The Irish Times - Wednesday, June 13, 2012

IZABELLE BALIKOEVA

EXAM BLOGGER:YESTERDAY WAS Russia Day. I celebrated with a 3-hour Russian exam, after a three-hour biology exam, after a 2-hour Irish exam. Yay!

I dont know if the State Exams Commission thought it would be nice to have the Russian exam on Russia Day, but I could have done without it.

There are days that can be described as character-building. Yesterday was such a day for me. I was born in Russia but have lived in Ireland all my life. As a result I took Russian, Irish and French for the Leaving, and yesterday was the day that two languages landed together, or would have, if a three-hour biology paper hadnt got in the way. Im up for most things, but sitting two papers at the same time is not one of them. So I finished a very long biology paper at 5pm, ate the lunch I didnt have time to eat after Irish, and finally fell out of the exam hall at sunset.

This timetabling quirk had a number of knock-on effects.

Trying to remember not to answer biology questions in Russian, for example. There was also the little matter of my technology embargo as I took Russian hours after everyone else (actually, there are quite a few of us taking Irish and Russian around the country), I was not allowed access to my mobile phone, laptop or anything that might plug me into the mainframe, in case I might find out what came up on the mornings Russian paper. With three exams back to back its hard to see what I could have done with any information it took me until 5pm to find a gap for lunch.

It was a surreal day. In fact, this whole process has been surreal.

Week one was like walking through a dream. It felt strange but I was excited to finally start and get it over with once and for all. The last days before the English exam everyone seems to brush up on their clairvoyance abilities and the predictions for the paper are inescapable. It was a tough paper. If only they gave us eight hours instead of three, the gold we could produce with more time! Writing in Russian is a different story. I have spoken the language at home all my life but over three hours of the Russian alphabet is quite another thing. Yesterday I spent a grand total of nine hours scribbling away on everything from Favellas in El Salvador in Irish to seashore ecology in biology to the past tense in Russian.

If the Leaving Cert is designed to mould us into flesh and blood Wikipedia sites, job done. However, something tells me that as soon as I open Facebook, it will all be forgotten.

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Surreal day with three exams - and a technology embargo