THE BOYS from Synge Street CBS in Dublin came out of their first Leaving Cert exam yesterday morning with their sense of humour intact. David Donegan from Dolphin's Barn had been studying until midnight on Tuesday in the corridor of St James Hospital while waiting for treatment for torn ligaments suffered in a recent soccer match.
Karl Byrne from Kimmage said there should be "an extra 10 per cent for studying in pain."
Karl himself had been feeling all right about the exams on Tuesday, until he took a break to watch the England Brazil match on television. "After that it started hitting me, and I couldn't sleep all night."
Philip Kealy from Tallaght objected to the essay titles in yesterday's first English exam: titles like `The Art of Conversation', `The Food Industry in Ireland' and `I am a Bundle of Prejudices'.
David Donegan, doing pass English, was much happier with `A Message from Mars' and `My Thoughts on the Eve of the Leaving Certificate'.
None had experienced the traditional small sigh of relief breathed by students at the end of their first exam. It had been next to impossible to prepare for the morning's first English exam, an essay and an exercise in comprehension. The problem was that they were expecting yesterday afternoon's second English exam to be one of the toughest of the whole series, demanding detailed interpretations of poetry, Shakespeare, the classical and modern novel.
"Poetry is the hardest of the lot," said Karl Byrne. "It's really difficult to get your head around some of the ideas the poets intended." David Donegan said the morning exam was already "a big blur" because of his worries about what was coming in the afternoon. "I've the brainspan of a goldfish", cracked the young man from Kimmage.
Most of them had started revising properly only when school broke up three weeks ago. Marcus Carey from Crumlin admitted that he had been studying for three hours a day three months ago and for up to 10 hours a day in the past three weeks.
"Only serious, sad people start studying early," said David Donegan, "people with no life in them." Karl Byrne agrees: "You need rain to study." But they were making an exception of their friend Marcus from the ranks of the dry, lifeless swots.
James Shannon from York Street felt the pressure would be more bearable if the Leaving Cert was replaced by exams at the end of every term during the senior cycle, with the points added up to make a final overall mark. Only Marcus Carey disagreed.
However, all agreed on the huge importance of the Leaving Cert. "In the Junior Cert I had no nerves at all. I woke up, I did it and it was all over," said David Donegan. "This is completely different. Where you're going from here is into the rest of your life."
AT the school once attended by Eamonn Andrews, Liam Cosgrave, Gay Byrne and Eddie Jordan, around 90 students started their Leaving Cert and 130 students their Junior Cert yesterday.
The principal, Mr Stephen Jordan, said the intense fortnight of exams raised the levels of pressure on staff as well as students, with "considerable organisational pressure to ensure everything is in order", from desks to clocks to exam rolls.
He welcomed the variations offered by the Leaving Cert Applied and the Leaving Cert Vocational courses, although in a traditionally academic school like Synge Street these new exam courses had not yet been tried out. "They're something for the future," he said.
