E XAM DIARY:My A grade could be down to quotes I can commit to short-term memory, not to critical thinking skills

I HAVE fallen deeply out of love. It’s not that today’s English paper didn’t go well for me; it was grand.

However, I was able to write an essay I’ve written countless times before and I couldn’t relax at the thought that my three years of learning and loving English could have been reduced to this.

I know what you’re going to say – why not choose a more difficult essay? But that would make me an eejit.

Today is causing me particular heartache. If I had to sit English Paper 2 right this minute (this being 5pm on Wednesday), I wouldn’t get the A I’m hoping for. I need the next 20 hours to learn off by heart the quotes that are going to get me the A.

I won't get it for the three years I've spent swooning over Sailing to Byzantiumor puzzling pleasantly over King Lear. Sure, I'll rack up a few points for appreciating the poetry, but my A grade, if it comes, will be down to the quotes I can commit to short-term memory in the next 20 hours, not down to my critical thinking skills.

Is this the kind of mentality we need in Ireland now? To be able to recite a page of words that would be found on an iPhone in seconds?

And another thing! The wrappers on those glucose energy sweets are too crinkly.

Perhaps all this is just a serotonin dip brought on by the hype of this morning. I need to let off some steam. You could tell that everyone felt the same way in the exam hall today by the tinkle of nervous laughter that broke out when the invigilator attempted a phone amnesty – although it was pretty funny. She asked everyone who had a mobile phone with them to switch it off and leave it on the table out in the hall.

Nobody moved.

So she asked anyone who had a mobile phone to turn it off and leave it at the top of the room. Half the hall shuffled up. The other half laughed. Is there no trust left in this world?

Well it's dog-eat-dog on the CAO front for sure. We are the generation with the fewest options in a decade. Everyone's going back to college because there's no work out there, the Government's not hiring, the multinationals are leaving, we can't catch a break in the Eurovision– no wonder there was a question on today's English paper asking us to envision the future in 2050.

That’s a nice safe distance. Any sooner and the examiners would need counselling after correcting our responses.

It was interesting to note the inclusion of Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451. Imagine the scene: a world where critical thought is frowned upon, the unexamined life is considered the happiest and books are burned lest the citizenry might dwell too long on the knottier problems of existence.

Hey Leaving Cert! Self-aware, much?

OK, I’m winding my neck in now so that I may sweeten up for today’s paper. I’m neurotically fearful of any little mindworm that might land me in the wrong headspace for these exams.

Some say that you can taste the fear hormones in badly slaughtered beef. I believe that any bad vibes I bring into the exam will get trapped between the pages like a virus and escape into the face of the examiner, turning her against me.

So that’s why I’m taking it out on you.

Yesterday, I revved up my happy head with my own weight in Honey Nut Loops and a good blast of the Colm and Jim-Jim Leaving Cert song.

(That may account for the Post-Leaving crash I experienced at the top of this column).

Today, I plan to sleep in until nine, get up and learn my own weight in Lear. By the time I talk to you again, my three years of learning and loving English will be behind me. My love affair with William Butler Yeats will be over.

Or to look at it another way, with the dead weight of the Leaving Cert off my shoulders, it will finally, and critically, begin.

Jessica Leen is a student at Christ King secondary school, Cork