The sense of humour of those who set the Leaving Cert English paper did not appeal to students at the Presentation College in Carlow. Most criticism of the higher-level paper focused on a piece of text headed "An Irish Sense of Humour" about a man attempting to sell a hole in the ground. There may have been a joke in there somewhere, but the students didn't get it. "You're asked 'where did the story first strike you that it was going to be a funny tale?', but it doesn't strike you as being funny at all," said SinΘad Larkin from Carlow town, echoing the views of her classmates. "I didn't like that question at all, I just kept away from it," said Jonathan Martin, originally from Malahide, Co Dublin. "It was more odd than funny." So they weren't laughing, but Leaving Cert, Leaving Cert Applied and Junior Cert students were quietly pleased with their first morning's work. - all the papers were well received. The theme running through the higher-level paper, Ireland and Irishness, appealed to most of those sitting the exam. Stephen Gillespie, however, was entitled to feel unlucky, having moved to Carlow from England just three years ago. "It wasn't what I expected. Looking over the sample papers I didn't think they would have one theme of just Ireland. It was the whole paper and it put me back a bit. It took a while to adjust and it took me a bit longer to understand it, but I did what I could." The extra 20 minutes allowed this year to complete the paper was welcomed by students, although for some it was still not enough. Lisanne Byrne from Graiguecullen, who hopes to be a home economics teacher, was "fairly happy" but disappointed she didn't get her essay finished. Rebecca Dunne from Ballinabranna was very happy with the Junior Cert higher-level paper. "I expected it to be harder. We had a good choice in functional writing and the personal writing was good as well because we were given loads of topics to choose from. It was actually easier than I thought it would be."