The IrEUSO, up until the point at which Mr. Geraghty told me about it, I had no idea what it was. Turns out that the 250 highest marking students, out of a total 61,000, in Maths and Science in the Junior Certificate were invited to compete for a place on the Irish european science team. “Well” I said, “That sounds interesting.”
So I filled out all the forms and on the 11th November 2017, I made my way to DCU. Walking in the door of the building you could smell the intelligence. 250 of the brightest scientific minds of my age group all crammed together in 1 building, food for thought.
I signed in at the Physics desk, my name only 1 of 100 TY students who chose Physics as their discipline, and if you do the maths right, you can tell I shouldn’t have chosen physics. Anyway, too late now. So the clock struck 11am and the exam commenced. First was paper 1, a multiple choice walk in the park. Leaving the lecture hall with high hopes I went for a snack. My ego quickly disappeared when I opened Paper 2, 15 minutes later. So I did the logical thing to do, push my brain into exhaustion. That seemed to do the trick.
As quickly as it had begun, the exam ended. I left the DCU nursing building and met up with the family in ‘The Helix.’ I got my third coffee of the day and then we headed for the award ceremony. Now considering in the exam I was pitched against 5th year students who were too young for the olympiad the year of their transition year, my hopes weren’t very high as far as getting a medal went.
The names of all the participants were called out in order to collect their certificates. I got mine, well chuffed with that, and then I returned to my seat to watch the award ceremony. Emma Beashel in fifth year in Gerards got the bronze medal for Biology and I have to say fair play to her. So the award ceremony ended, I departed for home without a medal but that didn’t matter. The knowing that I was picked to compete in the first place was more than enough to make me feel proud of myself, and who knows, when all participants get invited back to compete in a chemistry exam in 2 years time. Stranger things have happened.
So I filled out all the forms and on the 11th November 2017, I made my way to DCU. Walking in the door of the building you could smell the intelligence. 250 of the brightest scientific minds of my age group all crammed together in 1 building, food for thought.
I signed in at the Physics desk, my name only 1 of 100 TY students who chose Physics as their discipline, and if you do the maths right, you can tell I shouldn’t have chosen physics. Anyway, too late now. So the clock struck 11am and the exam commenced. First was paper 1, a multiple choice walk in the park. Leaving the lecture hall with high hopes I went for a snack. My ego quickly disappeared when I opened Paper 2, 15 minutes later. So I did the logical thing to do, push my brain into exhaustion. That seemed to do the trick.
As quickly as it had begun, the exam ended. I left the DCU nursing building and met up with the family in ‘The Helix.’ I got my third coffee of the day and then we headed for the award ceremony. Now considering in the exam I was pitched against 5th year students who were too young for the olympiad the year of their transition year, my hopes weren’t very high as far as getting a medal went.
The names of all the participants were called out in order to collect their certificates. I got mine, well chuffed with that, and then I returned to my seat to watch the award ceremony. Emma Beashel in fifth year in Gerards got the bronze medal for Biology and I have to say fair play to her. So the award ceremony ended, I departed for home without a medal but that didn’t matter. The knowing that I was picked to compete in the first place was more than enough to make me feel proud of myself, and who knows, when all participants get invited back to compete in a chemistry exam in 2 years time. Stranger things have happened.