ISSU 23/06/2016 ISSU 23/06/2016

Leaving Certificate Music

Liam - Higher Level

As I woke up this morning I felt a great wave of relief. My final exam, music. I've always struggled with the theory side of music but I wasn't nervous whatsoever for this exam, as all I could not think about was finishing this bloody leaving cert.

The first paper was the listening paper. I thought it went brilliantly. The question on Mozart, Sea Changes, Berlioz and the Beatles were all excellent. The essay went terribly however. I did the one about Irish song tradition but thankfully it's not worth many marks. We then had a fifteen minute break before paper two. I tried to study during this but I was just not able to.

Paper two was such a relief. I did question 1 and question 5 (the ones everyone do). They went very well. With just fifteen minutes left I finished. With a sigh of relief I handed up my paper. No more leaving cert <3 No more school <3 Finished at last <3

Emma - Higher Level

Music!! The listening paper for me was a fail! The Mozart was so unexpected and that threw me for the rest of the paper! The written had two minor harmony and melodies and that's what I chose! They were quite nice and I was so HAPPY to see everyone else got C minor too!

Hopefully the listening won't affect me so much!! I'm so happy the leaving cert is over!!

Klara - Higher Level

The music listening paper could not have been better. At first when I saw that the third movement of Mozart's piano concerto came up as a long question I was really worried because it was the one I knew the least but the questions were actually very easy and general. Even the dictation type question was okay as they gave you options. The Berlioz excerpt was the idée fixe from Un Bal with questions on instrumentation and how it is used in the work. Next was a question on the Beatles' "When I'm 64". One of the questions was to differentiate the given verse (verse 2) and the first which is not included in the excerpt, I found this one difficult but the rest were fine. Deane was the fourth question with an excerpt of the main melody. I really dislike Deane and was dreading this question but I think it went ok. Again, we had to differentiate this section from when it is first heard in the piece and we also had to identify the percussion instruments.The Irish listening went pretty well overall. The essay titles were great. I was especially happy that an essay on O'Riada came up.The unheard listening was a bit different from the other years, as all the excerpts were from the same piece, as opposed to being from different pieces. The questions were also quite easy although I wasn't too sure about the last one which was to show how the music conveys the time of death. Overall, it was a very good paper.I wasn't as happy with the composing paper though, unfortunately. Both Q1 and Q5 were in the minor key, with an anacrusis. The melody wasn't too bad though as it was in 3/4 time. The Chords and Bassline question was pretty difficult though in my opinion as I found it difficult to get a good progression and bassline. I was writing up until the very last minute and didn't get the time to look over it at all. I think though, with the listening paper being so good, the exam went really well!Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union. Blogs are updated daily by 6.30 pm on scheduled examination dates.Zeminar is an event for Generation Z, particularly those aged between 15 and 19, and their parents, teachers, mentors and coaches. It will take place from 11th - 13th of October 2016. For more information see www.zeminar.ie

ISSU 23/06/2016 ISSU 23/06/2016

Leaving Certificate Agricultural Science

Lorraine - Higher Level

After having to wait almost a week for this final exam I just wanted it out of the way. I didn't sleep a wink last night and words can't describe how nervous I was this morning.With Ag Science you have to answer 6 out of the 9 possible questions. Genetics and soil are definite questions so I did them but not before tackling question 1 which carries 60 marks. I answered the 6 short questions from question one with no bother. I was quite happy with them.I then did the genetics question which was a dream to be honest. In Part A we were asked to define some genetics terms, no problem there and then we had a lovely cross which I was delighted to see on the paper. There was no surprise with it at all! Cross a bull heterozygous for both traits with a polled white cow, easy. Part C of the genetics question caught me though, what was EBI? I certainly can't remember seeing that before.I did the soil question then. Again another question that wasn't too difficult but just required a little bit of thought. I think I managed it quite well. The experiment that came up here was the experiment to determine the soil texture by using a sieve. Overall it was a nice question.I'm quite happy that my question 1, genetics and soil questions were good but what came after that I'm not so confident about. I did my best with them but I found that you really had to hit the nail on the head with the answers. I just hope I've done enough to at least get a decent grade along with the project.All done now, let the celebrations begin!Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union. Blogs are updated daily by 6.30 pm on scheduled examination dates.Zeminar is an event for Generation Z, particularly those aged between 15 and 19, and their parents, teachers, mentors and coaches. It will take place from 11th - 13th of October 2016. For more information see www.zeminar.ie

ISSU 22/06/2016 ISSU 22/06/2016

Leaving Certificate Design & Communication Graphics

Liam - Higher Level

I can almost smell the end of this accursed leaving cert. No more books, no more uniform, the whoppa sesh, my second last exam, I’m almost there.As most people are finished the leaving cert by now, I’m eager to get it out of the way. I kind of have a love/hate relationship with DCG. Sometimes I find it easy, sometimes hard. The theory side takes up 60% of your overall mark, while 40% went to your project. Our project this year was to design and investigate your own tap. I thought my project was pretty top notch so I was going into this exam fairly happy.From my experience of doing DCG I always found it to be the most tiring exam, so before going in I downed a berocca boost, hoping that it would give me the kick that I needed. I started off with the short questions. You are given four of these short questions but need only answer three. I usually struggle with the short questions but I was delighted to find them quite easy. After those I moved swiftly onto the long questions. It was happy days on from here thank god! I started with the road map question which was quite odd but I answered it well. I then moved onto question B-1 an intersecting planes question which went brilliantly! I realised I had lots of time left so I took it easy as I moved onto B-3, a question on curves. Finally, I moved onto C-2 a hyperbolic parabolide question. It sounds hard but it was easy.So I was pretty happy with my DCG exam. I’m even happier that there’s only one more left! Roll on music because we’re almost there!Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union. Blogs are updated daily by 6.30 pm on scheduled examination dates.Zeminar is an event for Generation Z, particularly those aged between 15 and 19, and their parents, teachers, mentors and coaches. It will take place from 11th - 13th of October 2016. For more information see www.zeminar.ie

ISSU 22/06/2016 ISSU 22/06/2016

Leaving Certificate Economics

Craig - Higher Level

A nice paper but quite abstract - it was quite difficult to know just what they were looking for. That's how I'd sum up Economics Higher Level 2016. As predicted, there was a focus on elasticity, national income and appearance. Labour popped up as a factor of production and Oligopoly was the market structure.Aside from those topics - we had a very "waffle-able" macro section - whereby a large part of Question 7 was do-able without text book knowledge. Not very typical of an economics exam and for those who did it will either excel or fail terribly - it'll be interesting to see how nice and/or broad the marking scheme is for that section.I took Questions 1 , 2 , 3 and 5. The short questions were handy so I'm not going to go into them.Question one was on Supply and Elasticity. The first question was quite nice, however I blanked on how to show a movement along a supply curve. The part b really demanded personal thinking- a theme prevalent throughout the entire paper. The 2nd part asking if PED was inelastic in the long run - I said it was , because consumers develop a loyalty to the good. Part C was based on personal thinking - this was very welcome.Question two based itself off Oligopoly, as predicted. Most students would have had this and perfect known to a T - the first question was quite unusual but very welcoming. There was however a very abstract question in the piece where it asked to show the curve facing a firm in this market. Now a kinked demand curve is split three ways, kinked, kinked equilibrium, long run kinked equilibrium - I drew the latter two, many other drew the first - it didn't specifically say what was needed but I hope I took the right choice, if it was meant to be the first - this was an extremely easy question.Labour/Employment popped up in Question 3 thank god, and this was quite nice aside from one or two definitions I may have messed up on. Then as the question got on we got to look at trends facing labour in Ireland. I thought this was very good and really rewarded students with a knowledge of current affairs.Finally, National Income was mashed up with employment- this was perfect for those who acted off predictions, as both were topics expected to come up, however if one didn't touch the employment subject, and only focused on national income this would've been a nasty loss of 30 marks. The national income question was pretty handy asking for very basic knowledge. Finally the effect of an oil spill and an increase in child benefit found its way on to the part c - continuing the trend of genuine skill application - this is a very welcome tactic to assessing .And that's it. At this stage I could get 300, 450 or 500 and I genuinely don't care. I'm done and I hope ye have all got something out of reading these blogs. I'd like to thank ISSU for the opportunity and the work they've done, and opportunities they provide young people with; if you're looking to get involved with them - do!Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union. Blogs are updated daily by 6.30 pm on scheduled examination dates.Zeminar is an event for Generation Z, particularly those aged between 15 and 19, and their parents, teachers, mentors and coaches. It will take place from 11th - 13th of October 2016. For more information see www.zeminar.ie

ISSU 22/06/2016 ISSU 22/06/2016

Leaving Certificate Chemistry

Liam - Higher Level

Questions that I did: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 & 10 (b) & (c).La chimie! Chemistry and I have come to the mutual understanding that it's best for both parties if the test is neither too difficult nor too 'doable', safe to say, Ceimic, you've lived up to our deal.Question 1, the titration. I was hoping the water titration would come up, just so it could ask me what EDTA stood for (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, for those not who have not yet seen how great water is). Alas it was not meant to be! The vinegar acid-base titration came up, which I was delighted about! Loads of calculations, so that was good!On to 3 afterwards, and all I can say is I spent enough time on this question to deduce that the graph is worth 4.5% of the exam. The question wasn't the hardest, I found it okay.I managed to somehow answer 8 of the necessary short questions in question 4, they were alright too. I've had worse!Questions 5, 6, 7 and 9 were all okay. They all had stuff that I knew reasonably well so I was satisfied after doing them, as you can tell I don't like to dwell on chemistry too much!10 was the option. I did the re dox balancing one, (b). Here's to hoping I did it right! And the second one was (c). If I didn't make it clear with physics, I like radioactivity, so that half question on it was nice !Overall, I'm reasonably satisfied with the paper. I mean I can never tell with chemistry how I do so all I can say is, we'll know in August. Cya Friday peeps!

Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union. Blogs are updated daily by 6.30 pm on scheduled examination dates.Zeminar is an event for Generation Z, particularly those aged between 15 and 19, and their parents, teachers, mentors and coaches. It will take place from 11th - 13th of October 2016. For more information see www.zeminar.ie

ISSU 21/06/2016 ISSU 21/06/2016

Leaving Certificate Spanish

Cárthach - Higher Level

Apart from Irish, Spanish for me was that one subject in which I wanted to do my best. My favourite subject by far so really the biggest pressure in these exam situations are self inflicted by trying to reach your full potential...but I think I remained calm enough, only to be greeted by fairly manageable reading comprehensions accompanied with the often dreaded synonyms questions that didn't pose too much of a problem for me.I chose the dialogue instead of the formal letter, as it's more straight forward and less time consuming. Funnily enough, they asked phrases that had come up many times before such as;"abair go bhfuil tú ag foghlaim Spáinnise le cúig bliana" / "say you have been learning Spanish for five years"And also there were plenty of subjunctive uses and I think I handled them well enough, but who knows...not mad about post mortems in exams!The oral exam work is NECESSARY to know. Many aspects of the dialogue and note/diary rely on knowledge of what you could have said in the oral exam. Luckily for me, I had vocabulary for watersports from that, and the dialogue asked for "say you love watersports and swimming", fifth years (now sixth years) take note!The essay titles were difficult for most;"La vida puede ser sencilla"Or"Hay que hacer más para los demás"Okay...I heard plenty of whispers saying "JODER" and "MIERDA" around the room in English when people flicked over the page...but luckily I had prepared enough on world issues to do the second question. But I wrote too much!!!..entre 80-150 palabras was ignored ('go hard or go home' probably didnt help me, but no rules against writing more). In my attempts to make a flowing answer...this could have been a big mistake, but who knows, I think my grammar was okay so I can't lose too much!The listening was tough enough from the onset...but I answered all questions with some confidence bar from the bizarre last announcement...anyone have a clue what was going on really? Watching a film 'Ahora o nunca' on Netflix last night certainly helped!Overall, a lot of topics were covered, even a flying minion on a motorway in Dublin in the listening, most students would have had enough knowledge to do reasonably well, so fair play to anyone who took Spanish. Make sure you use that perfected language on your trip to Santa Ponza and Ibiza!!