Dreading maths in the Leaving Cert? Have some roast potatoes

It’s said that when one person in the house is doing the Leaving Cert, the whole house is doing the Leaving Cert. So, it would seem that chez Hogan is sitting the Leaving Cert again in 2023. We are mid-mocks at the time of writing and I can’t wait for them to be over.

I still have the Leaving Cert dream, particularly when I’m stressed. Marginally lower-scale stress sees me dream about my English finals instead, where, in my nightmare, the only book I’ve read in preparation is Oliver Twist and I begin to worry if my recollections are from the novel or the movie. Is “food glorious food, hot sausage and mustard” an appropriate quote to support my point I wonder before waking up in a panic.

But I digress. “Don’t do that,” I warn my Leaving Cert student. Stay on course and answer the mock questions as best you can. Keep an eye on the clock. Don’t stress about it in advance. Don’t worry about it when it’s over. This is just a practice for the real thing. And above all else, in my eyes, a timing exercise, I remind him.

They derailed the study plan to facilitate short-term cramming, she felt, and more often than not knocked students’ confidence

I remember my own form teacher, in sixth year, asking my class around to her house before our mock exams. It was a chance for the class to be together socially before study for the main event took over completely and we forgot to stop and breathe. She wasn’t a woman for sitting on the fence. She disagreed with the mocks completely. They derailed the study plan to facilitate short-term cramming, she felt, and more often than not knocked students’ confidence. They took place well in advance of the actual exams. There was plenty of time remaining for revision and consolidation, that mock exams held several months ahead of the real thing, could not reflect, she argued.

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I often think of my form teacher’s assertion about what the mocks could really achieve. And I remember feeling validated at the time as the stress of the non-important one took hold.

I was the first in my family to go to university. I was the first in my family to sit the Leaving Cert. And I was the first in my family to go to secondary school. I had one chance, and once chance alone to take advantage of this. And I felt all the pressure because of it. There was no one to advise, help or even empathise, because they hadn’t been there. But there were two parents who in spite of having had no educational opportunities themselves, thankfully placed great value on education.

It’s a great privilege to be able to support your children with their learning, throughout school. Even if you’re a bit rusty when it comes to the workings of the endocrine system or the modh coinníollach. That doesn’t mean of course your child will always appreciate that, and may even choose to study a different third language in secondary school to the one you could have helped them with — just so you can’t help them with it.

It’s also a great privilege to be able to look back on the experience and know, while that particular exam, the source of so many nightmares, was important, it is not the be-all and end-all. There are so many more opportunities and so many other options. Education matters, it really matters, but it’s about far more than what the mocks or the actual Leaving Cert can ever measure.

I suppose it’s a test run for the parents too, ahead of the big one. ‘It’s just a rite of passage that we all go through,’ I explain to him

Of course trying to convince a student who’s in the middle of preparations for it, that this is the case, is not always easy. Hobbies, outlets and plans fall by the wayside temporarily as he and his peers get ready for the test run. I want to object, but I know it’s pointless. I wouldn’t have listened either. This is everything for them at the moment.

I suppose it’s a test run for the parents too, ahead of the big one. “It’s just a rite of passage that we all go through,” I explain to him, offering more food.

That’s all I’ve got these days.

Dreading maths? Have some roast potatoes.

Worried the poet you’ve prepared won’t come up? Sure I’ll make some bolognese.

We’re half-way through the mocks. In spite of my genuine beliefs, I still feel the dread of memory. Pressure is for tyres. I feel like a tyre today, and it’s not even my rodeo or my first non-rodeo at that. Godspeed to all the Leaving Cert parents. We’ve got this — well the mocks, anyway.