Junior Cert Students’ thoughts on the eve of the exams

Clara

So,it's the night before the first exam! English Paper 1 looms above the heads of us Junior Certificate students to be tackled at 9:30 in the morning.EEEK! I wish everyone the best of luck to begin with.I'm feeling a little nervous this afternoon because English is one of my favourite subjects and it's one I really want an A in-97% in the mock is hard to live up to.Hopefully the topics I'm looking for in my studied poetry (adresses an issue)/fiction(setting,setting,setting!) come up.I plan on spending my evening cramming a little for geography on Friday and watching lots and lots of television to calm myself down (counts as revision for media studies if I watch lots of adverts,right?).  An early night shall be had by me.Praying that the weather stays like this for the next few weeks-I really don't fancy sitting exams in the blazing heat we had yesterday, particularly because my exams are being held in a kitchen of all places....Wish me luck anyway! I shall be speaking to you soon-blogging about the Irish exam on Thursday.

Lorraine

Hi guys!I'm Lorraine and I'm doing my Junior Cert tomorrow! :OI have to admit, I'm a tiny bit nervous. Ive been sent 2 cards with Good luck on them and a Facebook mail and lots of status updates on Facebook but it doesn't stop me still being terrified, but the cards have motivated me!Something that hasn't motivated me? All the people from my year writing on there Facebook's about how they cant be bothered studying and there more concerned about the finale of Desperate Housewives tonight! That definitely puts me off studying because if they aren't bothered why should I be? When I'm like that I look at all the Good luck cards and think about how well the rest of my family done in there Junior Certs and I'm back on track!Tomorrow, I have English paper 1 and 2. I'm doing honours! English is one of the exams I most want to do well in, for the simple reason that I want to be an English Secondary School teacher and it wont look too great on my CV that I failed it in the Junior Cert! I've always done well in English, in the mocks I got the highest result in my class so imagine if I failed it? :OI have to admit, I started studying at the start of third year because I really want to do well in the exams. It might have cost me some friends because I'm such a ''nerd'' but hopefully it will have gained me some great grades!! I probably should be studying more now but I look at weekend's as my day's off but that has slowly turned into any day off being my day off!I'm off to study now! I think this is being published after the exams and if so I hope you all get the results your hoping for! Good luck! :)

Jack

So. Junior Cert, 2012. Three years' worth of hard work boiling down to one week (for me, at least!) worth of exams - day to day, back to back. Let's do this!I've been studying quite hard for the past few weeks. I began studying in September - and I am glad of that. Murphy's/Sod's Law came through, and I've become really tired and lazy in the past two or three days, just before the exams. I'm finding it hard to study in the final few days. Of course that would happen...In terms of subjects, I am most nervous about French and Irish. I am really anxious about them. I feel quite okay with the rest of the subjects. I feel quite under prepared for Irish (mainly, the poetry and letter) and French (pretty much all aspects of the subject!). My standard of French is extremely poor. But, with work (lots of it....) I might be able to nab a B. I got a C at the Mocks, so here's hoping.Surprisingly, I feel quite calm and collected right now. I pretty much guarantee that to change when I walk in to my school and I see all the official-ness of the whole exam process. The fact that I begin my first State exams tomorrow hasn't really set in. Until tomorrow morning. Oh dear... That's something the Mocks don't prepare you for. I guess "Be Calm" by fun. will become an anthem of sorts for the exams! "Be caaaaalm!"Well, now I must go and try fit in a final few hours' of study before the exams. I have much left to do... Irish letter, poetry, listening, English revision... Oh dear.I wish the best of luck to all doing the exams! :33

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.