I want my money back. This summer is not at all what it was cracked up to be. I have been dreaming about these few months since I started secondary school - the legendary "Summer After The Leaving Cert". All my big plans and schemes forgotten . . . all the holidays and weekend trips unorganised . . . and my whole social group turned on its ear. I had never heard of these problems from past pupils; only the ecstasy of being finished, and the wild and crazy events which they were involved in. A lot of which I now believe to be either fictional or the result of delusional psychosis.
Oh yes it's mad. I mean I've left Co Kildare twice! The only really good things about this summer, as far as I can see, are: 1) I'm earning some money; 2) For the first time my parents haven't sent me off to the Gaeltacht or some French course or a summer camp; and 3) I didn't have to go on the annual torture to either Dunmore East or Kilkee.
Why do parents think you have to enjoy yourself, when they bring you and your wailing, sweating, annoying siblings on a four-hour car drive down the country, to a town with less life than a chunk of rock? The sea is freezing, your clothes always stink of fish, and the swings in the hotel are always taken. If you're really lucky you might get to go to the local funfair or some limestone formation in a local cave.
But that was an age when I thought bright blue bicycle shorts were the coolest fashion item. Refusing point-blank to go is more my style these days. I apologise profusely to anyone who supports the institution of the "family holiday", but travelling in the back of a car, wedged in between a screaming child and a 10-year-old who every five minutes says: "Are we nearly there yet?" is not my idea of relaxation.
Relaxation is knowing you have a nice little sum of money in your pocket going home on Friday evenings, and the only thing you have to spend it on is yourself. So the summer is spent earning money to spend at the weekends. And all the weekends blend into one because you go to the same pubs and nightclubs with the same people every Friday and Saturday night.
Yet, when Monday morning arrives and the drudgery of work looms (and believe me, you don't get any drudgier than standing around in a nurse's uniform all day, picking pieces of wax off dental instruments) the distant weekend is the one thing that keeps you going.
Take me for example: I work for an orthodontist. I am a "clinical assistant". In other words, I clean everything that is used in big sterilising ovens, and then put them on trays. All day, each day. Work is monotonous, routine and boring. I never want to do it again; I'm going to stay in school forever if this is independence.
I spend all my spare time (including when I'm out at the weekend) moaning loudly about my job. So, I don't really have time for anything else, especially those "deadly" holidays that I hear so much of.
That planned trip to Galway to hear some unheard-of band play in a field? Neither sight nor sound. A scheme that makes it possible to do all the decent pubs and clubs in Dublin city centre in one weekend? Sure, but weren't we supposed to do that in June? And that plan to go down to Courtown to get really drunk? Well, most of the people who wanted to do that were just too busy drinking to organise it.
Even after the results come out next week, there's still a month-and-a-half before college starts (presuming I get into college; I don't particularly want to dwell on repeating at the moment). That time will be spent standing around at work, gossiping about other people's love lives, and buying shoes.
