His future hung in the balance. Alan Hanley wanted to do medicine, and he got 530 points in the Leaving Cert. last year - "which is 10 short of what I wanted in Galway". For a number of weeks he wondered about repeating or taking up a place on the biomedical science course in NUI Galway, or on the therapeutic radiography course in TCD.

"I didn't know if I wanted to do that or not," he says. He spoke to a therapeutic radiographer in Galway and that decided him.

"There was a point where I thought I'd be going up to Dublin to do the radiography course," he says. However, he decided to repeat.

The fact that two of his best friends were also repeating made his decision easier, he says. He returned to his own school, Colaiste Einde in Galway city. "My parents wanted me to go to a private school. I felt more comfortable in Colaiste Einde. I knew the teachers."

After the exams this year he felt "pretty confident". He approached the repeat year "in much the same way" but he changed his subject choices. He dropped Irish "which was my worst subject, and I dropped English". He took up applied maths to make up his sixth subject.

He believes the repeater faces a challenge. "It has to be study to the exclusion of everything else. I found it harder going this year, forcing myself to sit down to do the work."

It was harder, he says, "because I'd already done it the previous year - it seemed a bit more tedious".

He has no regrets about the time he spent. "It's only a year. If I'd gone to college and done a degree that I didn't like, it would have been much messier and also I'm slightly more mature going into to college. I'm 18 now. It's going to make social life in college easier - even from the point of view that I'll be able to get a drink without any difficulty!"