Top 5 Leaving Cert Langers

5th Jun 2013

On Monday September 3^rd last year just as students were heading back into another academic year the clouds rolled back and gave Cork its finest weather week of the year. As if to torment the same young academics all over again Mother Nature, the saucy bitch, has decided to roll back the clouds for another glorious week of sunshine just as the state exams kick off.

Leaving and junior cert students are fully entitled to be mighty pissed that they can’t take full advantage of the daycint weather as they watch others spend the day at the beach or playing football and hurling on park greens while the best they can hope for is the warm smell of freshly printed exam papers.
 

If we cleverly spread the state exam schedule across the entire summer maybe Murphy's Law will give us blue skies for the whole three months?

True, maybe the awful Limerick-esque weather we’ve had since last October has meant students have ended up studying more than they would have if we weren’t hammered by monsoons and chilly northerly winds. Hopefully that means that Cork can continue its dominance of the leaving cert and produce another year of truly awesome results that we are becoming accustomed to on Leeside.  

As well as the gorgeous weather there are a few other mental obstacles facing students – namely the small minority in the exam halls who make it difficult for everyone else:

5. Coggy
The first time this fella opened a maths book this year was in the hall outside the school twenty minutes before the exam kicked off so now he’s doing fake-coughs and mockeyeah throat-clearing to get your attention: “pssst…here…what’s the answer to the first wan?”.
 

All you can do is feign deep concentration and ignore him if you don’t want the disgrace of repeating your leaving because you were nabbed yapping – although it’s tough if a paper aeroplane with “what’s calculus?” touches down on your answer book.

We say: If you engage with him then the return flight will be long haul and in very dangerous airspace.


4. Bladder Pest
The leaving and junior certs are an unusual place to discover the unusual bowel and bladder habits of your classmates. Nerves, constant sipping of water or a silly-coloured sports drink and the hope of spotting a few handy cogs in the jacks are the main reasons some heads ‘need’ more than five trips to the bathroom during an exam.


All this means a cacophony of noise each time as he moves back his chair and trudges out to the bog disturbing the entire hall.

We say:  buy wax ear plugs in Boots chemist and don’t fill yourself up with too much Tanora before the exam.

3. Quiz Master
The sound of this langer’s incessant ceist-whispering to the supervisors can sound like you’re doing your exam outside a busy confession box. Teachers, exam-tip columnists and online resources will have you well briefed on just about everything that could possibly land on your plate during an exam yet there will be one git who insists on bugging the supervisors with questions like “is this the paper we are supposed to write on?” and “is this definitely the ordinary level paper, Sir?”.  
 

Dose! Heaney not Kavanagh!

We say: stamp it out early, swivel ‘round and give the eegit the glare-of-death (also known as if-I-end-up-in-college-in-Limerick-I’ll-hold-you-responsible look).  

2. Little Miss Snivels
Her parents would really like her to get into ‘med’ in UCC as it would do wonders for bragging rights on the Cork coffee-morning circuit but her teachers know that poor auld Jacinta will be struggling to get into arts….in Maynooth.  

She has convinced herself however that if a very particular set of writers and poets come up in the English exam then she’s still in with a good shout of being presented with a stethoscope on arrival at College Road in October.
 

Hurray for slightly more comfortable unemployment!

The pre-exam shakes give way to gentle sobs as she reads the questions and reality dawns: the only emergency calls she’ll be dealing with in life will be angry mobile phone customers in a drab call centre, somewhere desperately depressing like Athlone.

We say: sure she can always dress up as a doctor for Rag Week.

1. The Page Turner
In the English exam there’ll always be one frantic participant who manages to write faster than a high speed printer can churn out pages. By the time you’ve done your first scan of the questions this wan is already appealing for extra paper from the supervisor. When she stands up at the end everyone marvels at the enormous stacks of paper on her table that looks like the life work of an 8^th century monastic scribe and may require a forklift to collect.
 
We say:  it’s about quality and not quantity. 


Special Langball Award:

Mr. Eeeeasy!
It doesn’t matter how many points this langball gets in the leaving or how many exams he has failed in the past because his career will inevitably involve bullshitting. The last thing you need after emerging from a traumatically tough test is a smiling face loudly chortling ‘that was eeeeazzeeey wasn’t it?’.
 

Why so serious? A well timed loud fart can do wonders to help ease exam hall tension

He’s also the one who’ll turn over the exam page at 9.30am and loudly whispers “yes!” as he reads through the questions that allegedly suit him.

PROC says: make a mental note to find out how he actually got on when the results come out – and don’t take his word for it: insist on seeing the result on paper.

Best of luck to all Cork leaving and junior certers! And sure, if it all goes wrong don’t worry: there’s oil in Barryroe.