Failed Leaving Cert, What now. Is my life over?

Kam425

Hey all , im new to this site and i have a dilemma.

Baisicly i failed my leaving cert and repeat is not an option. I dont like the way leaving cert is structured, i hate everything about it . Please if youre here to tell me how i should repeat , ect , just close the tab. I already have enough stress in my life as it is.

I want to get into college and get a degree in food nutrition , baisicly a dietitian. Now Blackrock Institute of Further Education do a PLC evening course where LC is not required . If i indeed do complete this course i will recieve a Lvl 5 QQI and can go on to apply for a full time 2nd year of the course.

Now my question is, can i get into college after completing 2years of this PLC?

StupidLikeAFox

You probably can. Ring up the Blackrock IFE and have a chat with them - they will come across this all the time.

To answer your question - no your life is not over. Have worked with many people who ended up in decent jobs through all sorts of different routes. It may take you 5 years instead of 3, but in the grand scheme of things that won't matter make a huge difference.

Even if you wanted to work/travel for a few years, you would be able to apply to a university as a mature student at 23 so there are plenty of options there for you

theteal

Relax OP. MrsTeal failed her leaving cert. . .twice (no joke!).

She's now a senior ITU nurse in possibly the most high profile hospital ward in the UK.

She did a PLC before being accepted to Uni in the UK. It'll obviously come down to the course you want but the LC is not the only route into higher 3rd level education.

TOEJOE

You will get there,you will just have to go the longer route.Completing a plc course will help you move on .To complete a dietician course is going to be a challenge.The only one I am aware of is the DIT /TRinity course which requires very high points in leaving cert.There are other courses but I am not sure you will be able to call yourself a dietician but they are in food science and would require a lower point entry which might suit you.Check out the local college to find out what is available and if the plc course will help you.
Good luck there is always a route to success.

strangel00p

Don't worry, your life is definitely not over. Although it might seem like a huge deal now, the leaving cert is not the be all and end all. There are so many options out there. I did a PLC course when I left school(poor leaving cert), this led onto a university degree which I then followed up with a postgraduate course.

Trust me it's not the end of the world, you'll be fine.

rawn

Kam425 wrote:

I want to get into college and get a degree in food nutrition , baisicly a dietitian. Now Blackrock Institute of Further Education do a PLC evening course where LC is not required . If i indeed do complete this course i will recieve a Lvl 5 QQI and can go on to apply for a full time 2nd year of the course.

Hi OP. Just a word of warning: you might have to repeat one LC class. I didn't sit my LC at all. I did a one year Nutrition & Dietetics course in Whitehall CFE, and from that I was able to go to DIT to study Health & Nutrition for the Culinary Arts. BUT some of my classmates from Whitehall went on to study Dietetics, which requires a lab subject. Basically you HAVE to have either Chemistry or Biology to do Dietetics. So make sure you look into that, maybe do a course but make sure you can do something that will give you the lab experience too if Dietetics is the path you want to go down.

Wanderer78

What a bloody dreadful education system we have, to make people feel a failure of they fail some exams! There's some great advice already on this thread op and more to come, the problem is not with you but with our system, 'it' fails many including you. There are tons of options out there for you and I'm sure you will be successful with whatever you chose. Taking some time out might be an idea, you've just endured a stressful experience. I wish you the very best of luck with whatever you chose

Kam425

strangel00p wrote: »

Don't worry, your life is definitely not over. Although it might seem like a huge deal now, the leaving cert is not the be all and end all. There are so many options out there. I did a PLC course when I left school(poor leaving cert), this led onto a university degree which I then followed up with a postgraduate course.

Trust me it's not the end of the world, you'll be fine.

Thanks!! And what course / plc did you do?

strangel00p

Kam425 wrote: »

Thanks!! And what course / plc did you do?

I definitely wasn't interested in school and my leaving cert results showed it! Initially did a certificate in Blackrock Further Education Institute. This allowed me to then do a Bsc in surveying and then later I was able to do a postgrad in ICT. This definitely opened doors for a management position. Don't despair, everything will be grand.:)

spurious

OP, not sure what you mean by 'failing' your LC. Do you mean passing less than five subjects?

There is always another way into courses.
There may well be another full time day provider of the same course you are looking at in Blackrock. How about 'Nutrition and Dietetics' in Whitehall?
Even if you have to wait till next September to start, it's not that long and you could volunteer in an associated area to gain valuable experience before starting.

Be aware that not all applicants who apply following one year PLC courses can gain access to degree courses. You will need distinctions in as many modules as possible.

dartboardio

I failed my leaving cert the first time when I was seventeen due to silly reasons such as smoking weed the whole time never going to class etc. But I went back and done it just got those five passes you need for a PLC. It was easy, literally scrape a pass. Five is all you need. I didn't even need to "put the head down" I just looked over some stuff a couple of times a week. School isn't for everyone. I'm now receiving distinctions in all my assignments I'm getting back, and hoping to do culinary arts in a university next year with my PLC results. You can achieve anuthing you set your mind to and it doesn't
have to be out of your reach

Vlove

Don't give up, there are a lot of options waiting for you!

eeguy

People make out the leaving cert is the be all and end all.

There's many paths to further education and once you get a few proper qualifications nobody will give a damn how many points you got in Irish or geography.

endacl

Wanderer78 wrote: »

What a bloody dreadful education system we have, to make people feel a failure of they fail

In fairness...

Overheal

Visualize your goal and intended destination.

I mean, by the way, ignoring school and college for a moment: What do you want to do? [food nutrition, etc]

OK Great! There are by virtue of the way life is, an indeterminately large number of paths to take in order to reach this point. Not all of them are direct, not all of them are even smart. You could for instance, join the army, become a fighter pilot, then retire at 60 and do it in your spare time. Or you never make it as a doctor and open a food truck to pay off $300,000 in loans. Eh.

More appropriately, we could think of some logical ways to go about them. One way of course is the well-advertised (BUT NOT ONLY) way of going to College for some schooling program in nutrition or culinary. Excellent.

The roadblock to this, as you say, is a constraint you chose for yourself. That's fine, as no one but you can define your happiness, but it's a constraint nonetheless, being that you don't want to repeat the LC. So there are some avenues that close due to this life choice. That's fine.

One thing you could do is revisit higher education when you reach your mid twenties and become a non-traditional student. This could have several pros and cons. But just for starters, you could spend the time entering the culinary trade: work in a professional kitchen. You may start washing dishes or if you can demonstrate a knack for it, a line cook, and work your way up from there. And this presents opportunities. Work experience to any employer is worth often more than a degree. As in yes, on paper you may know how a bridge carries load, but do you have any experience building them in practice? How embarrassing for someone to walk on the job day one, and get schooled by the technicians under his pay scale right? Though a machinist will know a hell of a lot more than an engineer about his craft, and one of those two people never went to college. And you can take the PLC course, but even that is not an all or nothing requirement!

So no, there's no "end of your life" here, not by a long long long shot. Just one avenue has closed. Irish education makes it a compelling choice, but it's not the only choice, and as I said wanting to focus in nutrition you do yourself many, many, many many manymany favors by entering the trade directly.

As for failure in general: you learn a lot from failure. It's never the end, it's a lesson! If we never learned anything from failure we would never build anything more than 2 stories high because "well the first couple times we did that it sucked" Good question OP. You're doing grand.

WHATEVER method you go with never quit your craft. Practice nutrition as much as you can, learn as much as you can in your own time.

rawn

^^ this guy!