What I wish I'd known on Leaving Cert results day
On how points don't matter, but partying does!
🇮🇪 For readers based outside Ireland, the Leaving Cert is the exam students sit at the end of high school. Points are awarded based on your results which determine which college you’ll be able to attend. University tuition is free in Ireland, though students still pay for accommodation, books etc.
I still remember the day I got my Leaving Cert results. I did well - 500 points - but I was disappointed. My first choice - English Literature in Trinity College Dublin - was 515 points the previous year, and I was unlikely to be offered a place. I got my second choice - arts in Maynooth University - and, to soothe the disappointment, a €1000 scholarship from the college. I worked incredibly hard for the Leaving Cert. It was the biggest task I’d ever attempted up to that point in my life and though I knew it was a flawed process, I wanted to aim for the highest marks I could. By the end of my exams, I was an exhausted mess. The side of my right hand was shiny and red, wounded by days of furious scribbling across countless exam books. That was 18 years ago. What follows are some of the things I wish I’d known back then. 💌 Please share with someone you think might enjoy them.
1️⃣ What you learn in terms of organising yourself for a big project, in managing your time and your energy and in dealing with what can at times feel like overwhelming pressure is much more important than the actual content of your work. I have not used the vast majority of the knowledge I acquired for those exams - Shakespeare’s sonnets, Pythagoras' theorem or the reproductive system of plants - but I have often relied on my ability to sort through a mountain of tasks and find a path forward.
2️⃣ You will never, literally never, be asked about points every again. I have never, since the month of August 2005, been asked how many points I got in my Leaving Cert. Not in a job interview, not in college, not ever. For the final two years of school, it’s all you people talk about and then, it’s literally never mentioned again. I remember my result only because it’s a round number that got me a nice little scholarship bounty. And because I was 15 points short of what I wanted. Or at least what I thought I wanted at the time.
3️⃣ You can’t know, at 18, how your life will unfold. I was bitterly disappointed to miss out on my first choice for a few weeks but, by the time I started in college and discovered that it was essentially an endless party, I got over it pretty quickly. I threw myself into college debating and the newspaper and student politics, and never gave it another thought. Two years later, I applied to the Washington Ireland Programme and spent a summer working on Capitol Hill. I was the second student from Maynooth University to be part of the programme and I wonder if I’d have been successful if I’d applied from another university. Just 1 in 10 applicants get a place and coming from a smaller university gave me something of a competitive edge. Suffice to say that if I was given the option of choosing between attending Trinity and spending two life-changing summers in the states, I would have easily chosen the latter.
4️⃣ Your choice of university is often the least interesting thing about your life. For some careers, the choices you make at 18 will be consequential. For most, they won’t. There are always many paths to get where you want to go. Often, your career isn’t the most important thing about your life. Two years into my university education, my mother died very suddenly in a car accident. College didn’t matter much after that. I squeaked through my final year and graduated into the 2008 recession. The combination of those two things - bereavement and economic collapse - had a far greater impact on my life than anything that happened in college. At the time, it felt like the most important decision I’d ever make. But, just like my exam results, it ended up having very little impact on my life.
5️⃣ Embrace the college experience as much as you can. When I think of college now, I remember much more about the interests I pursued and the friendships I made than anything I ever learned in the lecture hall. My first two years were full of socialising and extra curriculars. I loved debate, wrote for the campus newspaper and got involved with student politics. I fell in love, did internships, made a short film, took last minute trips and lived the kind of big, messy life I craved. It wasn’t always easy - the late teens/early 20s rarely are - but I had a great time and I don’t regret a second of it.
Chatting with my partner recently, I was reminiscing about these “party years”. The time in my life when I could go out 4 nights a week and not collapse with exhaustion. I was surprised when I realised that this period of life was just 24 months long. After my mother died, I wasn’t much in the mood for socialising and I never returned to that kind of social schedule. But those years loom large in my memory as a time when I was hungry for life, eager to try things and braver than I am now. That bravery often overlapped with stupidity, with a kind of naive defiance, a cluelessness that came with inexperience. It got me in trouble but it was also, in its way, kind of magic.
Five things:
I’m not a parent but this is the rallying cry we all need to just go.
Looking forward to Zadie Smith’s next book.
“It is tough to be your mother’s jailer.” Really related to this piece.
Still astounding to me that that we get to eavesdrop on conversations like this.
“I won’t adjust my freedom for your comfort”