By 12.15 yesterday, the 188 students sitting their Junior Cert exams at Ashbourne Community School, Ashbourne, Co Meath, were in a reasonably relaxed state. They had just completed their first English paper. Filing out of their exam centres clad in their petrel blue and grey uniforms, they appeared calm and collected.
"It wasn't an easy paper but it suited me and I did brilliantly," James Looney, who sat the higher-level paper, told The Irish Times. James particularly approved of the essay choice and opted to write about his hero, Padraig Pearse. He hadn't been worried about the paper and had done "the basic amount of study", he said. The day before the exam he'd followed all the rules - no study, lots of fresh air and exercise and a good night's sleep.
Roidin Crowley and Laurie Shanahan had both completed the higher-level paper ahead of time. Roidin found the letter a bit difficult but wrote an extremely long essay and her hand was "wrecked." Laurie hated the essay writing but otherwise the paper was "okay." She felt sure that she would do better on the afternoons' paper.
Higher-level student Mark Meleady said the paper was what he had expected and that he hadn't been at all nervous. He had particularly liked the essay question and had written about an alien. Students taking the ordinary-level paper said they had expected a much more difficult exam. However, Ciaran O'Sullivan would have liked a bit more time. Sioibhan O'Neill, who also had to rush her paper, said that she had only felt nervous when she took her seat in the exam centre. Kerri Walsh had started to get a bit nervous the previous day when she had heard talk of the exams on the radio. Both girls liked the paper - sections two and five were particularly good, they said. David Moore said that the essay was the best part - he wrote about swimming. Ciaran, though, disagreed - the selection of essay topics was "boring". The four students thought that they had done quite well on the paper and reckoned that they had scored Cs or Ds.
Dave Bermingham who sat the foundation paper had "felt a bit shaky coming in." The paper had started easily enough, he said, but had got harder as he went along. Philip Hannigan said that he had mostly known what to expect on the paper and thought he had a good chance of doing well. Aisling Rock, who also sat the foundation paper, reported that she "had been in bits" getting up that morning. She was worried because she hadn't worked very hard, but in the event, she had found the paper "grand".
While the higher-level students rushed off for a quick lunch and revision before the start of the afternoon's paper, students taking ordinary and foundation-level exams returned home to bone up on today's papers.
