Celebrity Leaving Certificate:

Alex Meehan talks to a number of wellknown personalities about the exam that defines Irish childhood.

For many it’s a rite of passage that marks the end of childhood and the start of a new phase of life. But how we do in the leaving certificate is only one of many factors that influences how our careers and lives progress.

At the time, however, it doesn’t always seem like that. Here are the experiences of five people who describe how they ended up where they are today and the role the leaving played.

DR CIARA KELLY, broadcaster and doctor Best known for her afternoon radio show on Newstalk, Dr Ciara Kelly had many false starts before developing her career in medicine and the media.

“The leaving cert was a tough experience, it’s still the toughest exam I’ve ever done even though I was in college for nine years and studied medicine. It had the most number of exams, they were the hardest and I was under the most pressure,” she said.

When Kelly did her leaving cert, it was the 1980s and there was a lot of pressure on students to get into college in order to secure a good job.

“I was very young doing my Leaving Cert – 16 when I filled in my CAO form. My first choice was for drama in Trinity, but I didn’t get in and ended up doing a commerce degree in UCD,” she said.

“After a year and a half, I realised I wasn’t really interested in that but finished the course. I decided I really wanted to do medicine, and was lucky that my leaving cert results were still enough to get me into that.”

According to Kelly, what she took from the leaving into her future career was an appreciation of how to hold her nerve.

“Performing under pressure is a skill. I still have the classic leaving cert dream where I don’t know anything on the paper. To this day I dream about being ill prepared.”

Her take away advice?

“I should have studied more, but I did okay and got the points to do whatever I wanted to. In a way, it doesn’t matter. If there’s something you actually want to do, there’s always more than one way to skin a cat. You might not get the points for what you want, but there’s always a way.”

KARL HENRY, personal trainer, writer and broadcaster As part of the Operation Transformation team, Karl Henry has become well known as the public face of fitness, but his memories of the leaving cert are primarily about stress and pressure.

“I was brought up with the idea that as long as I did my best, there wouldn’t be any recriminations from my parents. For me it was a massive test of how I deal with pressure and as my career has gone on, I’ve used that ability to prepare for marathons, TV shows, radio pitches or writing for newspapers – it’s a transferable skill.” Henry wanted to do a course in Sports Science and Management at UCD, but it hadn’t yet launched when he did his leaving. He filled in a year running a coffee shop and doing a diploma in injury management and then applied the following year to UCD.

“There is a huge amount of pressure on kids to achieve points, but it isn’t the be all and end all. There are lots of different ways of getting to where you want to go. It might take you longer, you might have to go and do other courses first, but if you really want to do something, you can,” he said.

Maia Dunphy,

TV producer, writer and broadcaster

“I remember the leaving felt like a wall, behind which the potential for great things lay. I also remember the feeling that the wall was getting higher as the exams approached,” said Maia Dunphy.

Exam stress affects everyone and Dunphy was no exception.

“Someone said to me that if I didn’t get the points the first time around, I could always repeat. That was anathema to me. A year when you’re 17 is such a significant amount of time that the thought of repeating felt like a jail sentence. Now I see it wouldn’t have been a big deal at all.”

Dunphy said leaving cert students should be suspicious of advice trotted out by an older generation but if she had to give some, she thinks that the leaving cert isn’t the start or the end of anything that can’t be changed, however much it feels that way at the time.

“It’s just another turn in the road, and there is always another path that can be taken. Sometimes it’s only in making the wrong choices that we realise what the right ones are,” she said.

Rick O’Shea, broadcaster Best known for his work with RTE 2FM and RTE Gold, Rick O’Shea also runs Ireland’s largest book club at rickoshea.ie.

“Like most people, I think the leaving cert meant an awful lot more to me then than it does now. I did well enough despite not being very studious, but I’ve no doubt if I’d worked harder I could have done a lot better,” said O’Shea.

“I can also say that my leaving cert had no baring whatsoever on what I’m doing now. It would have made a difference to me going to college of course – I did arts in UCD – but really there was no obvious route from education to radio presenting.”

According to O’Shea, his career path consisted more of making the most of his personality, his interests in language and reading and being in the right place at the right time.

“If you’re sitting exams this year, my advice is do your best but don’t sweat it. If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way by hook or by crook. Almost everyone I know looks back on it and realises it’s not as important as they thought it was. Success takes many forms.”

Emer McLysaght, author and journalist Together with her friend and co-author Sarah Breen, Emer McLysaght wrote the hit novel Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling. Her leaving cert memories are tinged with nostalgia.

“I did my leaving cert in 1999 and look back on it with more fondness than horror because it’s so strongly associated with that period of my life. I enjoyed school and had lovely friends but I can viscerally remember the sick feeling I had before the first English exam – it’s the same as doing a job interview or anything scary you’d rather not do,” she said.

Her take away advice for students is to make sure they do their homework properly. “I was terrible at studying but because I’d done lots of good quality homework, I had a lot of the facts and figures in my head,” she said.

Like many others, she said that her exam performance hasn’t ended up having the impact on her life she thought it would at the time.

“When I left school, I started a science degree in Trinity but I didn’t last. I ended up doing media and journalism in Ballyfermot Senior College and got into that based on an interview and portfolio so the results themselves of my leaving really had very little to do with it.”