My Leaving Cert: INTO General Secretary John Carr recalls the year when pressure on those hoping to get a teacher training place was huge.
Those watching their children doing the Leaving Cert must remember some of their own personal story - the lucky break with a question or, more likely, the sheer bad luck as the study done and the questions that appear on the paper fail to harmonize.
Many of the features of the weeks leading up to the Leaving Cert have remained constant over the years - study and stress, anxiety, fear of failure and the outward confidence of some fellow students who inwardly are probably nowhere near as certain. One thing of which I am quite sure is that mothers' prayers on the mornings of exams haven't varied much in intensity over the years.
Every year I recall the "all or nothing" nature of the exam and think that there has to be a better way of assessing years of steady study or an intensive final few weeks of study.
Doing well is everything and dreams, hopes and ambitions very much depend on that fortnight at the start of June.
Although choices on CAO forms, the need for careers guidance and the infinite array of options make it appear much more complex today, many have their hearts and minds set on a particular career. For me it was a relatively straightforward choice - teacher training or nothing.
The pressure on those hoping to get teacher training that year was huge. Those who went to Coláiste Éinde in Galway and other preparatory colleges in the years before us were guaranteed a place in teacher training if they got the Leaving Cert with honours Irish.
That year open competition for places in the Colleges of Education was introduced so those wanting to do teaching knew they were up against everyone else. It certainly helped to focus the mind.
The subjects we took for the Leaving Cert reflected the narrowness of the curriculum at the time. We had a staple diet of Gaeilge, maths, English, history, geography, science, botany, Latin and Greek - all of them through Irish. Today's menu of business, construction studies, modern Languages, accounting and technical drawing hadn't yet seen the light of day.
Then, as now, we tried to predict questions and prepare answers. That year being the centenary of W.B. Yeats's birth (now you know what year) we were certain that his poetry was a sure bet.
However, our English teacher at the time held to the view either that Yeats was too obvious a topic to come up or that other poets were more worthy of study. Sufficient to say our predictions about English poetry were correct and our knowledge of English poetry was not tested.
The fact that Coláiste Éinde was a boarding school meant that study was a part of our daily routine - seven days a week with extra helpings on Sundays. This no doubt helped to lessen the cramming as the end approached.
I can't for the life of me remember what I got in each subject but it must have been enough because that September saw me in St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, to train as a primary teacher.
The rest, as they say, is history.