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by grace

A Lack of Patience…

January 27, 2009 in Study

Discuss the leaving cert in the forum

Three weeks til midterm…four weeks til pre’s…eight weeks til the orals…twenty something til the leaving. The countdowns continue.

Countdowns are all I have these days, cause I’m getting oh so sick of school! Usually my tolerance is much lower but I have finally snapped. I’ve had enough. I’m finished! We’ve got about four months of actual school left though, so it’s not looking too bad. As for that old gem, “Enjoy your school days, they’re the best days of your life!” Life after school will have to be fairly crap for that to be proven true, in my opinion at least.

This seems to be as good an outlet as any so I’m going to continue with the ranting. Does anyone else think that teachers should have some kind of psychotic assessment before being given a job? If I may borrow a quote from Henry Brooks Adams, a teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. That being said, what if the teacher is a bad influence? Teachers are meant to inspire and encourage…but I find more and more that teachers are bitter, cynical creatures who do nothing but discourage and irritate pupils. It’s most disheartening. Of course I don’t mean to generalise, there are that special few out there who truly enjoy teaching their subject, and fair dues to them, but that other breed…it’s soul killing stuff.

This is the last rant I swear. But does ANYONE else see that the vast majority of these revision days and courses that are currently being shoved in our faces are money spinning rip offs? I think that paying sixty quid to sit in some lecture hall for three hours with four hundred other kids is blasphemy. Sure you might remember one or two facts from the day, but surely three hours of study in the comfort of ones own home would be much more beneficial? Not to mention free of charge. If you have an idiot for a teacher then fair enough some help is needed…but for gods sake, get a few grinds! I’ll stop talking about this now cause anyone who cares has gotten the point and those who don’t have already been distracted by something shiny and less neurotic.

If I may be so bold as to blatantly advertise, for those with an incompetent French or Irish teacher who’s a little worried about the orals then I recommend the Shortcuts to Success Oral books. As I don’t do German, Spanish or any other language I can’t help you there, but all in all those books are great.

Later, Grace x

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by jennie

Barack Obama et le français.

January 27, 2009 in Study

Dear Barack Hussein Obama,
You rock my world.
Lots of love,
Jennie xx

Lots of people* like to groom my ego from time to time, telling me my writing skills are simply immense. Unfortunately, English teachers don’t tend to think so. I mean, yeah, my grammar’s usually pretty immaculate and I know a great deal of big words, but I’m also a cynical and contemptuous young’un who gets carried away and distracted too easily, making vague references to popular culture like nobody’s business. I also overuse the word “plethora”, so sorry about that.
(*May not be true.)

Anyway, this isn’t about my musings, this is about me and my good friend Barack Obama. Although, now that I think about it, maybe “good friend” is a bit ridiculous. Great friend or “BFF” is probably far more accurate. He has absolutely no qualms with my style of writing and after sending him the above message concerning him and his world- rocking ways he’s agreed to come into my French Oral with me! Seriously!
OK, well, maybe not seriously. I didn’t REALLY tell the new world leader I love him lots, but he’s still coming along for my French Oral like the hero that he is. Sort of.

As anyone doing French should know, you’re allowed to bring a “Document” into your oral, so a photo or a project or something along those lines. It’s not obligatory but it’s apparently advised. I didn’t bring one in with me last year and still managed to get myself an A in French, but that’s completely beside the point.
This year, I, my friends, am bringing in a photo of Barack Obama. Why? Do I like awkward situations based around painfully difficult questions? Eh, yeah.
Just about every other French student in the country runs along into their orals wielding a holiday photo. Do I want to bring in a photo of me in some lovely location and get asked about ridiculous things like the weather? Not if I can avoid it, that’s for sure.
Last year I was dying to talk about Obama and the Election campaign in general in my French oral, I got him in there alright. And a bit about Bertie too, although that culminated in the examiner cutting me off and asking about Bertie’s “maquillage”. I wish I was joking on that one, but no, she actually stopped me mid well-delivered Bertie rant to ask me my opinions on the amount of money our good oul’ Ex-taoiseach spent on make-up. Stupid glamorous, politically unconcerned examiner!

Anyway, look at me going off the point here, I’m meant to be talking about Obama!
I bought 3 different newspapers on Tuesday, The Times, The Examiner and the Independent, and then I trawled through them picking out the best Obama pictures from the Inauguration Ceremony. Which was absolutely savage fun, even if it did involve me doing absolutely nothing but reading Bush-isms and Obama related articles all night. I’m still wholly undecided as to what photo shall be brought in, but thanks to a certain Professor Wiki Pedia I’ve plenty of well written stuff on Obama. (A quick tip to anyone who wasn’t aware of this: Wikipedia is also available in French and it’s a total lifesaver for the oral/ reaction questions. A good search can give fantastic results, so you can say goodbye to the effort of actually writing out your own opinions! And online translators do the rest of the work, it’s relatively foolproof.)
I’m looking forward to the little interrogation somewhat now, I mean, there’s no way the examiner will be able to avoid my political ramblings or my views on everything from the recession to racism. It’ll take a good bit of preparing, but for a man THIS cool, it’s worth it:

Obama Surf Pictures, Images and Photos

Discuss the leaving cert in the forum

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by olen

Retard, Am I?

January 25, 2009 in Study

Few things in this planet are as tedious as washing contact lenses after coming home from school. Having to learn 5 Bildergeschichten is one. Following a particularly slow learner driver when you’re already a week late for school, is another.

And so, in order to distract myself from all that German, and also to adhere to the quota of posts per week (quota, what quota?), I thought about those moments when I was mentally paralysed and decided to bore anybody who is reading this into leaving the site and (hopefully) getting some study done. Because something wicked this way comes. Mocks, anyone?

1. I actually asked my biology teacher, when we were doing respiration, why humans couldn’t breathe under the sea when water has oxygen dissolved in it. 5.7/10 on the Retard scale. (1 being stupid and 10 being Jessica Simpson in Newlyweds)

2. Last week, the best excuse I could blurt out when asked why I don’t do after school study, was that I had to walk my dog. Which is wrong for two reasons: I don’t walk dogs. And I don’t have one. 2.3

3. 65 cents + 65 cents? 1 euro 10, of course. 7.8

4. When my bio teacher reached my name while taking the role, I let her know I was in class by saying, with the most exaggerated German accent possible, “Ja?” 8.1. And I’m quite sure she did not forget I was there.

5. Being stuck during a particularly hard English exam – pen in mid-air, eyebrows furrowed – because I could not spell “draw”. 10.0

I’m sure there must be more, but right now, that’s all I can care to think of. In these tense few weeks leading up to the mocks, taking some time to laugh at myself really takes the edge off.

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Avatar of elizabeth

by elizabeth

The sudden realisation of what I’m getting myself into

January 20, 2009 in Study

I always look forward to Tuesdays. Tuesdays is Desperate Housewives day, when I can reward a good day’s work with catching up on the scandal in Wisteria Lane. On  Tuesdays I have no violin, piano, music class or singing so I have the whole afternoon to study. On Tuesdays the Irish Times publishes its Health Supplement, which I started reading last year when trying to decide is medicine is the course for me. The Health Supplement two weeks ago had a very interesting article on how much Junior Doctor’s were being paid in overtime.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2009/0106/1230936695161.html

The basic gist of that article was that a Junior Doctor was paid €100,000 in overtime and various TDs spoke out against it. You might think I’d be delighted at the thought of someday earning in excess of €100,000, but no. Junior Doctors can often spend 80 hours working in a week, on a salary of less than a primary school teacher who works from 9-2.30. €100,000 is a lot of bags and shoes, but with 80 hours of work to be done the only place to be wearing those 4 inch slingbacks would be around the wards, and I don’t think that would be entirely appropriate (until I break my ankle in the shoes that is, in which case I can’t think of a better place to be).

No, I’m not jumping for joy at the prospect of earning all that money I’d have no time to spend. In career guidance class the other day the teacher said she was confident that working hours would be reduced, and that many med students are confident of this too. I spoke to my dad about it over breakfast today and he said the government had been talking about this since my uncle was in med school, over thirty years ago.

Coincidentally, I stumbled across this blog just a few minutes ago. It’s basically a NCHD outlining the hours s/he has to work and the conditions s/he has to work in. Some things really surprised me, like NCHDs don’t get a lunch break even though they’re supposed to, and now they’re being paid an hour less for the lunch break they don’t take. What shocked me most of all though was how underhanded the HSE is in its dealing of criticism. The way it reacts to doctors speaking out against how hospitals are run is akin to that of various corrupt government around the world. Anyone who speaks out is labeled as a troublemaker and often cannot progress in their career.  That blog is well worth a read, at the moment there’s just one post, but what’s in the post will probably make your blood boil as much as it did mine.

Despite how awful the working conditions are and how badly NCHDs are treated I’m still determined to do medicine. I’m still pretty sure research is the way I want to go, so thankfully if I still feel the same way in a few years time I wont have to spend too long in that horrible, horrible system if it’s still the same shambles it is today.

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Avatar of olen

by olen

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful…

January 19, 2009 in Study

Last night, it actually snowed. Not the seldom pathetic little snow flake that melts even before it reaches the ground, but the other, seldom-er kind. So that five minutes of heaven’s dandruff, incalculable sighs of delight and wonder, and a serious case of verbal diarrhea later, the cars, the houses – even the cats outside, looked like cakes sprinkled with confectionery sugar. Delicious, comforting, and not-at-all-healthy.

Just what everybody needs after a season (or three) of too much gluttony and too little aerobic merriment.

That night was doubly memorable because that was THE night when I realised that I have got to be studying more than I did a year ago, if I want to have a perma-smile cemented on my face after I open THAT envelope in August. And that was what I did. I studied Chemistry. For an hour. Groundbreaking.

For a moment, as I peeled my face off the dog-eared chem book, and I myself looking like a dog, I thought that perhaps the Old Man (or Woman) up there sent the snow to mark this landmark moment in my educational life. But with the war in Gaza going on (btw, as I write this, a ceasefire has been called apparently), He/She has His/Her hands full. So maybe not.

Or maybe it was sent to delay my dad on his way to work, having to chuck water on his car so that he would not be driving with a blindfold on (water = H2O… see, that hour of studying chem did pay off afterall). But anyway, it did come and I did study.

So if sometime in the distant future snow starts to fall – heavily –  you would know what I was doing. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

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