Leaving Cert 2012-13 *OFF-TOPIC* (hideaway) thread

ray2012

Had my French mock oral today! Went really well (I think)! I always find it impossible to say how good/bad I did in an oral as you don't really notice the mistakes you make while speaking. My teacher is giving us the results next week I think, I'm not too sure. I hope I get at least a B, I'd love a B2 or higher! Mais qui vivra verra!

decisions

Home made Apple pie for dessert could there be a better way to celebrate pi day?

Jade.

Going to our schools play and leaving my homework until now wasn't the best decision

On a more positive note we have a half day again tomorrow to make the long weekend even longer :P

peekachoo

Anyone watching Legally Blonde?

decisions

Yep.

BrownBear11

decisions wrote: »

Home made Apple pie for dessert could there be a better way to celebrate pi day?

Mam actually got those little mini apple pie things today, which is a coincidence Just not the same as a proper apple tart though...

decisions

peekachoo wrote: »

Anyone watching Legally Blonde?

Yer man reminds me of Enda Kenny.

peekachoo

Ah here, I'll never unsee that. Head off him!

ray2012

A lad from NUI Galway was in talking to us in school today, and I'm almost persuaded to switch my 1st preference to their. :P I currently have Applied Languages in UL down, which seems like a great course! But the location of NUIG would suit so much better, as I don't live too far away and I know Galway city well, as opposed to not knowing Limerick at all. I'm maybe thinking of doing arts in NUIG, and doing 3 languages and some other subject I'm not sure of yet..

What do you guys think? Do ye think location should play a factor in choosing which college you pick? I love Galway and all, but the course in UL seems better. But again, Galway would be so much handier!

kingcobra

Yeah location should play a big factor for you. You wouldn't want to be spending 4/5 years in a place which is complete crap! But then I think it'd be a great thing to go to a completely different city where you can meet loads of different people and have different surroundings. :cool:

peekachoo

UL is about a 10 minute bus away from the actual city but I live nearby and I can honestly say, limerick is great. So is the college. If you do decide to go there you will love it

Colm!

Lads, random question, but are any ofye going to be at the Bombay Bicycle Club gig tomorrow? If so... don't hesitate to say hello.

On a bus for a weekend in the city, some of ye will guess why other than the gig. Stories to tell and all that. WISH ME LUCK ETC.

EDIT : Lads. Entirely positive.

mixery

Ray, I have applied languages in UL as my second option. First is languages in UCD. That's strictly due to academical reasons, UL doesn't offer Italian . To be fair, each of the bigger colleges is an interesting place to go. However UL have a minus as on their open day they only spoke about all the societies and fun their having. In UCD there was a lot lot more talking about the courses themselves. You have to decide for yourself. In my case no matter what college I choose it's still at least 2 hours driving :d .

Wonder how the points will be for languages in U.L. They were usually about 470-480 and last year they suddenly went down to like 420 (however from what I read up on their website a couple of months ago, their expecting it to go back up). Wish that happens in UCD this year.

ray2012

mixery wrote: »

Ray, I have applied languages in UL as my second option. First is languages in UCD. That's strictly due to academical reasons, UL doesn't offer Italian . To be fair, each of the bigger colleges is an interesting place to go. However UL have a minus as on their open day they only spoke about all the societies and fun their having. In UCD there was a lot lot more talking about the courses themselves. You have to decide for yourself. In my case no matter what college I choose it's still at least 2 hours driving :d .

Wonder how the points will be for languages in U.L. They were usually about 470-480 and last year they suddenly went down to like 420 (however from what I read up on their website a couple of months ago, their expecting it to go back up). Wish that happens in UCD this year.

Yeah, it's a pity there is no Italian in UL! Dublin really wouldn't be an option for me anyways, I live in Galway so it'd be a fair drive away and the cost of living there would be too much for me! The course in UL seems like a great course to be honest, I'd love it. But the fact the university is maybe 2 hours away from me isn't too good! It'd be so handy to go to NUI Galway as I love the university (I've been there before), love the city, and it's really convenient for me as it only takes around half an hour to get to. Also, I'd still be able to do the 2 languages (French and Spanish) that I really want to do, in NUIG, and also Erasmus in 3rd year. So yeah, I'm not sure what I want to do really. My heart says NUIG and my brain UL :P !

Yeah I know 2 years ago it was like 450, and it's gone to 405 (I think?) last year. I'd say it will go up this year, but not by too much, maybe to 420.. 430 max!

I'm fairly set on going into secondary school teaching or translation after college, so I suppose an arts course in NUIG would do that for me, as would applied languages in UL! :P

mixery

Yeah, I wasn't sure about the points, and a bit too lazy to check it, but I remembered the general trend. Well it's down to you what you want to choose. I believe the exchange( and work placement) is a standard at every language related course.

I'm doing(hopefully) German and Italian with a view to getting involved in politics. Teaching or interpreting might be abit too stressfull .

Prodigious

I went to my friends house to borrow ID and his assh0le parents wouldn't answer the door, despite knowing that I knew that they knew I was there.

ahmdoda

Methememb wrote: »

I went to my friends house to borrow ID and his assh0le parents wouldn't answer the door, despite knowing that I knew that they knew I was there.

haha dont make fun of his parents they prop think ur a bad infuence on him :P

Prodigious

He's two years older than me! Angry as hell

Vito Corleone

Anyone else still undecided on what course they want to do? Here I am half way through March and I'm still not sure, and what happened to all that time....seems like only a few weeks ago that we were starting back after the summer.

HugsiePie

Vito Corleone wrote: »

Anyone else still undecided on what course they want to do? Here I am half way through March and I'm still not sure, and what happened to all that time....seems like only a few weeks ago that we were starting back after the summer.

I'm more unsure now than I was in summer. I'm considering repeating next year just to give me more time to decide.

lolno

Jade. wrote: »

Pres came back today so disappointed with my home Ec! They gave everyone D's and F's the highest was a low C when there's a lot of people who would get A's all the time.

same here, it's usually my best subject, and it was my worst in the pre's
hopefully the write up will bring me up though?


and I've no clue what I want to do either, I wish I'd spent more time in TY researching courses, what the **** was I doing all year is what I want to know? I think I just want to do commerce because it's kind of broad, Idk really.

Jade.

lolno wrote: »

same here, it's usually my best subject, and it was my worst in the pre's
hopefully the write up will bring me up though?

Ours were so badly corrected she gave 0 for a lot of questions that were right or gave 2 out of 20 for questions that would have deserving about 15 out of 20 and she didn't even bother to mark some bits. And she was the messiest correcter in the world she scribbled all over what we wrote. Wasted our money paying her to correct them.

spurious

Jade. wrote: »

Ours were so badly corrected she gave 0 for a lot of questions that were right or gave 2 out of 20 for questions that would have deserving about 15 out of 20 and she didn't even bother to mark some bits. And she was the messiest correcter in the world she scribbled all over what we wrote. Wasted our money paying her to correct them.

This is why I would put more meas on results from papers corrected by experienced SEC examiners on your own school staff.
The mocks (as currently run in many schools) are a shocking rip-off imo.

Jade.

spurious wrote: »

This is why I would put more meas on results from papers corrected by experienced SEC examiners on your own school staff.
The mocks (as currently run in many schools) are a shocking rip-off imo.

I would agree. They cost around €110 and personally I wouldn't even use the results as a very rough estimate of points as it was clear they were corrected by people with no correcting experience who were just handed a marking scheme.

Parawhore.xD

spurious wrote: »

This is why I would put more meas on results from papers corrected by experienced SEC examiners on your own school staff.
The mocks (as currently run in many schools) are a shocking rip-off imo.

But spurious would you not think that there's a higher chance of bias/being marked to easily if your own class teacher corrects them? I reckon some of my mocks were certainly marked too easily..

11Charlie11

I think teachers in the schools should swap them and do other classes our mocks correction was really poor aswell

Glee_GG

Parawhore.xD wrote: »

But spurious would you not think that there's a higher chance of bias/being marked to easily if your own class teacher corrects them? I reckon some of my mocks were certainly marked too easily..

Same here, I feel that teachers at this stage sometimes just have the grade your going to get in their head and just give it to you, especially for subjects like English. My teacher consistently gives me B1/A2 yet everything in my mocks was given a C2 and our teacher actually gave them to someone they know so they were corrected properly yet when I gave her up the exact same answer to the comparative question for her to correct she gave me an A2, like thats a bit of difference! :L

spurious

Parawhore.xD wrote: »

But spurious would you not think that there's a higher chance of bias/being marked to easily if your own class teacher corrects them? I reckon some of my mocks were certainly marked too easily..

If anything I would say it's more likely someone who knows you would mark them more stiffly. That's been my experience with monitoring marks for projects at JC - the class teachers are very hard on their own students. Swapping classes among teachers is a good idea.

I really worry about people maybe dropping a level (and losing points) because of crappy marking, when in actual fact they're OK at Higher, just had a badly corrected mock.

CookieMonster.x

Some of mine weren't corrected that well either.
Each class had a different corrector and you can see the differences. I got 68% in English which is bad for me. My teacher generally gives me Bs with a few As (although sometimes I feel she just gives the same mark all the time as sometimes my work is of a higher or lower standard and I still get the same). Anyway, we did an essay a few weeks before the mocks and she hinted that it was very important. I got an A in that essay with her and only 59/100 in the mocks. There wasn't much difference between the titles but I did change parts of it. Poetry and Macbeth essays that I thought were better we're lower marks too. So now I don't really know what to do about English. I'm not going to drop obviously but I did think I was of a higher standard than that!
Also for chemistry, I just got Xs for some questions despite some of it being right, I thought that you got at least some marks?

But those exams don't mean anything and the marking schemes aren't that great. Although I did very well, especially with the lack of study I had done, I'm not taking any one of them to heart and I'll just concentrate on my weaknesses.

Eurovisionmad

I don't think there'll ever be a way that the mocks will be corrected to perfectly emulate the real leaving cert, obviously there's pros and cons to both sending off exams and correcting them in house. Our school the teachers correct them themselves and I know for definite teachers exhibited bias, I went into my French oral woefully under-prepared, sputtered away through it with my ridiculous French accent and the teacher gave me 96%, even if I was marking myself I would've barely given my self over 75% and in my English for the last two years I barely managed to achieve an honour in the exam and then I did my pre got 89% and topped the year! Also I know of certain students and they'd sort of saying "Well I'm not doing great so far but one I get X subject back that should really bring me up!" and all the time I'd know the result that person is going to get is totally false because that teacher is notorious for over marking! But I suppose in the end with getting them corrected by the teachers at least you would have some idea if a teacher was sort of codding you with a result.

Having said that from reading on here exams that have been corrected externally tend to be erratic at best! I know one of my teachers gave his JC exams to a friend to be corrected, I sort of like that idea because at least his friend is likely to be thorough and fair, but I suppose there's faults with each way, and in the end the pres are only supposed to be a sort of indicator and nothing more.