Leaving Certificate Biology
Emma - Higher Level 
Biology. Words can not describe the pain I have endured trying to make this subject less difficult! All of my time was spent the last three months completely on biology for seemingly absolutely nothing. The paper can only be deemed as fairly random and with a nice examiner I'd say I'd be lucky to scrape a D1 or C3. Half of my exam time was spent adding up marks I could get to scrape the grades needed for my course next year. The questions were an odd mix of everything with little digestion, little plant reproduction and little human reproduction, which was disappointing as that's what I had focused on for the last few weeks. The question on the eye, and the ear was manageable with the ecology being fairly handy with a couple of hard parts involving the grazing food chain. I completed all of the short questions, all of the experiments (which were fairly ok!!) and 5 long questions because I made a mess of the respiration question. For all of the study I put in, I'm thrown that nothing I learned in huge detail came up. However if you knew each part extremely well, like everything, I'm sure you would have done fabulously. The exam papers are in the bin and I cannot wait to leave behind the bane of my life- biology!
Ellen - Higher Level 
What can I say about that biology exam? Cruel is the first word that springs to mind. No genetics long question? I'm heartbroken to be honest. I even said it going in, 'this better not be the year they decide not to put genetics in the long questions'... so I feel like I may have jinxed it. Sorry guys. The short questions were manageable- if you could call it that. I thought it was very cruel to put plant reproduction in there when that is a difficult chapter most people (myself included) would avoid like the plague. The experiments were cruel in that it relied on your knowledge of the circulatory system to draw a graph for the experiment - not an easy thing to do if you ask me- and everyone I asked coming out of the exam hall went about it differently. With no genetics I was left to answer Q10 (ecology), Q11(photosynthesis & respiration) Q14b&c and, the horror of horrors Q12- the ear and eye - definitely not something I had anticipated doing. I am truly exhausted after these two exams but only one more double day left, then it's all over!
Cárthach - Higher Level 
Beannacht dé ar aoinne a shuí sin!Absolutely sickening paper, ruthless in it's approach.For example in the short questions, I had previously used the same 'give examples' examples for questions, they opened questions 2 with 'Name an non metallic element apart from C H N O found in proteins' ...I had not expected they would specify to this detail. The same in 2 (f) , my example of an element was Iron, and they asked 'apart from Iron'.This wasn't the worst, but yet again it was harsh.Other questions were stricter and not much chance to avoid anything you don't like.I hadn't spent much time studying this because of honours maths, But I didn't think it would be this bad :(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