easy. I'm looking forward to continuing my study of geography for LC. Looking forward to taking a breather this weekend!
Shane - Higher Level
I went into geography with buzz words for beaches, cliffs, soil creep, freeze thaw action and karst landscapes buzzing in my head. Of all this, I would only need one. But, it didn’t really matter. I did the short questions first. I felt these were by far the easiest compared to any year. Then I did question 1. I got a shock when I saw economic activities. I always thought (among with every JC student) that question 1’s were STRICTLY physical geography. I didn’t mind however. The questions in question 1 were very do-able and I felt as if it was a great question.I did question 2 secondly.This was the best out of 2, 3, and 4 in my eyes. I would have been rewriting Q3 part B and D (I think they were the parts) and I couldn’t do Q4 because my geography teacher didn’t do urban geography with us. I did find Q2 to be my weakest question but I did’t feel it went too bad. Then I did good ole question 5. I found this to be a good question, but I took so long to draw the coastline on the map. In the finish up, I think Geography went very well and I am over all very pleased with it!
Philip - Higher Level
So this went ok. I admit I panicked, there was about five subjects I didn't know well in the entire course. Guess which subjects came up? But after the exam I talked to a geography teacher in my school and they said they thought my answers was ok (I told them what I said). Anyway,I didn't find the short questions too hard. I'd say there were a few I got wrong though. The long questions I did were question one. The karst structure I did were pillars. Then I did question three A, B and C. Finally I did question 5 with the maps. All in all I think the test went pretty well!
Chloe - Higher Level
Let me start by saying that the majority of my time studying prior to the JC was dedicated to geography and I still didn’t know every single thing entering this exam, its so difficult to contain everything in your brain on the day and the cramming session we had an hour before the exam I think was the making or breaking of it. I began with the short questions, usually I can find these to be sometimes slightly awkward but they were actually grand yesterday and I had them done within 20 minutes.I opened the paper and not one of the questions from 1-4 appealed to me fully so I decided to begin with question 5 (which I don’t normally do) I found the questions on the OS map relatively similar to those that had come up before and the question about traffic circulation wasn’t a regular but it was doable. I then went on to do the question on ocean currents, irrigation and desertification, from this I was only fully confident with irrigation but managed to make a good enough stab at the other two thankfully enough as we had recently studied them in class.I finished with the geographical mix question and left out the question on polders. I felt this went quite well although I was definitely waffling for some parts to fill out my answers. Overall geography went reasonably well for me and I hope my studying for this subject pays off!Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union. Blogs are updated daily by 6.30 pm on scheduled examination dates.Zeminar is an event for Generation Z, particularly those aged between 15 and 19, and their parents, teachers, mentors and coaches. It will take place from 11th - 13th of October 2016. For more information see www.zeminar.ie
Introducing Zeminar
So what’s 'Generation Z'?
It’s the group of young people born in the late 90s and after 2000. They’re special because they’re the first generation ever who grew up totally surrounded by technology, and so their futures, ambitions and needs are completely different than those of any other generation before them…
It was this generation that inspired Zeminar, a youth summit organised for 15-19 year olds coming to the RDS this October! Zeminar is unlike any other youth event - it will bring together amazing speakers, like Bressie, Maria Walsh, Lynn Ruane and David Gillick, as well as the most innovative youth focused organisations in the country, all for you!
Zeminar is open to all. It will run over 3 days in the RDS (Oct 11th, 12th and 13th), and will provide young people with an opportunity to practice new skills, try out new activities and meet professionals from many different fields. High tech all around, diverse and interesting speakers and 8 different mini-Zeminar zones with themes designed to cover all aspects of being a young person from Generation Z - Zeminar is an excellent opportunity to try new things and gain information on everything from careers to wellbeing and self development.The ISSU is a proud partner of this event and we are looking forward to welcoming you all at the RDS in October! Keep an eye on this space as we will have some really exciting announcements to make as the summer goes by and in September, as we countdown to Zeminar. For more information about the event, the speakers and the different organsiations which will be present at Zeminar check out www.zeminar.ie (you can also book some earlybird tickets!) and if you have any questions, just email hello@zeminar.ieHave a great summer guys!
Leaving Certificate English Paper 2
Liam - Higher Level English Paper 2
"Questions that I did. Section 1: E 1. Section 2: A 2. Section 3: A 1, B 3"OH MY BISHOP! You are a beaut. I don't say this too often, but I liked this paper. From the second I sat down in the hall to when I got handed that pink exam paper, I was feeling a funeral in my brain! I had this exam timed out, 55 mins for prescribed poetry, 1 hr 5 mins for comparative, 1 hr for King Lear and whatever left for unseen poetry (not important to be honest).So from yesterday, you now know, I like highlighting. Today was no different. I got the paper and went straight to the back to prescribed poetry, Bishop and Dickinson, and I highlighted the hell out of them! They were the only poets I actually knew (I wouldn't recommend only knowing 2, the stress ain't worth it!). I answered Bishop and it went quite well!Next one was comparative, Cultural Context! I actually like Cultural Context! I did the 30, 40 questions about if characters were successful or unsuccessful in the aspects of cultural context, or something like that… lets hope I compared and contrasted sufficiently enough!Next was the single text and King Lear. Choosing the question on the tragic characters of Lear and Gloucester seemed favourable and I had done a question like that previously in class so I had some idea on what to say.I did the unseen poetry next and only jotted a few points down for that, I genuinely am not bothered about that. And by jotted I mean scribble like mad! It's only 20 marks at the end of the day, in comparison to the 50, 60 and 70 marks from the other questions.For once I kept my timing on track and I'm happy, enough, can anyone really be too happy when English is concerned ?
Emma - Higher Level English Paper 2 
Paper two was a dream come true!!! I couldn't be happier! I began poetry and it was brilliant - I was so lucky I studied five poets so I had 3 options on the actual paper. I chose Bishop over Eliot and Dickinson because her poems are easier to write about and I enjoy her themes, the question itself was pretty straightforward. The unseen poetry was extremely interesting and I enjoyed depicting each question- I did the two ten markers. I then went onto the King Lear question and chose the redemptive and destructive power of love- this was easy to plan, but I found I fell short of ideas so I had to elaborate a lot. However compared to previous years, I believe that the Lear questions were lovely.Then onto the comparative. We had only studied cultural context and general vision and viewpoint so I had no choice in the question. I chose the 70 mark question because I feel it is easier to focus on the three texts! Having only wrote 5 and a bit pages, I'm extremely happy and as they say quality over quantity!! I'm sure there are a lot of disappointed people because of the lack of Yeats this year, but cheer up!! There's always other papers!
Craig - Higher Level English Paper 2 
That was one odd unseen poem just as that was exhausting. 19 pages later, and I'm at last liberated from the oppressive regime that is the English syllabus. I had a pretty nice choice in this paper. And overall, it was a good experience.Single Text wise I studied King Lear and found the "love" question to be a treat. I was expecting imagery but love was a pretty easy theme to deal with, I may have spent too much time on it though, at the expense of my other questionsThe comparative was beautiful - Cultural Context I choose, though was happy to see Literary Genre pop up there. Having studied Pats, Foster and the KIng Speech the question on power was something of a dream. I was able to talk about the role of women, and people's inner power to overcome their personal complicationsFinally, poetry. I had studied nothing but Dickinson & Yeats from September to April, but recently decided id have to put my differences aside and get in on Bishop. I was so happy to see her come up today. Durcan, Elliot and herself were predicted and hats off to those tho who took the risk and only studied those three, to those who prayed on Yeats "being too obvious" so "he'll be put on to put us off" - my sympathies.Unseen poetry I don't know - I'd almost consider scrapping it as a piece, personally I was exhausted by the time it came to tackling it and was fearful of sounding repetitive so in my worst hand writing possible I expressed what I thought paper is meant to express. Honestly what was that?Anyhow, it was all pointless because I'm probably going to be back again next year repeating maths - which is tomorrow. Absolute yay. Best of Luck everyone!
Ellen - Higher Level English Paper 2 
In preparation for this exam, I visited the statue of WB Yeats in my local park and prayed to the poetry gods that he would come up on the paper, but like the rest of the country, I was sorely disappointed (and now my heart is sore). (I also prayed for Heaney to come up on the history paper so it's not looking good for him either folks). Anyways, onto the actual exam. What a lovely lovely cultural context question! We had studied Citizen Kane, King Lear and Never Let Me Go so there was power and powerless go leor. I left it until the end (probably a mistake) and had only written 4 pages with 5 minutes to go, so I figured it wasn't worth starting a new paragraph. Regretting spending so much time on the single text, I did the character question on Translations, that they are tragic but not heroic, which was all too easy to agree with. I focused mainly on Hugh, Manus and Owen but Yolland and Maire may have been the obvious choice. I struggled a bit with the unseen poem to be honest and chose The 2x10, simply because I feel it would be easier to get half marks in both. I read it completely at face value -about the legacy of literature etc- however I know some smart people connected it to art and transience and all that jazz. I was kinda happy that 3 out of the 6 poets I studied came up, (although I know some lucky suckers got 3 out of 3), after much humming and hawing, I settled on Bishop, which seemed the most straightforward, although I actually prefer Durcan and Dickinson.Anyways, the main thing is I've survived Leaving Cert English and live to see another day!Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union. Blogs are updated daily by 6.30 pm on scheduled examination dates.Zeminar is an event for Generation Z, particularly those aged between 15 and 19, and their parents, teachers, mentors and coaches. It will take place from 11th - 13th of October 2016. For more information see www.zeminar.ie
Junior Certificate Irish
Kate - Higher Level Paper 1 & 2
After a surprisingly successful English paper one and two, I was dreading Irish. Irish is not my strongest subject and without the previously prepared essays I wouldn't have survived. My biggest fear approaching the exam was in reference to the aurals. Donegal / rural Irish will be the death of me.Paper One - Paper one started off terribly and it never recovered. My hopes of getting an A rolled down the mountain along with my story. We started 10 minutes late as the examiner played the tapes but did not hand out the papers. The whole class died. I thought that they had changed the layout so you had to remember what was being said. After the disastrous start we began the paper. The aural was worse than I expected, rural Irish is what I hear in my nightmares. The grammar section was great, I predicted that Aimsir Chaite would come up and thankfully it did. I chose the essay title "an incident that happened when you are walking in the mountains" as it was the only title that I understood. All in all, I think I was okay in paper one but it could have been better .Paper Two - Paper two probably saved the day. Going in to this exam I was nervous, if not scared, due to my earlier experience. But when I opened the paper all my worry went away. The unseen prós and poetry was not as hard as I thought and was shocked that I understood the majority of them. The themes for studied poetry and prós were great. I choose 'grá' for poetry and 'duine cabhrach' for prós. Finally I did the letter. My letter was a load of waffle. I wrote about a party but I didn't understand the guidelines very well so I wrote and wrote and prayed for the best.Today had its ups and downs but I'm going into tomorrow on a positive note and hoping for the best!
Philip - Higher Level Paper 1 & 2
Paper 1: Can I start by saying, that was the hardest listening comprehension I have ever done. But apart from that I think paper 1 was good enough. The first comprehension was on something Ihave never heard of but I think I got the answers well enough. Then I moved on to the comprehension on "inside out" which wasn't too hard.(I said alt 3 and alt 4). Then I did the verb question, I think that went well enough too. I guess we were lucky enough with it being just multiple choice. Finally I did the story question. I did the first one which was something like " wait mum you haven't heard my side of the story", you wouldn't believe the amount of people who thought it was "you need to hear the news" and totally messed up the story section.Paper 2: Now this was a hard paper.....ok in the vampire one I answered all the questions just to try and get as many points as possible. As the studied story I answered on "An tAdh" as "duine carduil". I decided to skip the unseen poetry for a while and I answered the studied poetry which I used "Na Blatha Craige" for with "brod". I said they were proud of their cliff. So, I decided to keep going and go back to the unseen poetry in the end. I did the letter about the party, the first one. I wrote about a page including the address. Finally I went back to the studied poetry and did every question except (A iii). I thought that first poem was REALLY bad but that the second one was good enough. So I hope ye all did well and good luck everyone in geography and maths paper 1.
Shane - Higher Level Paper 1 & 2
Paper 1: I went in to paper 1 this morning feeling relatively optimistic. Then the listening started… I was on the brink of tears listening because I am generally rubbish at them. But! Then that ended and the written exam started and my hope returned. I started with the eachtra in the mountains and as usual, I fell and broke my leg. It always works! Then I did question 2 A and was a very happy person at just seeing those 2 words, Aimsir Chaite. Then I did 2B which I feel I did well in. And finally, the comprehensions. I did the second one first (I don’t know what my problem is with exam order but whatever) and lastly, the first one. I feel this went well also! All in all, paper 1 (minus the listening) went very well.Paper 2: Then we get to paper 2… I did the first letter which went well. Then I tried my best to make Pádraic from An t-Adh fit ‘duine cairdiúil’. I did Subh Milis for the studied poetry. Then the prós question 1 and filíocht question 3. As usual, I had a limited concept of what the poems were about and wrote 11 lines on why I enjoyed the vampire story, saying I love vampire stories and the main character (basically anything to stop me from having to read the full thing!)All in all I feel I did well in Irish, with my paper 1 and optional oral being my saving grace. I hope you all did well and I will say a prayer for everybody for Maths Paper 1!!! Best of luck!
Chloe - Higher Level Paper 1 & 2
Paper 1: Listening was up first, I felt these were quite difficult especially having two Donegal accents laced in there making it all the more challenging but aside from that I think it went well.Irish paper one was a grand paper, I thought. The Léamhthuiscints were easy to understand and the answers to the questions weren’t hard to find in the passage, which sometimes they can be. Between both reading passages I did the grammar and briathra questions, with these I think sometimes you just get lucky and thankfully today we had Aimsir Chaite and the grammar section wasn’t too bad either! The essay choices were also really nice and thankfully an essay that I had prepared was able to mix well with the first eachtra choice.Paper 2: This wasn’t as fab….I started with the reading comprehension, yet again and was disgusted when reading the piece about vampírí as the Irish used was so advanced and I found it really difficult to make sense of! I then went on to do the studied prose. Using ‘duine gclic for Díoltas an Madra Rua which I really tried to make work but honestly it didn’t go that smoothly. I continued on with the other studied section which was poetry and I chose grá for Bean tSléibhte ag Caoineadh a Mhic. It went well but it could have gone better. I was really racing against the clock at this stage! I did the letter next and chose the one about the storm, which was really like an essay we had learned in class and so it fitted well. This was the only semi-good section of paper 2 for me ! Lastly was the unseen poem and exactly like the reading passage it was so difficult I’m not sure if what I thought the poem meant is actually what the poem meant but I had no choice but to go with it!Overall definitely a harder year than usual in my opinion!Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union. Blogs are updated daily by 6.30 pm on scheduled examination dates.Zeminar is an event for Generation Z, particularly those aged between 15 and 19, and their parents, teachers, mentors and coaches. It will take place from 11th - 13th of October 2016. For more information see www.zeminar.ie
Leaving Certificate Engineering
Liam - Engineering Higher Level 
As I woke up this morning I tried to ignore the feeling of dread I felt. Thursday was the day I feared the most. Not because of the thought of having to sit down and do English paper two in the evening, but for the engineering paper in the morning.Now I’m sure a few of you reading this are asking “what’s so hard about engineering, it’s one of the easiest subjects out there?” Sure, this may be the case for some, but for my class and me, it wasn't. The theory paper on the engineering course covers 50% of your overall mark while there’s 25% for your project and 25% for your practical. We only started doing theory two weeks ago! Yes you heard correctly! We only started to learn an entire course two weeks ago. What did we do in fifth year? What did we do for all of sixth year? We just practiced for our practical the entire time. To anybody out there who is reading and this sounds familiar, start studying now!A few of you, I'm sure, are probably all wondering what my teacher was doing, not teaching us and all, but to be totally honest, he knew his stuff. For the last 45 years he has been teaching in my school, I don’t think anyone has failed the engineering paper. I got the surprise of my life when I went in and found that the paper was actually quite easy! With only two weeks of work with things I had never seen before I was fairly confident. We have a compulsory question for question 1 (a question about common sense) and we must answer four others out of 7. Within the first two hours I had my five questions answered and I was flying it. I even answered the others for the craic!So there you go. I'm really quite delighted to be honest. One more exam down to the whoppa sesh!Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union. Blogs are updated daily by 6.30 pm on scheduled examination dates.Zeminar is an event for Generation Z, particularly those aged between 15 and 19, and their parents, teachers, mentors and coaches. It will take place from 11th - 13th of October 2016. For more information see www.zeminar.ie