So then, what's TY been like for you so far?

jefreywithonef

It has been relatively ok for me so far, it hasn't been as difficult as last year was for obvious reasons but then again its been boring too...

TY's main positives so far:

• A lot less homework
• Work Experience (Exhausting but its worth it)
• Meeting new people
• Far greater number of trips

TY's main negatives so far:

1. Some teachers are taking it very seriously /o\
2. I have GCSE & module exams /o\

So then Jello et al - how have yis found it?

frenchman

its been pretty good! but then again kinda boring as well but overall im liking it!

challengemaster

its fecking awesome tbfh. mid term this friday, then the 6th we're going to brussles on a tour

its great, if the teachers need help with anything they call on good aul' faithful TY's to do it.eg. setting up the gym for 'back to school mass' etc.

It has a great social aspect as you get to know your peers better and interact with everyone.

loved the first tour, now im just wondering what can happen with 50 TY's on a plane...or rather what cant happen

another good point is all the things like ECDL etc really help build our CV's

in the words of mc.donalds... im lovin' it

PurpleFistMixer

Why do you have GCSE? I.. thought that was like, English JC or something?

Jello

Monzo wrote:

So then Jello et al - how have yis found it?

Directed at moi?

But yeah... I've this week off for Work Experience in UCD, then the week after mid-term I'm in an Engineer's, then I've another week off in March for Work Experience in RTE, then a week off for a care week, then a week off for a trip to Paris and at least another two weeks off for trips and outings and other days we get off simply for being in TY. So that's at least 7 weeks we're not in school! (and I've a feeling I'm forgetting another week for something else..)

I've hardly any homework, which is great. I've a good few projects to do though but they're interesting.

And we also get to broadcast/help broadcast a show on South Dublin FM which'll be nice. And our school are also hosting this thing in Croke Park in March where there's gonna be these famous people talking about leadership (Brian O' Driscoll is the only one I remember) and something like 50 TY students from each school around the country will be invited.

The only thing that sucks is doing Leaving Cert Honours Maths from day one, and having a test in it at the end of each chapter...

And the President's Award thing is a bit of a pain more than anything... especially the Community part.

Piste

I'm really liking TY so far. Before I started I had a load of people telling me it was a joke, and not to do it, waste of time etc. But it's really what you make of it. In my school there are so many opportunities to do fun stuff to keep me amused.

Like what other people have said, I'm getting to know my year a lot better. There are girls this year who I';ve spoken more to over the last few weeks than I had in 1st, 2nd and 3rd year.

And I've gotten to know a few girls from the year above me too because we're doing Grease together, plus the guys that are in Grease, and the boys from Guys and Dolls.

I like the way we get to try new things, like Spanish! And the flexibility of the school, like they'll let us take a week off here and there for coursers etc.

I've realised that the teachers are actually human beings, with personalities and a sense of humour, not just badly dressed people asking me why I haven't got my homework done.

I think that TY will make my year a whole lot closer, I've heard some bad things about my school and its reputation from people in other schools but I can really see why a lot of people think of it as a good school because everyone's so encouraging.

(and the trips)

Cons:

Although they mean well, a lot of the classes are quite boring. Especially classes like science which have to cater for everyone, the people who got As in JC science and the people who didn't even do JC Science, when we're all mixed in together we just don't do anything interesting.

Also because a lot of people see it as a doss year, they talk through classes meaning that we don't actually -learn- anything, so they think it's a doss year and talk in class so we don't -learn- anything...

Piste

not if all the other dossers are talking and being annoying and stuff.

DanOB

its ****e, still getting homework, irish and maths teachers are viewing it as our first year of "leaving certificate studies" its crap.

we suggested to our coordinator to bring us paintballing and he flat out disapproved it.
however we're doing Grease with the local girls school so its not sooo bad i suppose.
went to the IFI in temple bar today to see "mean creek", no charge, missing for half the day, hour and a half of lunch, 2 trips to mcd's and when we got bk to school at 3:20 we were told we could go home...

Piste

#Elites wrote:

meh! learn at home then:D

That's just silly talk

jefreywithonef

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

Why do you have GCSE? I.. thought that was like, English JC or something?

My school is the only one in the Republic to offer such exams. Although it's only for TYs. I think over there it is the equivalent of our Leaving Cert actually - not 100% sure though. What makes it difficult is the fact it's a three-year course yet we've only from September to March (around March time anyway) to cover the course and prepare for the exam!

(btw there is only one subject for this GCSE exam, we had two options: Physical Education and Computers. I chose the latter. The theory of it is the hardest part. )

Jello wrote:

Directed at moi?

Well you and the rest (hence 'et al' ). I only wrote your name cos you're the only one I remember who posts here most frequently - nothing malicous was intended mate!

Did you have the option of being able to not do the An Gaisce Award? I didn't do it - too much effort would be needed and with my decreasing stamina levels it was a no no for me haha! I was thinking of doing some sort of online journalism course that was mentioned by my year head but the €180 fee kinda put me off it altogether.

Jello

Monzo wrote:

Well you and the rest (hence 'et al' ). I only wrote your name cos you're the only one I remember who posts here most frequently - nothing malicous was intended mate!

Ah, I see .

Monzo wrote:

Did you have the option of being able to not do the An Gaisce Award? I didn't do it - too much effort would be needed and with my decreasing stamina levels it was a no no for me haha! I was thinking of doing some sort of online journalism course that was mentioned by year head but the €180 fee kinda put me off it altogether.

Yeah, we didn't have to do it, but I signed up anyway as it was one of the first things we were told about and I just went ahead with it without really knowing what it was and what it involved. At least the fee for it was only €5 though!

jefreywithonef

Are you planning on quitting it then?

Br@nkin

It's crap.

Our principal sees it as a chance to learn or some ****e.

That whole Gaisce thing. I havent organised ANYTHING for it yet. Woops.

We're not going on any trips or anything either, because Principal is a ****ing ****.

Thats what 4 grand a year gets for ya...

Jello

Monzo wrote:

Are you planning on quitting it then?

Dunno, don't think so. I haven't that much left to do so I'll probably just stick it out at this stage. But at the end we go on a two day adventure (a hike, cycle, kayak trip, etc) which should be fun.

jefreywithonef

Sounds like a nice principal!

PurpleFistMixer: After skimming through the ECDL thread I came across this:

Module 1 - Basic Concepts of Information Technology (IT)
Module 2 - Using the Computer and Managing Files
Module 3 - Word Processing
Module 4 - Spreadsheets
Module 5 - Databases
Module 6 - Presentations
Module 7 - Information & Communication

which I am pretty sure are basically the same things we've to do for our practical GCSE work, although one notable ommission there is the internet search we had to do...

PurpleFistMixer

Ah, doesn't seem too bad. Then again, we've only just started ECDL, so I can't judge too soon.

Acid_Violet

People say TY's a doss. I was up till 1.30 doing a project last night, and that was early by everyone else in the classes standards. I didn't do any work for the JC so it's odd now to see me stressing about stuff this year.

Piste

I like An Giasce cos i'm just basically dong everything I had intended doing for thisyear and getting an award for it :P

Yeah Cliodhna I know what you mean about the Projects. Even when we have forever to do that I always do them the night before, sitting up on my bed with my pritt stick and scissors trying to make some sort of Poster-type-thing...

PurpleFistMixer

Tbh I found TY a lot more stressful for JC. JC is sort of.. normal, calm, you know what you're doing. With TY there's projects due all over the place and you don't even know how good it has to be or anything. Ugh. Just hate projects now. Shudder. The stress of it all.

lilmissprincess

So far in TY we've:
Done a Gaisce walk in Glendalough....so damn wet!!!
Done 2 modules in ECDL
Gone to the National Concert Hall
3 of us did a drama week with other TY students in other schools
Tons of carolsinging
Business Studies Projects
Planned a wedding for Maths!

And we painted our classroom lilac one day. it's now much prettier..
I got my first ever a's in Irish and Maths this year, and its like LC ordinary level maths apparently..first a in science since first year..
I love this year!

sock puppet

Its been brilliant so far. I dont know how im going to be able to go back to normal in 5th year.

phasers

mine's a bit rubbish to be honest,the teachers all see as part of the leaving cert course and this year the coordinators have decided it is to be more "academic".
all our trips are educational and VERY strict,the teachers ask the same girl to do all the interesting stuff over and over,the rest of us don't get a look-in.
our classes are very dull,just reading from books,I thought we'd be doing more hands-on stuff.
our classes weren't explained to us at the start of the year,so I chose science thinking we'd be doing forensics,which is what we were told last year,and I get stuck in a class talking about make-up.
and we have to go over the basics of first year science again because some girls haven't taken it before.
<

philologos

PurpleFistMixer wrote:

Tbh I found TY a lot more stressful for JC. JC is sort of.. normal, calm, you know what you're doing. With TY there's projects due all over the place and you don't even know how good it has to be or anything. Ugh. Just hate projects now. Shudder. The stress of it all.

The teachers never regarded the projects we did as incredibly important though, and to be fair they weren't really that indepth either. Although then again the JC doesn't matter much, its the LC thats important.

marshmallow

It has it's ups and downs!

I've done pretty much everything available to me yet it can still get boring. So many extra-curricular things are on at lunch-time that you barely have time to eat your lunch! Classes are boring..

You get giving loadsa notice for projects but because there's so many trips and classes off it's hard to keep up and keep track of them!

Doing MUN and An Gaisce. Already had Community Care and Gael Linn. Went up North for a week. Doing Young Scientist, going to Spain, have Work Experience, 4th yr musical.

PurpleFistMixer

Jakkass wrote:

The teachers never regarded the projects we did as incredibly important though, and to be fair they weren't really that indepth either. Although then again the JC doesn't matter much, its the LC thats important.

Well, I found the way my school did the projects to be stressful. It must be different in other schools.

Twinkle-star15

I've had two days of it, and I hate it already. I'm not going to go blaming the school, actually I knew I was going to hate it before I did it. So I'm just going to try find A LOT of work experience, or extra classes or SOMETHING TO STAVE OFF THE BOREDOM...

Upside: no classes, talking to people I wouldn't usually.

Downside: no classes- I miss mah learnin'! And I was pretty much thrown in at the deep end of everything- I'm supposed to find work experience yesterday and I haven't a clue how to go about it. I just borrowed a friend's CV to get the outline of it, but my mother's shouting at me to make it shorter, so I haven't a clue what I'm doing. Also, mine looks pretty crappy, because I missed all the modules and stuff like that.

frenchman

i dont think we do as many modules and stuff as most school as we are beginning and doing our leaving cert classes as well for our optional subjects and maths.. is this the case in other school or is it just ours!!!???

Killaqueen!!!

Mixed opinions here then...

In response to some people...I can kinda see why some people find TY stressful because of the sheer amount of projects, and different modules etc. but seriouslt, DON'T GET STRESSED OVER THIS. The projects don't mean a thing and if you're staying up til 1.30 over a project...well, you just shouldn't be. The projects are more of a practice for skills you might need later on but by no means do you need to spending a lot of time on them. This is the only chance you'll have to take a break because next year (if you're not a big dosser) you'll be doing a lot of work.

So, now. None of you should be saying that TY isn't a big dos

I don't really like it though...it's really boring. The TY trips are cool (We're going to an adventure centre after mid term) and so are the actual holiday trips like the ones to Europe and ski trips (I'm not going though cos it's too expensive). So that's good.

I actually like the work experience so I can't wait for that...but that's the main highlight. I find it really boring otherwise. (Though I do like the weird subjects we're doing!)

I think it would actually be better to do 1st and 2nd year dedicated to the Junior Cert (In my case thatd be two dos years anyway), 3rd year for 'transition year' and 4th, 5th and 6th dedicated to the Leaving Cert (In my case I've promised myself I'll work hard for that).

I think it'd be better if we started some of the LC courses in 4th year. I wouldn't prefer it but it should be like that.

jefreywithonef

Killaqueen!!! wrote:

Mixed opinions here then...

In response to some people...I can kinda see why some people find TY stressful because of the sheer amount of projects, and different modules etc. but seriouslt, DON'T GET STRESSED OVER THIS. The projects don't mean a thing and if you're staying up til 1.30 over a project...well, you just shouldn't be. The projects are more of a practice for skills you might need later on but by no means do you need to spending a lot of time on them. This is the only chance you'll have to take a break because next year (if you're not a big dosser) you'll be doing a lot of work.

What projects are these you all speak of? I haven't really had any projects this year with maybe the exception of an Irish chart I had to fill up with typed out sheets and my GCSE IT Report. Can't believe the contrast between my school and some of the others here - I've hardly been getting any homework at all. Last week all I done was answer this questionnaire regarding the year just gone by.

I think it'd be better if we started some of the LC courses in 4th year. I wouldn't prefer it but it should be like that.

Agree with you there totally. Preparation for this up coming LC is vital yet all we've done nothing in English and Irish. Maths is the only subject that we have been working a good bit at, but I have the misfortune of being stuck in an ordinary level class where most people are incompetent and the teacher is absolutely brutal.

Does anyone else have modules once a week? We've three classes on a Friday afternoon dedicated to the particular module. I have done the First Aid one and now I'm doing Electronics, which is a waste of a Friday afternoon in all honesty.

macroman

Best thing was a week in DCU doing a web design course. I'm already a wizz at HTML and PHP (I'm not modest am I ). Was a good laugh, have some incriminating videos of what we got up to on campus.

Some trips were good, like Arran Islands, trips to UK and various other trips of less importance.

Good thing about it, is less work, and if you skip last class you never got noticed...:cool: