Senior Cycle Choices

ether

My son is currently doing TY and has been given until the end of the month to chose his subjects for the leaving.

He doesn't know what he wants to do after school and isn't particularly academic.

Any ideas on which way we should approach this?

Myself and his mother feel he should chose subjects he enjoys doing and also subjects he knows he can get good marks in.

Professional Griefer

ether wrote: »

My son is currently doing TY and has been given until the end of the month to chose his subjects for the leaving.

He doesn't know what he wants to do after school and isn't particularly academic.

Any ideas on which way we should approach this?

Myself and his mother feel he should chose subjects he enjoys doing and also subjects he knows he can get good marks in.

I really can't stress how important this is. If he likes the subject, he'll generally pay more attention, do his homework fully and not ever halfarsed. Results should good and studying for a subject you like is SOOO much easier than studying for one he hates.

As regards subject he could get good marks in. That's any subject, it all depends on his attitude towards work and school in general. I picked up 2 subjects, and I hate them ATM, trying to study for them is such a pain.

unknown13

If you hate the subjects then your are not going to enjoy putting the hours in for the subjects come sixth year and you might slack on the subjects you hate.

randylonghorn

ether wrote: »

Myself and his mother feel he should chose subjects he enjoys doing and also subjects he knows he can get good marks in.

Bless you for using your cop-on!

The reality is that if he enjoys them, he is far more likely to put in the work and do well.

The standard advice to those who don't really know what they want to do is to "keep their options open!" i.e. do a language, a science subject, a business subject ...

It isn't necessarily bad advice, but at the same time if the lad has hated science for the last 4 years, he's unlikely to fall in love with it now!

If he isn't the most academic in the world, has he the option to do some practical / technical subjects? ... LCVP?

TEMPLAR KNIGHT

all the posts above contain good avice, another thing to watch out for is good/bad teachers in my old school there was a few notoriously bad teachers and the people that were in there class including me ended up not doing too well in those subjects so watch out for those teachers equally i had some excellent teachers and ended up doing very well in those subjects, so try and find out about the teachers before going into the class, and goodluck!

H2student

^ That's a very difficult thing to do. I tried in my school and failed to find out anything. Sometimes they genuinely don't know as there's probably several classes for the same subject and the timetable isn't officially finished until mid-summer (in my school anyway).

One thing I would suggest is for the student to go and look at the subjects' textbooks. I picked my subjects blind and didn't really have a clue on what's the actual content of the course (and preferably the exam papers).

About teachers' opinion, they aren't that important. They aren't students so they can't really judge a course's difficulty accurately half the time. For example, because almost everyone went in to do biology in the past and failed, they made it sound like it is one of the hardest subjects in the school you can pick up so I choose Physics + Chemistry instead. (Big mistake >_<) I would suggest him to go talk to some leaving cert students are doing the subjects he's considering and ask for their opinion(ask a few people for less biased views).

Fad

Firstly, I congratulate your cop on regarding doing what he enjoys!

However, please do not take the apparent difficultly of a course into account, even if the course is difficult, it'll be a lot easier if he's interested.

An example, Chemistry. I love it, people always moan about how difficult it is, but I loved it, I found it genuinely interesting, so studying it was less of a chore. Same with Higher Irish and to a lesser extent, Physics.

ether

Thanks for the advice, good idea checking out the textbooks and talking to senior students will keep it in mind.

Will let you know how it goes