I’ve just been reading Eolaí’s latest post on how being online helps him remain Irish while away. It’s very good. Great even. So check it out while it’s still hot.
In it, he, being Lord of the Lists, mentions the 20 best Irish sites for maintaining your Irishnessness while abroad. At number 14 is Scrúdú - “Because you’ve left school and Scrúdú is no longer a word to be feared”.
Well 18 months ago, at the tender age of 40-something, I took the plunge, put on the short trousers and went back to school. A postgrad diploma followed by the masters I’m doing now. And let me tell you, exams scare the bejayzez out of me. Remember those nightmares you had for years after the leaving cert where it’s the day of the geography paper and you’ve completely forgotten to study the effects of glacial erosion in Norway? Or the one where you walk out of the Irish exam only to realise you hadn’t attempted the essay? Well I’m getting those again. Only worse this time.
That said, I got the latest set of results this morning and they’re fine. On the finer side of fine, but let’s just call them fine, so I don’t deafen you with the sound of my own trumpet. No nightmares for the next while but I know they’ll be back as big as assess come May. Oh, wailey, wailey!
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Fair play to you. I recently completed a relatively mickey mouse exam, and it brought back so many memories of those horrendous sick-to-my-stomach times that I knew that I would not be able for any further serious education. I like the idea of going for an MBA, but the reality is three years of ridiculous pressure. That I can’t be arsed with. Maybe if I didn’t have kids it’d be different.
I’d take my hat off to you, only it’s incredibly cold here.
Ah yes, I think the fear grows the longer you leave it. I think I can say that it did some serious damage to my Inter and Leaving, before rendering my third-level career a joke, and making minced meat out of my professional exams.
Since moving to the US I’ve only had to revisit heavy exams once, a few years back when somebody was stuck needing somebody with technical expertise in Unix. And they needed them certified in something like two weeks. Not being a technical person such a dramatic anti-vocational career switch was tricky but I gave the study my all for the days I had before succumbing to the fear in what I felt was a gallant attempt at a pass. Americans call that a Fail. I was quite pleased though, in truth.
And yet if ever again in life anybody suggests to me that I embark on something that involves an exam, I will quietly stab them and move to a new country.
Kav: Did I forget to congratulate you on being a certified systems auditor? Well done! Is that IT or business systems?
I know folks who did an MBA while rearing rugrats, paying a mortgage, holding down a job etc. and without the support of their partners, bosses and indeed, kids, they would now be certified … in a different way.
Eolaí: Leave your hat on and your knife in its sheath. Too cold to stab anyone.
As you get older it gets harder to take in information. Cramming doesn’t work anymore. You have to take a little and often approach.
I’m lucky in that I’m doing something I’m really interested in and the university is the most mature-student-friendly in the country. But it can be a curse trying to juggle study and regular grown-up commitments.
Remind me to do a post on my experiences sometime. I’ll include a bit about the time a lecturer was warning our group about what it was like in industry. I cracked and blurted out “Sonny, I was working in industry, as you academics call it, when you were still short trousers. Don’t try to tell me about something you know nothing about”.
Eeeeeeeee, nice new gaff! How poooosh of you. It really does look the biz. congrats darling, mucho congrats.
XX
IT Systems….not that it’s proving much use to me as yet. Bah.