My Leaving Cert: Sharon Ní Bheoláin, RTÉ newscaster.
It could be a mild form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
But once or twice a year, prompted by nothing in particular in my waking life, I'm taken by my sadistic subconscious on that most nerve-wracking of journeys.
The venue: a hot stuffy sports hall. The date: June 1988. The event: the terminal exam of my secondary school career.
It's usually my history exam that I'm sitting. The hands on the huge wall clock appear to move at alarming speed.
Before I can gather my thoughts, let alone put pen to paper, two hours of my allotted time have been squandered. I've five essays to compose in one hour and that damn clock is ticking louder and louder and louder.
I was a bright, albeit precocious, student at Malahide Community School in Dublin, cunning enough to know exactly the study commitment required to secure my first CAO choice of Gaeilge and French in TCD.
Little sense in wasting points, I thought. God forbid that I should work harder than I needed to! Like a private investigator in a B list movie, I took to forensically examining past papers. I searched for trends, for clues, for patterns. I predicted the questions, the issues, the essays, the topics. Bismarck's domestic policy a dead cert, Patrick Kavanagh long overdue, and Peig: bean chraifeach pleigh. . . I'd crack this nut.
Of course, I'd have been better served substituting the crystal ball gazing for some quiet reading and note taking.
Curiously, it was about this time that I took to scoring off the calendar days with a large felt pen - a useless activity which served no real purpose other than to increase the sense of panic and hysteria which had enveloped me.
In the face of such growing madness, my family showed endless patience, ignoring (perhaps wisely) that I had commandeered the kettle from the kitchen, installing it in my room along with the weekly supply of Nescafé and chocolate hob nobs.
English paper one was my first exam. After laying out my dazzling array of newly acquired stationery, I set to it. Two years of course work concentrated into a 2½ hour exam! And so it continued.
I was physically drained after the Leaving Cert. My view then, as now, is that the exam is largely a test of memory. Inordinate quantities of detail are rote learned, regurgitated, then largely forgotten forever after. From Shakespeare to Scothscealta, the Leaving Cert rewards a student's ability to commit to memory, rather than to show a clear understanding or appreciation of its content.
That no serious attempt has been made in the intervening 17 years to overhaul such a key - and potentially life-influencing - exam, with a view to incorporating some element of continuous assessment is regrettable.
The Leaving Cert was sold to us as the "Holy Grail" of academic achievement. This was the door through which every student must pass in order to reach adulthood proper.
In reality, of course, it is no such thing. But it seemed to hang over me like a cloud for two long years. With a ferocity which would almost definitely be deemed out of place by today's politically correct standards, one tutor - a decent (albeit scary) man - would bang his fists and stamp his feet.
I'm sure he felt it necessary to remind us on a daily basis how long the dole queues were, but I resented the bully tactics, and spent as much time as I could mitching not just his class but any class.
My results in the end were respectable but hardly spectacular. With the exception of Maths, I sat higher level papers and managed an honour in each.
My heart goes out to those embarking on the three-week marathon tomorrow. While I would never seek to patronise by offering advice, I would say the following few words of caution. Bismarck never made an appearance, Patrick Kavanagh was a no-show, and the craifeacht theme in Peig was conspicuous by its absence.
I said I was bright. I never said I was clever!
