Exam Diary / Séamus Conboy: So here we are, approximately 86,400 seconds away from the biggest exam of our lives. The banks are crumbling. The football hysteria is building towards Saturday and the start of Euro 2004. There are hysterics in the Dáil chambers and intergenerational sex on Fair City. But it's all just background noise to me as the big story of the year gets set to break. English Paper 1.

I can't see beyond my own little world far enough to care about my poor father, who's being banished to Youghal by his paymasters in the name of a less centralised Ireland. Or my brother, who's doing the Junior Cert and getting no sympathy from me. My mum teaches Leaving Cert Irish so she has dozens of people to care about. Accelerated global warming could wash Europe into the sea and I'll only notice if it gets me out of answering Paddy Kavanagh on English Paper 2. It's amazing how small the world becomes when you're sitting the Leaving Cert.

In our final few days the atmosphere in school has been reasonably relaxed.

There are pockets of quiet desperation in the corridors but I have tried to avoid the harbingers of doom. On the whole, the teachers have done a good job in building up our confidence. Either that or they've put something illicit in the vending machines.

You could describe this feeling as excitement - the prospect of the exams, the challenge ahead. My only concern is what happens if I just have a bad day. This is one of those times I'm really glad I wasn't born a girl.

Global warming is impacting on some level this week - this is the worst possible time to have a heatwave!

Firstly it has turned me blonde. If stereotypes are anything to go by, I'm in big trouble for the exams.

More importantly, it is impossible to study in this weather. All I want to do is go outside and play ball or sunbathe. I've done more or less no study this past week. And as for trying to get a good night's sleep with a back like a well-cooked lobster - forget it.

Another major distraction are graduation nights, and I don't just mean my own. Every school in Dublin has one, and that includes a lot of all-girls schools. That means a whole load of partying - naturally, I'm overbooked. And that in turn means days spent studying with a head not fit for an "English as a foreign language" exam, not to mind the Leaving Cert.

Last week half the team, myself included, decided to go on sabbatical from hurling. I wasn't overly keen on the idea, but a broken finger doesn't appeal to me right now either. I'd like to think that they're lost without me, but even I don't believe that.

One date that has been stuck in my head since February, when we got our timetable, is Monday, June 21st. E-Day - emancipation day! If only I could remember what date D-Day was, I'd be set. On June 21st, I will be a free man; the world will be my toystore.

Now, with only 84,000 seconds left until the exams, I still don't know if I'm ready. All I can hope for is that I open tomorrow's newspaper to learn that the world has stopped turning, the future, past and present have converged, the Leaving Cert exams and CAO choices have become meaningless, and that all we can do is live for the moment in an everlasting Wednesday, June 9th.

I think desperation is creeping in.

Séamus Conboy is a student at Scoil Caitríona, Glasnevin, Dublin