Exam Diary: As I ate my last fajita in silence last night I mused on the year gone by. It was a hectic calendar of study, union activity and the social highs and lows of late teenhood.

The miasma of the last few months robbed me of my perspective, but when, two weeks ago, committee members of the Union of Secondary Students - the lobby group for second-level students - were called together to prepare a statement on the school bus crash in Co Meath, the smoke cleared.

We are lucky to be around to sit this exam and it's not important enough to lose the head over. The crash happened only nine miles from where I live. Friends of mine knew people who were involved in that terrible accident and the loss those families have experienced puts a bit of exam pressure back where it belongs.

With that in mind, I went to bed last night slightly calmer and more circumspect than I have done in recent weeks.

I wound down before bed with a bit of TV. I have an eclectic taste in programmes, ranging from Scrubs to Oireachtas Report. I'm pretty keen on The West Wing as well, given that I may one day pursue a career in politics. I'm confident that the offices of Leinster House are as dimly lit and intriguing as those of The West Wing. Oireachtas Report doesn't really support this theory but I stay tuned just in case.

English should be fine as long as I don't bamboozle the examiners with half-remembered lines from Dickinson, used to illustrate points I'm trying to make about Hamlet. I'll be glad to finally put the Poisonwood Bible to rest as well. That novel was not a page-turner by my standards. Irish tomorrow should be my best day because I went to a Gaelscoil primary school and my dad is fluent. I'll be glad of an easy morning because maths in the afternoon is my first big hurdle.

I'm not bad at maths but I have a mental block about arithmetic on paper 1.

By Friday I'll be putting Irish to rest and taking it easy in the afternoon. It seems unbelievable that I'll have 2½ subjects put to bed only 52 hours from now.

Now that the exams are about to start, I can see the beginning of the end of this chapter and I am already thinking about next weekend. With the first three days of exams out of the way, I will return to union business on Saturday as we march through Dublin to protest against anti- social behaviour orders. There's life beyond the Leaving and I don't want to be arrested for hanging around with my friends in a public place when I finally do get my head out of the books.

For the next two weeks I will attempt to follow the advice that I have given others on the USS website. Relax, eat well, sleep well and don't let panic get in the way of your exam performance. We're a lucky lot to be hale and hearty enough to take this exam when our friends in Meath lost that chance so tragically last month. Students such as Olukunle Elukanlo have fought for the opportunity to stay in Ireland and do the Leaving; to many around the world it is regarded as an opportunity to shine, not a burden to be endured. With these bigger truths in mind I'll head into today's exam with my perspective intact.

Oisín O'Reilly is a student at Ashbourne Community School, Meath.

Niteline, the USS student support helpline, can be reached at 1800 323 242 or www.niteline.org for the duration of the exams.