Sunburnt faces tell a story of no study

Tension. Fear. Purple faces as breaths held. And then, spontaneous, jubilant, and very audible cries of "Yes!" echoed through the exam hall as students saw that the queen of angst, Sylvia Plath, had deigned to show up on this year's English paper.

She hadn't bothered last year, leaving students with their pants down (metaphorically, so to speak). I wasn't taking any chances. The night before, I'd crammed in some quotes from Hopkins, Mahon, Wordsworth and, of course, Plath. In the end, I tackled Hopkins, because I felt I knew him a bit better. I thought the exam was fair and gave students plenty of choice. I'm a fan of Macbeth, because the characters are very layered and interesting.

The week before the Leaving was a week of two extremes: from fervently and madly studying, to fervently and madly lying about the house doing nothing. The gorgeous weather has made it tough. A lot of the students are coming in sunburnt, their red faces telling the story of exactly how much study they’ve been doing. Some are taking the books out to the garden, but this can make it hard to concentrate. My study den – or prison – has a big window just over my desk, so my arm got a little bit of a tan.

Today, with Geography and Maths, is easily the worst day for me, so I’m looking forward to getting them over and done with. This will be a lot of stress: geography has a huge curriculum and there’s a lot to be done. I can manage maths paper one, but I’ve quite a bit to look over. I’m not the biggest fan of the new Project Maths programme; there’s more of an emphasis on explaining ideas rather than just giving calculations. I don’t know if this works for me.

The worst of it ends today, for me at least. I think I’m reasonably on top of next week’s exams: Irish, Maths, History, and German. So I hope I can take a little bit of time to get outside this weekend and steal all the universe’s available supply of Vitamin D.

I’m not planning anything major, because I’m still very much in exam mode. We live in a rural area so we’ve a nice big space out the back. A few hours in the garden will do nicely, but I don’t think my parents would be delighted with me taking too much time off or making big plans.

It’s been a stressful time for them too. My younger brother is doing his Junior Cert this year. There have been quite a few days where one or other of us has been tense and highly strung. So far, that hasn’t happened on the same day, but when it does . . .

Mum and Dad heen really supportive, feeding us well and offering us cups of tea. I take the tea, sit on the couch, and watch anything. Anything at all. I don’t care. As long as it’s nothing to go with geography or maths.