Skills learned in honours and applied maths went by the wayside at the announcement of the Leaving Cert results in Limerick's Crescent College Comprehensive yesterday. The 160 former students were taking no chances and had their calculators out to compute their pointscores.
From 9am, mobile phones were buzzing, girls were screaming and boys were talking in muted tones after the fateful decision was made to open the white envelope and read the yellow slip of paper.
"My legs and everything are shaking," said one pupil. Some preferred to peruse the results in a quiet space, holding on to the sealed envelope so as not to destroy any attached good luck. "I have not them open yet. I cannot open them," said one.
Another roared up in his car, collected his result and tore off again without a word.
Others preferred to call on a friend. Susan Nash was going to open Niamh English's and vice versa.
Daniel Cagney got five A1s and two A2s - enough, he believed, for studying medicine in Cork. Pierre Butler got all Cs. "I thought they gave me the wrong results," he said. "I'm going home now to prove my mother wrong."
Other mothers were on the scene. Greta Kiernan remarked there was not half the fuss when she did the Leaving 20 years ago and went on to work in the bank. But she was happy with her daughter, Amy, who will do an arts degree.
"She did well. She got what she wanted in Mary I."
Elsewhere there were tears and hugs. "Stupid ol' Leaving Cert," said one friend in commiseration.
There was also gratitude. "A brilliant maths teacher," said Mark Crowe, who got an A2 in honours maths, of Fr Martin Curry.
"If you do the work, you get the results," was Fr Curry's reply, adding that the students he had seen were happy with their results.
Some of them said the teachers strike affected everybody equally. "It was a level playing-field. The only ones who got away with it were the grinds schools. When the teacher had covered the course already, it was almost handier to have the time off," said Donal Flynn.
Preparations for celebrations of the rite of passage and the parting of ways began early with most people heading for Doc's Nightclub. "We are supposed to be working in the morning. Not happening," said Colette McNamara.
