Saturday, September 18, 2010

School, Schule, Scoil

I haven't posted anything for a while, sorry about that. But I do in fact have a valid reason for it this time. School has started back up again, and where as for the past 4 years I got by (rather well) with not too much work, this year is a lot more trying.

If your not familiar with the Irish schooling system, in secondary school there are 2 exams. The junior cert after 3 years (doesn't qualify you for anything, won't get you into college, pretty much useless) then some schools offer an optional 4th year, known as transition year of TY. After TY, or third year, if you didn't do TY, you go into 5th year. 5th year is the start of the senior cycle and were a lot of the work for the final exam in 6th year is done. I am in 5th year. It is a lot of work, and I cleverly decided to take on an extra subject, and not just any subject, perhaps the most essay heavy next to English. History.

I love history, it is my second favourite subject, but my god is it a lot of work and learning off. Because its an extra subject I can opt out at any stage, but i really do want to do it and get a good grade.

I really should have mention the exam at the end of 6th year is called the Leaving Certificate. This basically decided if you'll get into your college/university/IT whatever. It is made out to be the be all and end all of your education but really there are countless back door ways into a lot of courses.

Your leaving cert results are transfered into points and certain courses require certain points. The most points you can get is 600. An A1 in a higher level class is worth 100 points and the points decrease as the grades get lower. Most students take 7 subjects, the results from your best 6 subjects are used to determine your points, unless a course has a required subject, then that is used in your points even if you only got a D. If you fail Irish, English or Maths, you have to go through 6th year again and resit the leaving cert (i don't like this rule)

Anyway, for my leaving cert i'm hoping to get 480 - 500 points, i'd love to break 500, but i'd be happy with anything over 450 really. The subjects I'm taking for my leaving cert are: Irish, English, Maths,German, Business, Physics, Music and History. Heres what i hope to get in each of them

English: A1
Irish:C/B2
Maths: A1
German:B2
Business: B2
Physics: B1
Music: A1
History: A1

The courses i'm interested in are Applied Music in Dundalk IT and Media Studies in Maynooth. Dundalk only requires me to get 2 Cs or higher in any 2 higher level subjects and Ds or higher in ordinary level subjects. Seeing as i'm only doing one ordinary level class (maths) i think this is more then attainable. Media however requires me to get an A in English, which is quite difficult. I only got B in the junior cert, but i know that's because i didn't revise my novel well enough and subsequently messed up my novel question.

If i don't get into these courses, there are similar ones around the country. These are just the two i have looked at properly. But if i don't get my points or into any college I think i might go to America for a year or two and try to work on my music. Being a successful musician is of course what i truly want to do, but I know that it isn't the most likely thing to happen in the world.

Back to this years workload, i really went off on a ramble there. Anyway, its not so much that the workload is ridiculously big, its more that I'm doing it properly this year and putting in the effort i should, which i must admit I didn't really do before. This has resulted in both my blog and YouTube being ignored. I'm trying to fix this, but i don't know how often I'll be able to update, we shall see.

Oh and in other news i get to sing a solo in choir on Thursday :D

And y'all need to see this video