Kate Ferguson's Results Day Diary: Yesterday, Kate Ferguson, a student at Wesley College, Dublin, received her Leaving Cert results. This is her diary of a dramatic day.
My car pulls up outside school. I get out. I pass a boy arriving in his car. I wave and I smile. He waves, but his face remains scarily blank. He looks terrified.
The school is horribly silent. About 20 people sit around. I approach my friends and comment on their tans. Nobody mentions the unspeakable. We have another half hour to wait. I fumble in my bag and take out a calculator. There is no way I am going to count up points in my head.
As yet, there is no sign of life in school. No teachers, just silent teenagers. The girls are golden-skinned and glowing, some guys have bleached their hair. Sitting, waiting.
What feels like hours later, in reality 10 minutes, the scene becomes alive. Teachers, the headmaster and chaplain arrive. Surnames A-H to one side. I-Z to the other. A-H, that's me, I think. Ferguson begins with F, right?
It's cool, I tell myself. I don't expect my first choice. In fact I actually would prefer my second choice, now I think about it. I bet English and Psychology in Trinity is way overrated anyway.
I claim my corner. It is the same corner where my friend has opened her results and got 575 points. It's a good corner, I decide.
I open the envelope clumsily and quickly. I feel strangely calm. I scan the page. I don't connect the subjects with the marks at all. I see some A1s, a couple of A2s and a B2. The B2 is fatter than the As. Frantically I type numbers into my calculator. I have no system. I'm not counting from top to bottom. And suddenly, 580. Yes, 580, 10 more points than I need for that first choice, which now I come to think about it, sounds pretty good.
All around me are familiar faces. Some are crying and some are brooding. A photographer asks for a "big smile" and I oblige. My best friend has remained in her car all this time. I rush over to her and she gives me the loveliest warm hug ever.
Finally it's all over.
What's it all been about though? Have the last two years spelt the final stage of my education or the conclusion of a game dominated by the media?
Happily, I can say the former. Writing my column The Toilet Wall for Wesley's newspaper Fullstop was much more beneficial than leafing through revision guide Less Stress More Success.
However, this past year my representation of the Leaving Cert has been dominated by revision supplements, academic dietary advice on Radio One and the image, as an idol, of Ruth Borland, the girl who got maximum points last year - and revealed her secrets to The Irish Times's study guide.
I believe it's possible to do well in the Leaving Cert having received a "real" education.
In fact, I know it is. I got an A1 in English, not because I learnt a single answer off by heart, but because my teacher encouraged me to think for myself.
I was lucky enough to have a teacher who would waltz into a room carrying a painting and ask us to comment, and a class that was not afraid to admit they were working hard.
Hard work should never be undermined, and as somebody who went to a middle-class school and was surrounded by a "pay for your grades" attitude I feel justified in complaining about parents who fail to see the point of education.
If education is about getting into college, then what is college? If college is nothing more than getting a job then why do we bother teaching the Irish language to somebody destined to become an engineer?
Why did I, as somebody much more linguistically than mathematically gifted, bother to struggle with maths? Because, the last time I checked, education was about learning.
My best friend Amanda calls me and asks how many of us are eating at Yamamori tonight. She's booking the table. We will eat out and head on to Q Bar. Then we will come home, and realise that worrying about our future was so last season. But before then, we will decide what we are wearing tonight.