‘Roughly what I expected' – Leaving Cert students react after first day of exams
The Irish Independent caught up with two of these students for their reactions as they exited their exam hall.
Ms Healy said: 'It was roughly what I expected. I really liked seeing Margaret Atwood on the paper. She's one of my favourite authors. And I also liked the personal essay."
The Higher Level paper was topical and current from a reading comprehension on a speech given by Margaret Atwood and extracts from the Man Booker Prize Winner Orbital to a composition assignment tasking students with a podcast script.
For the personal essay, Helena chose question 6 - 'In Text 2 Margaret Atwood refers to cherishing, 'democratic elections'. Write a personal essay in which you reflect on some of the factors that would influence your voting intentions in future elections'.
'I thought it was general enough where you could talk about anything that you were interested in, but it wasn't so broad that you wouldn't have enough ideas. Overall I thought the paper was really nice and hope I did well,' she said.
Fred Movete (18), who sat Ordinary Level English Paper 1, was also happy with his paper.
With love a theme across Ordinary Level paper 1, with Beatles' song 'All You Need is Love' in the mix, writing about universal experiences was key.
He said: 'I definitely felt the pressure but once I started everything was ok. There was maybe one question [that caught me] but I think I will do great.'
Mr Movete is looking forward to his history exam next Wednesday and hopes for an essay on the Nuremberg trials to come up on the paper next Wednesday.
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"It's my favourite subject, for the research study report I covered the CIA's secret programme MK-Ultra,' he said.
Ms Healy and Mr Movete's year group were in first year when Covid-19 upended the nation.
Nuala Brady, Deputy Principal, said: 'This would be the year group we would have worried for the most because they didn't get the proper foundation initially.'
'It's been a challenging couple of years for all post-Covid.'
Leaving Certificate results this year will once again be artificially inflated through a post-marking adjustment which will be applied after all marking of individual papers has been completed.
This was first introduced to compensate for students who missed out on classes due to school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tomorrow students will take on English Paper 2 before Geography and Maths Paper 1 on Friday.
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