Memory is a strange thing. My own is in good shape, but even the best memories forget much of what happened in your life.
I am aware for example that I spent six years in St. Macartan’s College, in Monaghan. Something like 1,300 days of my life, across those six years, involved the same journey to and from school, meeting the same people, being taught by the same (mostly excellent) teachers. And yet, of those 1,300 days there are no more than two or three that I can remember clearly.
You remember the people, of course. By one of those quirks of life, my dearest friend in that school is somebody who I have barely spoken to since we both left, because we went in entirely different geographic and career directions after it ended. I remember the teachers, two in particular (one of whom is sadly deceased) and my impression of them and the lasting impression they left on me. I remember that I was occasionally, as teenagers are prone to so being, a dick to them.
But I remember the leaving cert results day pretty clearly. I remember the nerves in particular.
The truth is that I was never a good student. I was (and am) lazy. Others studied their backsides off, I did sort of the minimum. There was a sense of moral hazard about it, I remember, on that particular morning. A sense that if I failed a key subject or didn’t get the points I wanted, it would be entirely my own fault. I remember, quite clearly, my heart pounding more than ideally desired as I walked through doors I had walked through over a thousand times before.
In those days, your results were handed to you in a sealed envelopey-thingy. We had to wait to have them handed out. I remember the chatter and the tension, and the way that every boy (we were all boys, in that school) would get his envelope. Some would open it in front of everyone. Others would walk away from the group, over to a corner, to examine it privately themselves.
I took option A.
I will not pretend here that I did a great leaving cert or that I – in the words of the teachers – “maximised my potential”. As it happens, I did exactly enough. A week later I discovered I had received the exact number of points needed to get into my first-choice course (meaning, of course, that I was on paper the weakest student in that course, having gotten in last).
I remember in particular one friend – who did about as well – calling me a jammy bastard because I had done nothing compared to the work he did. That always stuck with me, because he was right. Others had not done as well, having done more work. I felt very guilty about that. Still do.
People often talk in Ireland about “the leaving cert dream”. The moment when you are suddenly, in the middle of the night, transported back to that exam hall and you are intellectually (if not literally) naked, with no work done and no questions you understand. That never to happened me in the leaving cert. It happened me in College all right, where I soon discovered that “coasting” was not an option.
But I do sometimes still get the dream, except I am back in Geraldine Garvey’s maths class, with not a jot of homework done.
I would not call this “trauma”, but it strikes me that the leaving cert leaves marks on all who sit it. Perhaps that is inevitable.
If you happen to be a person getting results today, or the parent of such a person, all I can say on the subject is this: Twenty three years on, that day has absolutely no relevance to my life. I went to college and did a distinctly average job in my degree in economics. I almost certainly chose the wrong course. I definitely didn’t give it my all. Now I do a job that I love that has almost no bearing on anything I studied for in school or in College.
Perhaps that is luck. But I think it is more a matter of choice. The leaving cert results day is one that those who go through it will never forget, but they should not think of it as being in any way determinative. Lives are long, and opportunities are more plentiful than you imagine.
What I will say, though, is that the day sticks in my memory for a reason: Because it was the closing of a door behind me, and the opening of new ones before me. It is a right of passage. It is a momentous occasion.
On behalf of everyone here at Gript, our very best wishes to the young people getting their results today. May you, decades from now, look back on Friday August 22nd, 2025, and remember the emotions fondly. And may you all have a safe time, going absolutely buck wild tonight.