Gareth O'Callaghan: I took the Leaving Cert again last week. Here's what I learned

After years of saying he'd do anything in the world rather than repeat the Leaving Cert, Gareth O'Callaghan takes on English Paper 1

Gareth O'Callaghan sitting English Higher Level Paper 1. 'All my concerns were quickly dismissed. If anything, I could have written for hours.'

I was away sitting the Leaving Cert last week. Actually that’s not entirely true. I sat English Higher Level Paper 1, but not in an official capacity. Call it curiosity, or a challenge. Or maybe there was something more regressive somewhere in that mind space labelled ‘unfinished business’.

I was restless the night before “the exam”, much like the first time. My wife acted as invigilator, careful not to allow me to see the paper which she had downloaded until the morning. Then as I placed a mug of strong coffee beside me, I exchanged my phone for the questions and a bundle of blank A4-lined pages and a pen. 

Here I was, sitting in our dining room reaching back through time and dragging it into the present moment. For a start, much to my surprise, it was as though all of the essays (compositions) were tailor-made for this candidate. 

I quickly narrowed the choice down to three: Write a personal essay in which you reflect on how being creative has a role to play in many aspects of your life. Write an opinion piece for a popular magazine about the power and influence of music, musicians and the music industry. 

Write a personal essay in which you reflect on a moment that was enriching for you, in a variety of ways. I opted for the third choice, pushing it aside until I tackled the first section of the paper, whose overall theme was influence.

An hour into the exam it was time to start the essay. What was enriching for me in a variety of ways was precisely what I was immersed in right there and then, namely resitting my English exam 48 years after first taking it. 

I wrote about that first time — so far back that I couldn’t recall any of the questions I had chosen. I wrote about how two different people who had come from the same mind of a small boy were sitting this exam, because it would have been wrong to say that we were still the same. 

Life had changed us. Time had seen to it that we were unrecognisably different. But yet some part of that teenager who had sat the exam first time round was holding the biro in a much older hand. The handwriting might have changed, but the creative energy that got the words onto the page was as earnest as ever.

This was a moment that was enriching in a variety of ways, as the essay title challenged me to reflect as deeply as I could. But I didn’t have to try hard because it was there and always had been. I never watch the clock while I’m writing, but I had to remind myself that time was unfortunately my nemesis last week. 

I thought of Luke Brady, my English teacher, and how he often used the word discursive when discussing style, and here I was freewheeling without a care in the world. I remember where I sat in the exam room on that first morning, and how my friend Gerry Canavan, who died four years, ago sat to my right. And I could sense others who are no longer here. 

They were all huddled around my thought process and my bridge between the past and the present last week as I finally closed the circle on a curiosity that nags me this time every year, namely could I have done better if I had sat the exam a second time. 

'I always said over the years that I would never want to do these exams again, or would I wish it on anyone else. Last week I went back on my word.'

All my concerns were quickly dismissed. If anything, I could have written for hours; but that luxury wasn’t afforded. I had other work to do on the theme of influence in this, my second attempt at an exam in the subject I love most. 

I can still recall the physical exam paper that morning many years ago — nothing as fancy as the paper I pored over last week. There were no pink borders or stylish font. It was just plain black and white, much like life back then. 

I always said over the years that I would never want to do these exams again, or would I wish it on anyone else. Last week I went back on my word. 

The experience was more than enriching, it was empowering, as though I was meeting my past face to face

There were moments as I wrote that felt almost sacred, as though I was once again channelling the thoughts of a young man without any life experience, and trying to pair them with this older version with its long lifetime of trial and error, all its honours and passes. 

That young man that morning all those years ago was counting down the days to freedom, as he imagined it; to the start of his new life. Little did he know he had no idea what lay ahead; and that goes for all of us who sat poring over those same exams back then. 

I would never have regarded the exams as an enriching experience; but as I look back now I finally realise why they are so important, and that only occurred to me as I sat alone last week with a set of questions and blank pages to write on. 

It was as black and white as the first time round, back when there were no smart phones, no computers, no internet — just the bog-basics at your disposal that you make the best of, based on what you have learned.

Can you answer these Leaving Cert questions?

In hindsight, considering there are now more years behind me than lie ahead, my results had little or no bearing on what came after, but the effort and its impact did. Back then it was the first real rite of passage for this teenager. It was a huge ordeal, and one I didn’t take lightly.

Those exams across a roasting hot fortnight that June felt like a transition from being a child, as I see it now, followed by a giant leap into adulthood. It qualified me to be more than I was before the exam. Results didn’t matter; it’s the challenge that sets students apart — the preparation and the participation. 

All these years later, I can barely remember my results, but I will never forget the hours spent in that room at that single desk, alone with my thoughts and how I could adapt all I had learned to the demands on those papers. It called for quick thinking and careful planning, strategy and meticulous timing, throwing yourself headfirst into the literary challenges without spreading yourself too thinly across a mentally exhausting three hours. 

I never thought I would say it, but I genuinely hope our educators retain the leaving certificate exam in some form. Yes it’s an unnerving endurance test that requires us to challenge ourselves on many levels, but what would be an alternative? There is none. 

Last week, I had been worried there might be too many topics — too much detail in too short a time; too much information for my brain to manage all at once; too much handwriting without a break, too much self-doubt knowing I could have done better. What happened over those three hours was quite a contrast to all my misgivings. 

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On the final day of my exams in 1978 I sat my Latin paper. Perhaps it has taken almost fifty years to realise the value of stoicism, and the words of Marcus Aurelius, who I wrote about that day, when he said, “You have power over your mind — not outside events”. 

If I learned anything from my leaving cert all those years ago, it’s that nothing worth having comes easy. That's as good a reason as any to retain this annual exam.