Every so often, I have one of those nightmares. You've probably had one yourself and, like me, you've probably woken in a cold sweat. They're all a little bit different, but the basic premise is the same - I have to sit the Leaving Cert. All over again.
Yes, it's now 21 years since I did my last Leaving exam (Latin, which is always one of the last exams on the timetable, which meant that my Leaving dragged on for about three hellish weeks), but I still have regular dreams about it.
And I know I'm not alone. Most people I know seem to dream about what we all agree are the most horrible set of exams we've ever had to sit. My dreams are always weirdly realistic, apart from the whole "having to sit a school exam I did over two decades ago" aspect. For some unexplained reason, I must do the Leaving again at the age of 38, and so I find myself frantically trying to remember stuff I learned about in 1993, like the Franco-Prussian war and the basic rules of geometry.
In the dream, I tell myself I'll be okay in German because I did do a degree in it, and English will be okay because I can probably remember some stuff about Wuthering Heights, but basically in every other exam, I'm screwed. There is a lot of panicking and trying to figure out what subjects are most likely to come up (so quite like the real thing in 1993, then). And then I wake up, thanking god that it was all a dream and that I never, ever have to do the Leaving again.
I probably have this dream a few times every year. But why? The obvious answer is that the Leaving is still the most stressful set of exams I've ever had to do, and that includes a four year degree and then an M.A. Think about it: at least seven totally different subjects, and ten exams, over just a few weeks. And you have to jump from maths to history to Irish in just a couple of days. It's no wonder we're haunted by it decades later!
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The thing is, although I did panic a bit beforehand, my Leaving actually didn't go too badly in real life. I did, however, have two genuine exam meltdowns when I was in college, when both times a very stuffy exam room combined with questions on what initially seemed to be unfamiliar topics combined to bring on a full blown panic attack. I walked out and had to be talked back into finishing the exams (and, to my amazement, got a 2:2 in one and a 2:1 in the other, which shows that the panic was pretty unfounded and pointless).
And yet horrible as those experiences were, I don't remember being so consumed by college exams as I was about the Leaving, and more importantly, I haven't dreamed of college exams once in nearly twenty years. But the Leaving still lingers in my subconscious.
But there is one dream that is far, far worse - the ones in which I have to wear my old school uniform too. The horror.
So do you still dream of the Leaving Cert? And did you have any real-life exam nightmares?
