‘Be stubborn with your ambition, but flexible about how you get there' – Irish celebrities on their Leaving Cert experience

Irish Independent

31-05-2025

Today at 21:30
As the Leaving Cert exams get underway next week, we asked some familiar faces to reflect on their own experiences, what their plans were at the time and what advice they might offer their younger selves.
Pat Shortt
Comedian Pat Shortt sat his Leaving Cert exams in 1986, a time he described as 'extremely stressful'.
'Largely, I really did not know what I wanted to do. I think the options for me were not really opening up terribly well,' he told the Irish Independent.
'I was a musician and I suppose, really, I always wanted to get into performance. But I didn't realise it – and that's a big problem too, when you're at that age doing your Leaving Cert, it feels like what you do in the next few weeks will map out the rest of your life. Of course, that couldn't be further from the truth, but that seems very real to someone at that age.'
The comedian dropped out following his first year of art college in Limerick to become a full-time musician and performer, having met Jon Kenny, the other half of D'Unbelievables, a few months before.
While he had a good experience in school, he said that he had 'very little concentration skills'.
'It just didn't suit me. I would go into a room and practice saxophone for five hours straight, and walk out raging that I had to go for my dinner and couldn't stay for another five hours, so it wasn't about applying myself. If I opened a book, I'd get to the second line and I'd be looking out the window, dreaming about something.'
He said students should do the best they can, but remember that it is ultimately 'just an exam'.
'I think you really need to get out into the world and start living a little bit before you realise what you really want to do – and after a year or two, the Leaving Cert, nobody cares about it.
'You can make life decisions after the Leaving Cert [or] without the Leaving Cert, and be very successful.'
Derval O'Rourke
Three-time Olympian Derval O'Rourke had her sights set on the Olympic Games when she sat down to complete her Leaving Cert in 2000, attending her first in Athens four years later and becoming world indoor 60m hurdles champion in Moscow in 2006.
'The Leaving Cert felt, at the time, like it was the most important thing because it felt like that was all anybody asked you about. It felt like a very big milestone when I was a teenager,' she said.
'I didn't care hugely about academics, I really cared about running. I wanted to go to the Olympic Games and I figured at some point that probably the best route for me was to get a scholarship and go through a college route, to be able to get supported that way.
'The Leaving Cert for me was massively intertwined with wanting to go to the Olympics.'
She added: 'I knew I needed to be running well to get a scholarship, but I also needed the points to gain access.'
While the exams felt like 'a means to an end', she enjoyed everything she studied after her Leaving Cert and is a firm believer that it is not a defining measure of intelligence or where someone will go in life.
'I have two kids – a six-year-old and a nine-year-old – and I know for sure my priority for them won't be nailing the Leaving Cert.
'My priority will be that they're purposeful and content and happy, and that they've a work ethic. I don't think getting loads and loads of points necessarily creates that.
'The people I think are the most extraordinary, I have no idea what they got in their Leaving Cert. I just don't think it correlates with the things that actually really matter,' she said.
I didn't know anybody who wasn't stressed, you start getting stressed maybe two years in advance, because everyone is talking about it
Sarah McInerney
RTÉ broadcaster Sarah McInerney sat her Leaving Cert in 1999 with a plan to enter journalism, but it was something she was not totally committed to.
'I did want to do well, to give myself options. That's where the pressure was coming from – it wasn't necessarily to get into journalism, it was to give myself options,' she said.
'I didn't know anybody who wasn't stressed. You start getting stressed maybe two years in advance because everyone is talking about it. There's huge build-up, which is so difficult when you're that age,' she said, adding that she hopes there is less focus on the big exam by the time her own children sit the Leaving Cert.
'I've always been very focused and that's just the way I am, so I would have done a lot of studying in advance, maybe two or three hours every evening. I would have been doing that continuously, but there were some topics I could never get my head around. I found maths very difficult, and home economics – I just couldn't make myself interested in it.'
She said she is a 'big believer' in the fact that 'things do come around', adding: 'If I could go back and talk to myself when I was 18, I would be saying: 'Give it everything, do your best and whatever comes out, you will work with it and it'll be fine.''
Keilidh Cashell
Make-up artist Keilidh Cashell, who is now one of Ireland's best-known beauty influencers and the owner of award-winning brand Kash Beauty, sat her Leaving Cert in 2014.
She was 'very easy-going' in school and had initially considered becoming a tattoo artist before shifting towards make-up artistry for films and TV.
'I always knew I wanted to do something creative, so I spent my final year creating a portfolio for art college. It was a great excuse for when I didn't want to study,' she said.
On what advice she would offer to her younger self, she said: 'What's for you won't pass you. I had spent all my time working on my portfolio, and ended up not getting enough points for the course I initially wanted.
You just have to trust sometimes that the world has different plans, but you know that if you work hard and give it your all, it will all work out the way it's supposed to.
'But I don't remember lingering on it too long, I just knew then that I really wanted to do make-up, and [I] really believe what's for you won't pass you, so I just looked up other courses. It all worked out in the end because if I had gotten my initial course I wanted, I wouldn't be on the path I am now 10 years later with my own make-up brand.
'By the time I would have finished the first college course, I already had my own make-up collaborations and worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, really cementing myself in the online make-up space. None of which would have happened if I got the original course.
'You just have to trust sometimes that the world has different plans, but you know that if you work hard and give it your all, it will all work out the way it's supposed to.'
Áine Kerr
Broadcaster and entrepreneur Áine Kerr had sat down and made her plans to become a teacher and a journalist at the age of 15.
'I've done two master's degrees since, and nothing would have me repeat my Leaving Cert. It is this cloud that just hangs over you in school,' she told the Irish Independent.
She achieved 545 points when she sat her exams in her native Co Monaghan in 1999, going on to earn a BA in Education before teaching fifth class at Corpus Christi Girls' National School in Drumcondra, Dublin 9.
'I was very fortunate at 15 to have a little mini plan that worked out for me and so, when I think back to that 15-year-old self, my 17-year-old self going off to Dublin, going to college, it's a reminder that you'll find your way [and] you'll still be finding your way – I'm now 43 and you're never done with it.'
She added: 'I've been a teacher, I've been a journalist, I've become the accidental entrepreneur along the way, I've gone on to work in and help found two start-ups, I've worked in Facebook, I've worked in Spotify, and the thing with learning is that sometimes your life is the learning, your life is the lesson.'
Her advice to any young students is to 'be stubborn about the ambition you have for yourself, but then just be flexible about how you get there'.