This year's exam students must be confused. For the last six months the public has showered them with sympathy and felt their collective pain as the Government and the teachers cranked up the pay dispute.
But after a week of exams, teachers are saying that this year's students don't know how good they have it.
Those who have done the Leaving Cert in previous years are cursing the good fortune of this year's lot. Their favourite poets came up on English paper 2 and their higher-level maths paper 1 was decipherable, if not quite pleasurable.
This year's students, it appears, are not helpless victims after all, but spoilt young things who get everything easy. Easy and predictable questions, well layed-out and user-friendly papers and plenty of time to showcase their talents. What more could an exam student ask for? Er... a holiday?
The students, of course, will take any good luck that is going, but maybe those who set the paper will too.
One can imagine the red faces in the Department of Education if this week's papers had been unnecessarily harsh or tricky for pupils. Parents would have castigated examiners for setting papers which piled misery on to students who had already suffered grievously.
The papers to date have been so widely praised by teachers that some observers have mischievously suggested that the examiners deliberately set easy questions. While this is unlikely, there will be a lot of interest in the grades students receive on August 15th.
If they are better than previous years, the students will be stuck with the accusation that favours were done for them by examiners. If they are worse than other years, the recriminations over the strike and who really caused it will re-emerge. Either way, this year's group can expect the sympathy to dry up pretty soon.
Unlike their predecessors, they can apply for a college place from their bedrooms, get their results over the phone and have almost 400 courses and 44 colleges to choose from, more than any previous generation. So things are perhaps not so bad.
With little indigation over the papers, students have been getting worked up about logistical issues instead. Many students who have contacted us through ireland.com and on RT╔ Radio 1's Five Seven Live programme have expressed anger at the layout of the exam timetable. Splitting maths over four days, having English and Irish on consecutive days and scheduling the science subjects so late in the month are just some of reasons for gripes.
With an extra 20 minutes allocated to English, Irish, history and geography, there is no doubt physical stamina is being tested in the Leaving as much as mental strength and recall. But the Department says it packs the subjects into such a tight timeframe out of necessity. It has to have results issued by mid-August because the CAO process needs to crank into life by then. Unless the CAO (which is owned by the third-level colleges) changes its modus operandi, there will be no change in future years.
Meanwhile, the charge of parochialism and insularity aimed at English higher-level paper 1 this week is still occupying some pupils. Its focus on the theme of Irishness sat a little uncomfortably with some, including this respondent to ireland.com: "English paper 1 was unfair for non-Irish like myself, who haven't really got the feel of Irishness yet," said a young man named Aishwarya.