She writes songs and records them in her bedroom studio, but for the next few weeks life for Jessica Leen will be all about the books as she prepares to sit the Leaving Cert. LOUISE HOLDENexplains why she's the right person to be this year's 'Irish Times' Leaving Cert diarist
ARE IRISH LEAVING cert students a stagger of zombies lurching towards college without a clue? Recent statements from university and industry heads might give you that impression. Here’s another perspective. Jessica Leen, this year’s
Irish Times
Leaving Cert diarist, is the typical Irish sixth year in every way.
A student of Christ King Girls’ School in Cork, she’s looking for 420 points. (So maybe not that typical, then.) Some days she’s stressed about exams and some days she doesn’t give a damn. There are subjects she loves and others she cares less about. She has a bunch of friends who vary from the highly competitive to the devil-may-care.
But Jessica is not a spoonfed automaton without a critical thought in her head. She’s a singer songwriter, a poet, a current affairs junkie, a GAA player, a born-again Gaelgoir, a wannabe teacher/journalist/actor and an insatiable consumer of everything interesting from Mayan Civilisations to French street culture.
And – get this – she loves school. Loves the teachers, loves the learning, loves the people, the whole lot. She is fond of saying that the best thing she learned in school was how to make friends.
“Jessica is a super student, bubbly and vivacious, a real team player,” says her Irish teacher, Cáit Watkins. “She keeps her classmates entertained.”
According to Cáit, many in the school were surprised to hear that Jessica was going for a course with mid-range points: arts in UCC. “She’s well capable of getting high points and a lot of people expected she might go for one of the more competitive courses.”
But rather than plump for law or medicine, Jessica is following her passion, English and theatre.
Performance has been a big feature of her young life. A quick search of her name on YouTube throws up a dozen Jessica Leen videos; just the girl and her guitar playing her own songs and covers of everyone from Katy Perry to The Script.
From this perspective, she has no problem inviting people into her life – most of her videos are staged in her own monochromatic bedroom, with Marilyn Monroe as smouldering backdrop.
Her friends (who helped her design and decorate her black and white bedroom-cum-studio) are hopeful that her outgoing nature will translate well to paper. One of her ‘besties’, Erin Rose, worries that some readers might not get Jessica’s sense of humour. “Half the time we don’t get her jokes. She’s very quirky. Still, I think the readers will like her in the end. She’s not one of these people that sees it all as a big competition, who comes out of an exam saying they failed and ends up with an A1.”
Another close friend, Ian Humphries, thinks that Jessica will get some fun out of the Leaving and writing the diary, and he hopes that others will pick that up. “Jessica’s hoping to get around 400 plus, like a lot of students. I think she’ll make a fantastic diarist because she gets emotionally involved in everything she does and the exams will be no exception. She’s not one for elites – in school she gets on with everybody.”
Granddad John Leen says Jessica is no angel, but he hopes readers will identify with her. “I think she will be influential in her life. I think the readers will like her. She has her moments, but she seems to know how to deal with her own moments.”
Moments aside, Jessica has yet to go off the rails, says her Dad. “Well, I know parents always think their kids are the greatest but we really are blessed with Jess,” says Colm Leen. “She hasn’t put us through any of the expected teenage challenges and she keeps a balanced perspective on everything. She doesn’t stay long at the zany or serious extremes of personality, but she’s prepared to go either way for enjoyment or for ambition. Above all she has a great sense of humour and I think different kinds of students will appreciate where she’s coming from.”
Over the course of the Leaving Cert, Jessica will take us through the highs and lows of the exams, from her passion, English; to her bête noir, maths. She got a “woeful” result in business studies in the mocks so the pressure’s on there. Jessica has also spent years struggling with Irish only to discover after a summer course last year that she has a latent love of the language and is now taking on honours, with some trepidation.
Her little sister Jennifer is sitting the Junior Cert next month so the Leen household may be a hive of moodswings and junkfood and unreasonable demands, according to Colm Leen.
“So far there’s no signs of heightened nerves or tension. The girls are getting on with it. There have been some minor adjustments to the home environment, and there is a certain amount of what I call Leaving Cert Privilege Abuse going on. I can handle giving up the last slice of cake or control of the remote for the time being.
“For now I can still hear Jess putting down the books and picking up the guitar at intervals. She’s still writing songs with three weeks to go, so she can’t be that stressed. When I stop hearing the strumming, I’ll know that something like tension is setting in.”
Who is Jessica Leen?
Who?Jessica Leen, Christ King Girls' School, Irish TimesLeaving Cert diarist 2010.
Where?Currently playing guitar in her bedroom in Douglas, preparing a video for YouTube when she should be studying.
When?Well, now. But as for the future, Jessica hopes to study English and theatre and then go on to be a singing, songwriting, acting megastar with a teaching job on the side and a secret life as a journalist à la Spiderman, except in reverse.
How?By getting around 420 points in her Leaving Cert and drinking millions of cups of tea
Why?Because Cork is her oyster, like
Happy Days
Once upon a long long time
when sat here scared at ten to nine,
we longed for time to move some more
and show us twenty-five to four.
Six Septembers and late Mays
sandwiched in those happy days
of parties, projects, puns and pens,
and half a million minutes, friends.
Walls all tall and packed with rules
were built but never saw us fools,
dreams we had and plans we made
were always real in this arcade.
The lines we learned, and read and wrote
we will forget, we will not quote,
but lasting memories of mind
will never prove too hard to find.
Now once upon our final time
we’re all together, ten to nine.
As one, we’ll leave our house once more,
this is our twenty five to four.
by Jessica Leen
Jessica’s Leaving Cert exam diary begins on Tuesday, June 8th
