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8th May 2017
04:25pm BST
Music
I never took a science subject. I had a feeling from a young age that it was important for me to stay away from chemicals. My Leaving Cert subjects were Art, History, Italian and Music… safe to say I’d never be a doctor.
Our music room was located at the very top of our old Georgian building on Leeson street in Dublin. And that’s how I liked it… being away from everyone else and working on melodies for a couple of hours on a Friday evening was complete bliss.
I ended up playing the drums and singing for the theory element of my exams - a logistical nightmare for my father who had always hoped I’d stick with the tin whistle (easier to fit in the car). My examiner told me I was the only girl in all of Ireland who was playing the drums that year for her exam. Take that science!
Geography
A day off school for a field study; colouring in maps and sketches; examining photos of volcanic activity - there was an awful lot to love about Leaving Cert geography.
As is often the case, my love of the subject stemmed from having a really great teacher who genuinely injected life into the mundane likes town planning and irrigation.
Sure elements of the course might sound a bit snooze - but I felt I walked away at the end of my school years with a wide-ranging knowledge and grasp of a lot of key topics.
An added bonus? Well, while I'm loath to say that anything to do with the LC is "easy" (the whole experience is pretty hellish, in fact), when weighed up versus the likes of history, Irish, or maths - Geography is as straightforward as it gets.
Given the opportunity to change subjects in third year ahead of the senior cycle (and having stubbornly refused to take Home Ec because of some teenage feminist notions about ironing and making quiche I was cultivating at the time) I settled on Classical Studies. Mainly because the teacher, Ms Walsh, was fun and beyond glamorous.
Luckily, I immediately found myself whisked away by the civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome and lost for hours in big stonking books such as Homer's the Odyssey and the Iliad.
What many people don't know about Classical Studies is that Greek drama is grittier than The Wire and more violent than Eastenders. The ancient Greeks took zero shit.
Take Medea for instance; the original 'woman scorned', Medea's fella Jason abandons her for the King's daughter, Glauce. Spoiler alert: Medea avenges her husband's betrayal by killing their two children with a knife.
Not content with that, Medea then sends Glauce a dress and golden coronet, covered in poison. This resulted in the deaths of both the princess and the king Creon, who went to help her. She later escaped to start a new life in Athens, where I think about her every time I visit.
Meanwhile in Sophocles tragedy, the Greek hero Oedipus Rex accidentally fulfills a prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother, thereby bringing disaster to his city and family. Cue a plague, a murder, a suicide and a self-blinding episode that involved a mortified Oedipus and two pins from his mother's dress.
If it's action you're after, I'd highly recommend it as a Leaving Cert subject. I mean, look at this for a visual...
Irish
Surprise, surprise – a journalist who enjoyed English at school!
And while it would be easy to dismiss the longer-term validity of the hours I put down deciphering Shakespearean dialogue, actually I learned some core skills that I reckon I still put to good use today.
I always liked English and so I worked hard on it - a link which taught me the important if enjoying what you do.
In turn, this helped me to choose a career I’m genuinely interested in; journalism (sadly Lizzie McGuire took my original idea of being an international pop star and singing at the Colosseum while exposing Paolo as a fraud).
At the beginning of Fifth Year art was actually one of subjects I least looked forward. But gradually it became my favourite - all thanks to an amazing grinds teacher.
Yes, I took grinds in art… and believe me, I’ve heard all the jokes.
The six hours of so I did art and art history in school became a doss class; my friends and I would sit down the back and ‘draw our feelings’ – basically mix some random paints and create something a parent might expect to receive from their infant after a day in playschool.
But my two hours of art grinds a week were when I was at my most studious. Curating a most impressive study folder (I'm still proud of it to this day), I flew through my exams – much to the surprise of my teacher at school who had told my mother she should be "very worried".
Art was one of the subjects that probably allowed me to keep my sanity during Leaving Cert year—a year largely made up of pain. For any poor souls taking part this year—don’t fret—life can only get better.
Although art was time consuming it was creative and I was doing something that came naturally to me. It let me focus on one thing rather than waste time overthinking everything else. It was also the most fun—the one class where we could have a bit of craic while still making progress sketching away. And yes, my teacher was an absolute boss.
What was your favourite Leaving Cert subject and why? Let us know in the Facebook comments or join the conversation on Twitter @HerFamilydotie
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