The final.

So I've been blogging about the Leaving Cert. on and off for the past year. Mostly off. Delighted to have the exams finished, by June I was ready to forget about everything and have some fun...which I did. Since my exams finished, I've been out a few times, saw a lot of Dave and volunteered at Castlepalooza music festival. In short: I had a really great summer. I'll probably post more about it sometime.

Me, Danielle, Conor and Hazel at Castlepalooza, in one of the rare moments of sunshine!

That didn't mean that I forgot about the results, though. They were always there in the back of my head -- one month, three weeks, two weeks -- and bang! Suddenly it was August 15th and I was awake and freaking out at 3am. All the post-its I'd used adding up 100s, 85s and 70s were worthless and now all I could do was wait and see. The scariest thing about the results for me wasn't not knowing -- it was knwoing that I couldn't change them, that I was stuck with whatever results I got. By Wednesday, I was convinced that I'd maybe scrape 500 and would never get to run through Trinity College, screaming like a little girl.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up at 6.30am, showered, drank copious amounts of green tea and then went down to the school with my parents. On recieving the envelope, I walked around for a moment or two, shaking like a leaf. The enormity of my Leaving Cert. results hit me then, I think -- not the best time! Eventually I opened the results and immediately zoned in on grade #1: a B2. This was immediately followed by a mental "SWEET JESUS FUCKING CHRIST HOW BAD WILL THESE BE IF I ONLY MANAGED A B2 IN ENGLISH?!" before realizing that the B2 was in Irish. Higher. Level. Irish. My year was spent crying over essays and being asked if I was dyslexic by my teacher and I came out with a B2! Fortunately, that bode well for my results in general...



Fucking ridiculous, aren't they?! I was particularly pleased about the A1 in Ag. Science, a course I did in a year. For those unaware of the system, these grades add up to 570 points -- out of 600! This means that this morning I received my offer from Trinity College -- I get to study English and History for the next four years! The wait for the offer was weird -- I wasn't too stressed about the points until last night. It hit me while cruising boards.ie at 2am...thankfully I only had four hours to wait then, and it was wonderful when I woke up to my course this morning.

 I realize that the amount of exclamation marks in this post is unbelievable, but I've had a wonderful week. Well, apart from a mild case of the mumps and sticking my phone into a glass of water, but that's another story...I realize that this is the part where I should get all reflective about results, the Leaving Cert., and where, to paraphrase Axl Rose, we go from here. The thing is, though, that I don't WANT to think about 6th year anymore! It's all I thought about last year - as I said, I didn't really st back. I worked damn hard for those points, but to be honest, I'm over it now. I want to start college, move on, join a load of societies and be told how bad I am at things. I'm ready. And by God, am I excited!