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For many, the Leaving Cert is over, but our Leaving Cert Diary entries continue with thanks to members of the Irish Second-Level Students' Union (ISSU).
Today, we lead off with Isabelle on German, and keep reading as Ryan tells us about his long day with Construction studies...
Isabelle - Freitag, den 13. Juni 2025.
The day has come. We walked into our exam halls/special centres with our heads bursting with Deutsch at 9.30 this morning.
Higher level students were met with Leservrständnis 1, about a professional gamer called Till, and we were asked questions regarding his journey as a professional gamer. This was followed by a grammar section with challenging adjective endings.
The second Leserverständnis followed an interview with a Munich student working in Antarctica. The questions related to the harsh winters there. I chose to do the Äußerung zum Thema about the diary writing. The questions were simple and nice, relating to how relevant it is to write diaries in our modern world.
The pen pal letter had plenty of nice broad topics, including the Olympics, how we meet new
people, and our morning routine. The 10 minute break between the written and aural allowed me to have a much needed stretch and movement break (fellow neurodivergent students will understand!)
The Hörverständnis was the part I was very anxious about, but was extremely happy with how smooth it was. The questions were straightforward and the 40 minutes went by in a blissful breeze. I personally was highly expecting topics of AI on the paper, and so was surprised to see that it made no such appearance on neither the written or aural paper.
While challenging in many ways, I found the paper relatively straightforward and there was nothing on it that my teacher hadn't prepared me for (shout-out to my wunderbar Lehrerin Frau Prior!)
It was all building up to this for Ryan...
The Construction Studies exam is over, after months of research and manufacturing of an artefact, a grim 4 hour day practical and a 3 hour long exam it's all finished.
Construction Studies was my break from the written subjects over the past two years, I’d look forward to going downstairs to get into some practical work, but then there was the Monday classes where we would do theory, it’s not a surprise that the class attendance was always better for the practical classes then the Monday theory class!
Today’s exam was theory based, the subject is 50% assessment before the exam and 50% for the written paper. I think the exam was fair, but definitely had a few challenges that will have surprised students because they definitely surprised me.
The first question was the window detail which is one of the harder detailed drawings, there was a few tricky details thrown into it to catch people. I was happy to see a Safety question come up in Q2 however I was hoping a site safety question would come up somewhere on the paper, which it didn’t!
Question 3 again was a very predictable question which I was very happy with, although Q4 was definitely not expected and threw me from having options in the exam to having no options of questions.
The U Values question this year again had two tricky elements thrown into it which I have to believe will have tricked some people. For the last number of years the two details stayed the same but this year they changed it so I think people will have been caught. Q6 again was a highly anticipated question on Enviormental impact which was very manageable.
I personally did not study Q7,8,9 as I opted to go for the chapters that suited me better as there is a lot of choice on this paper, we have 10 options and have to answer 5 questions.
Again, Q10 was a bit difficult and required critical thinking but I think most people will have got the majority of the marks here.
Overall it was quite a challenging paper compared to previous years but I think students will be happy with it. I’m certainly happy to have it all over but unfortunately I still have one more exam to go, I just have to wait 10 days to do it!
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The ISSU
Founded in 2008, the ISSU is the national representative body for school students in the Republic of Ireland. The ISSU is led by students, for students.
