‘I danced around the room’: Student who had epileptic seizure during exam delighted with results

A Leaving Cert student who had an epileptic seizure during her history paper, but was not entitled to resit the exam under official rules, has expressed delight with her results.

Rachel Langan (18) from Athenry, Co Galway, was worried that she would miss out on the points required to study her first choice college course after only partially completing the history exam.

While State Examinations Commission (SEC) rules stipulate that candidates who experience a serious medical condition are entitled to sit deferred exams, this does not apply to those who have commenced an exam.

“I was very nervous when I went online to check the results this morning,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if I had done enough, or if that exam would pull me down, so it was scary.”

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In the end, she was thrilled. “I was very, very, very happy,” she said. “I did a kind of manic dance around the kitchen. There was excitement and relief after everything ... I just felt, ‘I’ve finally done it’,” she said.

Ms Langan is now on course to secure her first choice course of arts at University of Galway, with a focus on English, history and Irish or Celtic civilisation.

She was diagnosed with epilepsy in October 2021 after experiencing seizures and was permitted to sit her exams in a room on her own at Presentation College Athenry under “reasonable accommodation” rules.

Her exams passed without incident until her history paper on June 15th, when she experienced a seizure in the middle of the paper.

Over a few minutes it developed into a “tonic-clonic” seizure, where a sudden burst of electricity in the brain causes the body to jerk and shake. By the time she came out of the seizure, she was feeling jittery and exhausted.

“My hands were especially bad — they were shaking quite a lot,” she said. “You’re not just mentally tired, you’re also physically tired. After a tonic-clonic seizure, every single muscle is shaking ... My thinking slowed down. Everything took so much effort, like sentences; just forming one took quite a lot of effort.”

In the end, Ms Langan did not manage to finish the exam and completed just one of the two required essays.

The SEC said it was unable to comment on individual cases, but plans to review rules around access to deferred exams.

She said she had felt particularly worried about her results because of memory lapses linked to previous seizures, and could not remember anything she studied between October 2021 and February 2022. “I had to relearn everything,” she said.

Ms Langan had hoped to achieve a H2 or H3 in her history paper, one of her strongest subjects. In the end, she secured a H4, which she said she was satisfied with under the circumstances.

She is hopeful authorities will now change exam rules to ensure other students with epilepsy in similar circumstances can sit deferred exams if necessary.

“The rule that you cannot resit an exam because you’ve started it has to change,” she said. “It’s not fair to students with conditions that prevent them from sitting an exam when dealing with circumstances that they cannot control,” she said.