LCA Office Administration & Customer Care

Rosemarie

I found this exam very difficult, which was a disappointment as I felt confident entering the exam and had done very well in this exam in my mocks. A lot of the questions had parts I felt I was not prepared for. Timing was also an issue for me in the exam as I felt that I didn’t have enough time to answer the questions to the best of my ability. Throughout the paper the answer space was longer than usual, this was a turn off as I thought my answers had to be longer than usual and I didn’t have time to give longer answers!This was my last exam. I really enjoyed the LCA programme and did well throughout the two years of it. I am delighted to be finished and look forward to the future.

LCA Mathematical Applications

Rosemarie

This morning, I had Maths which went very well. Overall, I thought it was a fair paper. I flew through question one and was well able for the rest of the paper. The only part of the paper I found difficult was question 2 (e), the question was on the Pythagoras Theorem. However, I am not too worried about it, as it is only one part of a question and I was able to answer the rest of the questions easily.

LCA Hotel Catering & Tourism

Rosemarie

I found this exam very hard. I thought the paper was a lot harder than previous examination papers that I had been studying in preparation for it. Although I found it difficult, I attempted all questions and did my best.I am going to prepare over the weekend for my final exam Office Administration on Tuesday. I did well in this exam in the mocks so at least that settles the nerves a little bit. I also hope to relax over the weekend after a busy few days of exams.

LCA English & Communication

Rosemarie

First up this morning for me was English & Communication, I wasn’t too nervous to be honest - just wanted to get it over with!The exam started well with the audio visual question on enterprise, it was about a woman called Jill that was trying to set up her own business and was going around trying to get funding and advice for it. She got advice from the guy that set up Hairy Baby Clothing Co. and I hadn’t heard about that before so I thought that was cool!For my first long question, I chose the question on one of my work placements. I decided to answer it based on my placement with Waterford Youth Art. I had to discuss two of my duties, whether I thought confidentiality was important in the world of work, how it helped to prepare for the world of work and suggest advice for other students going on work placement for the first time. This question went fairly well for me... no problems anyway.In the Communications and Enterprise Section, I chose the question on the enterprise project that I did as part of the LCA programme. For my enterprise project, I was involved in organising a car wash to raise money to hold a bingo day for elderly people in the local area. For the first part of the question, I had to describe my role in the project. I liked this part of the question as it gave me the chance to talk about my role as catering manager which involved preparing sandwiches and other refreshments for the bingo day. I talked about a problem that we had with the finances for the project after that. I had a bit of a problem with the next part of the question which was about how we’d advertised our enterprise so that was probably the trickiest part of the paper for me as I found the next two sections grand as we’d covered all the stuff that was on them in class.I was just happy that it was over and I did my best with all the questions so I think it went well enough!

ISSU Commentary

This morning’s LCA English and Communications exam candidates had a nice opening to their paper with an audio visual section based on an extract from an episode of RTÉ’s, Higher Ground, a series focusing on the progress of budding Irish entrepreneurs,. The episode in question featured an Irish entrepreneur who sought advice from the owner of hairybaby.com, a very successful online business which sells clothing with quirky Irish slogans (and which offers ISSU Scholar Card holders a 10% discount!).Questions in Section 2 required students to write a letter of application and CV in response to a job advertisement, to describe one of their work placements and how it prepared then for the world of work, to give an account of their enterprise project and to extract information from a HSE informational poster on swine flu. The final question of Section 2 shouldn’t have left students feeling too much “Under Pressure” as Jedward also had a starring role with students asked to discuss their entrepreneurial characteristics among other questions.Section 3 saw students faced with questions on the takeover of online media, Hairy Baby Clothing Company got another mention with a longer feature question (again, 10% off with your ISSU Scholar Card people!), another question on the lyrics of REM’s “You Are Not Alone” and finally a question on the second Oscar nomination for Ireland’s Brown Bag Films… let’s hope “in the bag” was the verdict to be heard among students after finishing the paper!