Question: Is our Leaving a dead cert?

COMMENT

BY LEAH BYRNE, 18, LEAVING CERT STUDENT COLAISTE EOIN, HACKETSTOWN, CO CARLOW

“IT was the best of times; it was the worst of times” – or so said Charles Dickens in A Tale Of Two Cities.

This is the tale of two lives, our life before Covid-19 and the life we will have subsequent to it.

For three weeks now I’ve been “studying from home” and I must admit it has been peculiar to say the least.

Initially, I struggled to find a routine because the internet never sleeps.

It is an all-pervasive element of our lives and it’s ironic the tool that once caused huge angst in every teenage-parent relationship has now become our new Messiah.

My school is small and, as such, that works to our advantage. I know it’s a cliche but we truly are a family.

We’ve gone through challenges before and we’ll do it again.

My teachers have been incredible and have done everything in their power to help me not only with my studies but also my fears and anxieties.

This is a world none of us was prepared for and they’ve stepped up to the plate with online classes, online quizzes, online “let’s just have a chat” moments. They have gone above and beyond what one could expect of them in these “strange times”.

UNCERTAINTY

The biggest difficulty we all face though is the uncertainty, the not knowing what is going to happen.

I want to sit my Leaving Certificate because I, like so many others, have worked hard to prepare for it.

I find it hard to listen to the media debate what should be done about our exams, because they are “our” exams.

Everybody has an opinion because they’ve all been through it but we’re the first cohort to be going through a global pandemic at the same time.

For students who are not sitting exams this year, this is a perfect time to reconnect with the beauty of the world around them, to see what the “best of times” really means, to take stock and appreciate family and nature.

At the end of the day, this is a global pandemic. Important as they are, exams cannot and should not take precedence to life.

Will the Leaving Cert go ahead? Who knows? If it does they will have to make reasonable accommodations for social distancing, especially considering the number of Easter eggs I have devoured over the past few days.

These may feel like the worst of times but we must try to make the best of them.

In the words of Seamus Heaney: “If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere.”

Although it may not be the annual LC holiday in Ibiza.