Can I do well in LC if I do badly in JC?

Georginapapps1

I'm not doing TY and know that I am highly motivated to work in 5th and 6th year because I know exactly what I want to do. I need 400 points, but is this still acheivable with a bad enough Junior Cert? I'm in higher level maths and dropping to ordinary next year because I really struggle with it. French and Irish are tough but the rest are okish. Would I be fine to get D's and C's for junior and still get a good leaving?

spurious

Some schools have a cut off point for HL LC classes. There's no point telling the teacher you will be motivated to work when you haven't shown it beforehand.

Why not get working now, get more than Ds and Cs in the Junior and set yourself up on a firm foundation for the Leaving.

Of course people can and do improve from JC to LC, but you might banjax yourself in terms of access to the HL LC classes unless you show a certain level of work for JC.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Dylanw2u

In my junior cert I did all honours, and got nothing but C's And D's, and 1 A in English, I did not study at all.

When going into 5th year, my teachers doubted I could do well, so I proved to them I could.


I went from C's and D's to A's, I'm in 5th year now and do about 3-4 hours of study a day, homework taking around 1 hour (I do homework at lunch in school to save me time for study at home)

My only problem being Accounting and Maths, simply because of the teachers, but I'm getting grinds for them, I also do pass Maths now; The HL maths class was too big of a jump.


You can absolutely do well in the LC with doing bad in the JC.

My sister for example most of her subjects in the JC, but she put her head down in 5th and 6th year, and came out with 525 points in her LC.

My own principle said to me on the day of the JC results that the JC doesn't matter, its simply a small glimpse for some people's potential, and for others; a wake up call.

Georginapapps1

Dylanw2u wrote: »

In my junior cert I did all honours, and got nothing but C's And D's, and 1 A in English, I did not study at all.

When going into 5th year, my teachers doubted I could do well, so I proved to them I could.


I went from C's and D's to A's, I'm in 5th year now and do about 3-4 hours of study a day, homework taking around 1 hour (I do homework at lunch in school to save me time for study at home)

My only problem being Accounting and Maths, simply because of the teachers, but I'm getting grinds for them, I also do pass Maths now; The HL maths class was too big of a jump.


You can absolutely do well in the LC with doing bad in the JC.

My sister for example most of her subjects in the JC, but she put her head down in 5th and 6th year, and came out with 525 points in her LC.

My own principle said to me on the day of the JC results that the JC doesn't matter, its simply a small glimpse for some people's potential, and for others; a wake up call.

Thanks so much for sharing that! What did you get in higher maths for Jc? I find it so hard I'll probably scrape a D but is ordinary okay for you now? I feel the teachers have such low standards for me now and that makes me feel so guilty because I know I'm capable of so much more. I don't care about the junior cert but honestly the guilt was killing me doing nothing so I've started studying.

Just wondering though how you can fit 3-4 hours study in a day? You must manage your time really well. Sometimes I could sit at a desk for hours with such little productivity. Plus instrument practice, sports.. time management and organizing myself is my biggest problem when it comes to getting work done. How can you manage everything so well, and only in 5th year?!

By the way I read your other post about grinds for accounting, get it now. My sister did accounting - by far one of the hardest leaving cert subjects. I'd safely say your not the only one struggling in your class and a lot will drop down to ordinary closer to the LC. Ordinary accountancy is supposedly piss. If your not gonna drop levels, make positively sure you get grinds.

BadBannana

If you're that highly motivated you should start working now. Maybe you won't be getting all A's but you can definitely pull up all your grades. The teachers won't let you into a class knowing you did f*ck all work in Junior cert

rainbowtrout

Georginapapps1 wrote: »

Just wondering though how you can fit 3-4 hours study in a day? You must manage your time really well. Sometimes I could sit at a desk for hours with such little productivity. Plus instrument practice, sports.. time management and organizing myself is my biggest problem when it comes to getting work done. How can you manage everything so well, and only in 5th year?!

The quality of what you do studywise is far more important than quantity. Obviously you are not going to get away with an hour a day in fifth/sixth year. But perhaps change your mindset about the way you study. Don't say 'I'm going to do an hour of maths, an hour of geography and an hour of french tonight'. Say 'I'm going to do five questions on trigonometry and write up notes on glacier formation, and learn 10 new phrases/words related to travel in French'. That way you have an actual goal rather than mindlessly staring into space or getting distracted. That, and leave your mobile phone/tablet etc in another room while you are studying so you are not tempted to check it every 5 minutes.

400 points is an achievable score in the LC, for anyone that is willing to work and is doing a few honours subjects. But start working in fifth year. Do the homework you are assigned each night. It's there to help you revise what you did in class, and then when you ahve time, build in some revision/study of your own. Starting with past papers is never a bad plan.

Volturnus

Georginapapps1 wrote: »

I'm not doing TY and know that I am highly motivated to work in 5th and 6th year because I know exactly what I want to do. I need 400 points, but is this still acheivable with a bad enough Junior Cert? I'm in higher level maths and dropping to ordinary next year because I really struggle with it. French and Irish are tough but the rest are okish. Would I be fine to get D's and C's for junior and still get a good leaving?

You're only in third year so theirs plenty of time. Pass maths is a lot easier than honors so you should probably just focus on it and make sure you keep up to date with it. As for Irish and French, if you are bad at French can't you just drop it for the LC? Irish isn't needed for most courses, they usually ask for something like a C1 English or Irish but you should check.

Is it realistic to think you will do well in the LC if you didn't in the Junior though? It's certainly more than possible but everyone says that they will make a change and never stick to it...

rainbowtrout

Volturnus wrote: »

You're only in third year so theirs plenty of time. Pass maths is a lot easier than honors so you should probably just focus on it and make sure you keep up to date with it. As for Irish and French, if you are bad at French can't you just drop it for the LC? Irish isn't needed for most courses, they usually ask for something like a C1 English or Irish.

Passing Irish is a requirement for the NUI colleges, so the OP can't just drop it. She wouldn't be allowed drop it in school anyway.

Volturnus

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Passing Irish is a requirement for the NUI colleges, so the OP can't just drop it. She wouldn't be allowed drop it in school anyway.

I said drop French?

rainbowtrout

Volturnus wrote: »

I said drop French?

But you also said Irish isn't needed for most courses, which implies dropping it. It is an entry requirement for NUI.

Georginapapps1

Volturnus wrote: »

You're only in third year so theirs plenty of time. Pass maths is a lot easier than honors so you should probably just focus on it and make sure you keep up to date with it. As for Irish and French, if you are bad at French can't you just drop it for the LC? Irish isn't needed for most courses, they usually ask for something like a C1 English or Irish but you should check.

Is it realistic to think you will do well in the LC if you didn't in the Junior though? It's certainly more than possible but everyone says that they will make a change and never stick to it...

Thanks for your advice, I'm taking a real focus and Irish and french currently so I can get them up to standard for the leaving.

I'm not that bad for my junior cert it's not like I've never opened a book. If it's a teacher I care about or a topic I like I study it hard. Getting the motivation to study and actually studying isn't my problem. It's my time management and organization between the 9 subjects. As I said sometimes I find it hard to productively study for long periods of time. I think that's what's motivating me right now though - the amount of people telling me if you haven't been studying for the jc you'll never get up to scratch for the leaving. Purely the reason I made this post. The junior cert results mean absolutely nothing to me. The leaving cert has my whole dream career at the end of it.

Dylanw2u

Georginapapps1 wrote: »

Thanks so much for sharing that! What did you get in higher maths for Jc? I find it so hard I'll probably scrape a D but is ordinary okay for you now? I feel the teachers have such low standards for me now and that makes me feel so guilty because I know I'm capable of so much more. I don't care about the junior cert but honestly the guilt was killing me doing nothing so I've started studying.

Just wondering though how you can fit 3-4 hours study in a day? You must manage your time really well. Sometimes I could sit at a desk for hours with such little productivity. Plus instrument practice, sports.. time management and organizing myself is my biggest problem when it comes to getting work done. How can you manage everything so well, and only in 5th year?!

By the way I read your other post about grinds for accounting, get it now. My sister did accounting - by far one of the hardest leaving cert subjects. I'd safely say your not the only one struggling in your class and a lot will drop down to ordinary closer to the LC. Ordinary accountancy is supposedly piss. If your not gonna drop levels, make positively sure you get grinds.

I come home from school at 4:10 usually, on monday to Wednesday, since I love close to my school, and on thursday and friday I come home at 3:20 (my school doesn't do half days on wednesdays, but takes an hour off thursdays and fridays) when I go home, I go right up to my room and do homework, generally only taking me an hour. Please note, I do not put TOO much effort in homework as I care mostly for my study (which pays off) afterwards it's usually 5:10-5:15 when I'm done, I'll then begin study for a certain subject and pick the topic I'm going to learn off, I usually do this until 6, then I have dinner, which generally I'm done at 6:30, I then go to my room and will continue study and move on to other topics/subjects up until 10:30-11:15pm I usually take 2 breaks in between this time period, lasting about 5 minutes each, and this works well enough for ME to cool off a bit. Please note, I never have ANY electronics in my room while studying, it is far too much of a distraction, even if its off! this will generally be my routine. Now, you asked about how I manage time well, and the only thing I can say to this is the fact that the junior cert really did give me a wake up call, and like you I felt so guilty, even though It didn't really matter. I felt teachers thought I was dumb, and would always get so stressed at the thought of them thinking I wouldn't be able to do well. And so, I said to myself in fourth year, that although this is a year in which not much is done, I'll begin looking at past leaving cert exam papers, and getting use to what examiners are looking for and practice questions. This helped a lot, not significantly, but a lot. Then when going into 5th year the workload was so immensely different I had many panic attacks because I didn't think I'd ever be able to get time to study with the homework (the teachers were so harsh with the amount!) however, come December I fully adapted to the workload, 2-3 A4 pages of English or Accounting became the regular, and soon I was able to do homework within an hour. I then went to my eldest Brother, (who got 7 A1's in his leaving cert) for advice on time management and how/what he did to get the grades he got. He told me that doing up notes in colour co-ordination helped him a lot, for example, in geography he said he would use orange stickers to represent examples, green stickers to represent SRP's and pink stickers to represent processes, he said that when you forget something during a test, remembering the colours you used can trigger your brain to remember what information fell under that certain faction. He said that this method of colour co-ordination helped him greatly, and he was able to summarize a lot of his notes and shorten them as much as possible because of it, and this generally made study for him very easy and manageable time wise. He also says that doing exercise is a great thing to do when study as it helps you relax and helps you concentrate a lot more, it doesn't matter what type of exercise as long as you do it! (I just do long walks, but again these walks are at lunch in school for 45 minutes, lol). And also, eating healthy is something he has always said to me, if you eat enough during the day of healthy meals it helps you concentrate a lot. He said that his friends often skipped breakfast and this caused them to not be able to concentrate in school, and especially when they went home to study they would just stare blankly at their books.


So to summarize that; Eat well, don't skip out on meals, exercise, have a good routine of what you're going to do when studying, and try certain methods that work for you; colour co-ordination, flashcards, rote learning etc.., have a positive attitude!

Also, please note that you do not need to study as much as I do, the reason I do it is because I want to get most of the work done this year so it takes a load off me next year, you do NOT need to put that much time in, just an hour of study a day will help you greatly!

And thank you for the advise on accounting! honors really is hard, but I'm going to stick to it, and will get those grinds!


Goodluck anyways!

Georginapapps1

Thanks a million!!

spurious

Listening properly in class is one of the easiest and most effective things you can do.

Don't try and convince yourself that you understand a topic or concept if you don't. Ask your teacher to explain it, even after class, or after school. Many things at LC level presume a full understanding of the basics and if you don't get them, you'll be lost.