Pink. In the past few weeks we have, as a nation, come to embrace and love the colour. Manly men can wear pink shirts . It’s a whole new world.
Pink.
Who are we kidding? Our relationship with the colour pink is fundamentally damaged by one traumatic event which touches all our lives. I’m talking Higher Level state exam papers.
It’s the first Wednesday of June. Welcome to Irish State-Sponsored Torture Day also known as the first day of the Leaving and Junior Certs. The utter pointlessness of the Junior Cert is a whole Undaunted in itself, so let’s park that and go straight to Undaunted’s guide to getting through writing answers to either English Papers.
Let’s start with the bad news. Following this technique means you are going to have read some books. No, not the Coles notes (are they still around?) or the four-page pullouts. I’m talking text here. The sonnet, the play, the novel. OK, for the play and the novel you might just get away with binge-viewing the DVD, as long as you realise Romeo never toted an AK47. The text is king.
Roll on the day of the exam. Everything you’ve dreaded happened. The question you least wanted to see: Never fear. Do not panic. You are a young adult with an opinion on everything. Why should that stop once you see the pink paper?
Your attitude has to be:
Go on Punk, make my day. Ask me anything.
Forget the key words. Thread of? Compare and contrast? Who uses those terms? You’ve been studying these babies for two years, so man, do you know what you think of our hero or whether platonic love exists.
The first paragraph of any answer might need to give a nod to what you were asked but your underlying message has to be based on one question:
Are you sure you wanted to ask me this? Surely, you actually wanted to know about this...
We are talking about works of art here. Value judgements are good. The examiner is going to be sick of all those Coles notes replies. Writing that Hamlet should have bedded Cordelia and told the King what his Ma was REALLY like would have been a breath of fresh air. As long as you can back it up with the text...
Trust me. I’m an English Graduate.
II
Right, that’s the theory. My erstwhile editor has handed me this morning’s Paper one. Does she want me to do it? C’mon, that’s torture. Ah ok, she just wants my reaction.
God, I feel old.
It’s all touchy feely. Back in the day, the list of essays was as dry as the driest thing you could think of.
To be honest, I’m secretly impressed. Ok, there are one or two which wreaks of a student going into autopilot and doing exactly the opposite that project Undaunted advises.
Asking students to write on important endings in their lives guarantees all that cash spent on grinds was worth it and examiners are sure to be screaming at a few essays written-to-order.
Given the fun with privacy, virtual or closer to home, asking you to discuss privacy in people’s lives? Ah yes! What fun if you were minded to throw a few spanners in your examiner's summer! They even quote Bono! Young people, you’ve never had it so good.
Yes, I’m impressed with that list of essays. Forget the fear go for it.
Moving on from what us oldsters call ‘prose’. Again, I’m liking what I see. No eighteenth century political tract from that unbelievably turgid book called ‘Leaving Certificate Prose’. There’s Penelope Lively, telling it like it is. There's room to call her a cranky ol’ wan if you think she is talking rubbish... The nerds among us have their chance to go all technical and look at how the piece is constructed.
Then there’s question two in that section. Ignore the piece altogether, pretend you’re an editor of a book and write your intro. Ego Heaven. Talk about your granny or why you hate old people. C’mon... Did you really need those grinds? Nervous energy can be released if you ignore everything you were taught and just go with the flow.
Still, I wouldn’t want to be in that exam hall... Be careful out there and stay calm.
