Colman Noctor: Instead of giving yourself a hard time about your exam anxiety, embrace it
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We spend a month every year telling young people that the Leaving Cert is not the ‘be all and end all’ of their lives. As a 43 year old, I can confidently say this is true. However, as a psychotherapist, I'm aware it is everything for current sixth-year students.
This year there appears to be an eerie absence of the usual column inches on exam stress-management advice. Even the well-worn joke about the guaranteed good Irish weather in the first two weeks of June for exams is being trotted out less frequently. The most likely reason for this is that many have opted not to sit their Leaving Cert exams but to go down the predicted grade route. (None of this applies to the Junior Cert as it's been cancelled.) However, it could also be that in the pandemic preoccupation of the last year, this cohort has been forgotten. Or perhaps we are burnt out from discussing anxiety and stress since the start of the pandemic and some degree of compassion fatigue has set in?
