Do not panic

AHHHH. . . there is only a fortnight to go. I am so far behind.

My best friend has just phoned in a self-satisfied mood to tell me he has everything done. He intends to spend the next two weeks at the beach.

Before departing, he helpfully tells me the poets I have spent two years labouring over are not going to come up in English and the theorems I've memorised for maths are the wrong ones.

Meanwhile, my parents peep through the keyhole and talk in low whispers outside my door about me not being "an academic type".

Despite these irritating intrusions, experts say you will not perform on the day if you come into the exam in a panic.

You need to ignore outside factors and concentrate on yourself. Eat properly, maintain your normal sleep patterns and - crucially - realise the Leaving Cert is not the scorecard used to measure your whole life. You can repeat it, you may never need it and you may surprise yourself and do very well.

Listen to advice

I know, I know. Read the paper carefully. Answer all the questions. Keep an eye on the clock. Bring a spare pen. Go to the toilet beforehand. Etc. etc. etc.

You've heard it all before, from teachers, parents, study experts, even education journalists. But such time-honoured advice, like reading the paper properly, is handed down to successive generations of Leaving Cert students for a reason.

Each year many of you fail to do these elementary things. For example, there is little point in answering two questions from a section where you are only required to answer one.

The other homespun piece of advice, to answer all required questions, is probably the most important. You will get marks even if you only partially answer a question.

In maths, you can produce an incorrect answer and still get most of the marks because of earlier work on the question.

Be realistic about your ability

Thousands of you face tough decisions in the first week of the exam. Do you take higher or ordinary-level papers in English, Irish or maths.

You are of course entitled to decide on the day, but most teachers suggest you decide long before that.

The higher and ordinary-level papers have their idiosyncracies and suddenly dropping down from one level to the other does not guarantee an A or B.

There is a danger in over-estimating your ability. If you opt, unrealistically, for higher-level papers in the maths, English or Irish, you could fail them.

If you have been failing these subjects in school or barely scraping a pass grade, you should talk to your teacher and seriously consider taking the ordinary-level paper.

Otherwise you could be living dangerously. Failing at either level could prevent you from entering a myriad of third-level courses. You need to ask yourself if it's worth the risk?

However, try not to be too self-doubting and if you genuinely think you can handle a higher-level paper, take it. But do some soul-searching first, particularly against the background of your school and mock exam results over the last two years.

Expect and react to surprises

Newsflash. The Leaving Certificate is an exam. There will be questions you did not expect. They may be asked in a different way than you planned for.

Rather than being asked to "discuss" something, you may be asked to "illustrate" or "define" or "outline" it.

For the past few months you have (hopefully) studied past exam papers carefully. You have mapped out the bewildering possibilities, poured over question patterns and tried to second guess those setting the paper.

You may have a spooky ability to predict what questions will come up, but no prophet gets everything right. Be prepared for the unexpected. Make sure if that "banker" question does not come up, you have prepared something else.

You need to be flexible - similar questions come up every year, but can be presented differently.

Read the question carefully. What initially appears unfamiliar can be - upon close inspection - an old Leaving Certificate question simply dressed up in new clothes.

As one observer said this week: "The way some teachers, particularly those in private grind schools, can predict exam questions, has made those setting exams determined to include a few surprises every year to keep everyone on their toes".

Scale down your studies

At this late stage, forget about trying to reach every far-flung outpost of the course.

Subjects like English, biology, history and maths are only ever covered in their entirety by the most ambitious (or is that daft?) of teachers and it is impossible for any student to do everything.

You should be paring down what you need to know. Forget about making your way through paper mountains and concentrate on honing your notes into neat parcels of information.

Small cards containing three or four vital points are especially useful. Ideally, you should not be trying to introduce yourself to new topics at this stage, simply refreshing your memory of those already studied. The nearer to the exam you get, the less paper you should be producing.

Your notes should avoid monotonous layout. Underline crucial points, use different colour pens, put asterisks and stars beside formulas and use acronymns where useful.

Some students desperately need to have a tiny bit of knowledge about everything, but this can mean spreading yourself too thinly.

Most teachers suggest you know a reasonable number of topics inside out and leave aside the others.

Forget about the lost days

Many of you may feel vengeful towards teachers and/or the Government over the ASTI dispute.

For anyone in a voluntary secondary school, you have lost over a dozen days because of the intractable dispute. Those in non-unionised private colleges or in schools where all the teachers are TUI members have lost no time.

For those who have lost time, you need to accept it cannot be recovered, and hopefully some of your teachers have given extra classes to help you.

Passions were raised during the five-month campaign and many wondered would this year's pupils be irreparably damaged because of days lost. Some of these concerns were overstated.

Because the majority of schools lost the same number of days, only a relatively small group of students have gained an advantage.

Also, students who have studied intensively and put in the ground work, especially in fifth year, will be rewarded in the exam.

One thing is also clear - there will be no change in the marking scheme because students have lost days.

If you examine the grades allocated each year, they follow a predictable "curve" pattern. The curve is flat among fail grades, rises for pass and honours grades and flattens out again for As and Bs. This traditional curve is unlikely to be contorted by any radical changes this year.

The chief examiner in each subject is there to ensure there are no wild fluctuations. I do not believe there will be any discernible movement in the number of honours grades awarded this year. So there is little use in speculating on what might have been.

Don't forget post-exam bliss

One of the most effective ways to survive the challenges of June is to focus on life after the Leaving.

For example, many students will be sunning themselves in Spain and Portugal once the exams end, while others will have summer jobs lined up to fuel a potentially hedonistic lifestyle during July and August.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to be going abroad, but if you can draw some comfort from whatever you have planned for after the exam, the madness of the whole event tends to pass you by.

The exams, for most pupils, end before June 22nd, so that still gives you plenty of summertime to play with. If you are hoping to get a college place, they do not open their doors until late September so you have sufficient time to re-adjust to civilian life.

The results are due to be issued in mid-August, so there is no need for the words Leaving Cert to pass from your lips until then.

Lay off the artificial stimulants

Like Olympic athletes, Leaving Cert students ideally should excel without recourse to banned substances. So take a pass on the nadrolone, but you are allowed the occasional sip of rock shandy. Many students like to study late into the night and often use coffee or coca-cola to keep themselves awake. However, too much of either and you may feel light-headed and have a peculiar out-of-body experience.

Living in an almost airless room while existing on a diet of crisps, Starburst sweets and Red Bull is obviously not recommended. Neither is studying late into the night. You will only find it harder to study the next morning. Your ability to retain facts is also quite low when you are sleepy.

Give yourself the odd breather

There is a great temptation to study remorselessly at this time of the year. But total dedication has its flaws. Breaking your study into two or three separate periods is a better approach. So if you want to watch Liverpool or Leeds or take in the latest episode of Friends, it is not a venal sin once you immediately return to your books.

Stay organised to the end

Remember to keep all your notes together. Remember to have plenty of pens, rulers, pencils, rubbers, sharpeners at hand. They all seem rather childish to a sophisticated 17- or 18-year-old, but you still need something to write with. You'll probably never use or see a mechanical drawing set again, so look upon it as a rite of passage. Many students adopt a Leaving Certificate mascot during their final few months, which they like to perch on their desk in the exam hall. Whether it is a teddy bear, a stolen traffic cone, a plant or a miraculous medal, don't forget to bring it on June 6th. Good luck.