3rd year Advice?

JPM1206

About to go into 3rd year and am looking for some tips. I study well got all A's in my summer exams in 2nd year except for 2 B's in maths and french. French was a JC paper and I wasn't happy with maths I thought I aced it.

Anyways if anyone wants to give advice or any tips for higher level maths or other subjects please comment below.

I do:
Irish (H)
Maths (H)
English
French
Science
Business Studies
Geography
History
Religion
Art
CSPE

Tropical.ing

Hello! I’m Ingrid and I’m just finished TY and am heading into fifth year next year. I did the Junior Cert in 2017 and got 8 A’s (including a distinction in English) and 3 Bs. Here’s some tips I hope you find useful....

I honestly wouldn’t be concerned about not getting an A in French or Maths in your second year exams. I always got Bs in French (including the mocks) but I managed to get an A in the Junior Cert last year. You said it was a Junior Cert paper so getting a B in second year is great and with more practise of past papers in third year you should get an A .

With Maths I didn’t use my textbook at all for third year. I just used the past paper book and the two “Less Stress More Success Books” and got an A in the exam. The Less Stress books are great (for Maths anyway, I wouldn’t really bother with the French or Irish ones), they give you practise questions and exam questions with full solutions. I’d really only use your textbook for sections you’re really struggling with and may need more practise with.

For Art my biggest tip would be to stay on top of your workload. Try and not leave everything to the last minute because when the project is due in May you’ll have 9/10 other subjects to be studying for and the last thing you’ll want to do is be rushing all your prep sheets. I only got a B in art but hey ho, I’m not doing it for the leaving so I don’t really mind anymore

For other subjects like history, geography, science and business (I’m not really sure I didn’t do business) I’d recommend the app ‘Quizlet’. It lets you make flash cards on your phone/tablet and it’s really handy as you can acces them anywhere and don’t have to worry about losing pieces of paper. It’s good for definitions for the subjects I listed above and for vocab for French and Irish. Some people prefer hand writing notes but I feel this worked for me.

Just a general tip for third year, please don’t feel you need to give up any sports or hobbies you may have just to make time for studying. I played hockey in third year and was sometimes playing up to five times a week up until April and then in April and May I played tennis. Sports (or other hobbies you may have like playing a musical instrument, drama, drawing etc) are a great way to take your mind off the Junior Cert for a while and can actually help you perform better in exams so keep at your hobbies or take up something new

This is getting really long now (and it’s getting late!) but I hope this helped! Feel free to ask me any questions about other subjects I didn’t mention like English, Religion etc. I hope you have a great year, I really actually enjoyed third year so I’m sure you will too. The fact that you took the time to post this question shows you really care about your studies and that’ll show come results day next September. My brother is actually going into third year in September so I wish all of you the best

spurious

Don't miss any days.
Do every piece of homework as if it was am exam question.
Listen in class.
Don't leave a classroom not understanding something.
Ask questions.
Read questions in exams properly.

sorptomber

I've just finished third year, about to go into TY. My best advice would be to DO YOUR EXAM PAPERS!!!!
Dont have any homework in a subject? do a section in a paper. You're really bad at a question? Do them all in your papers. If you find those papers easy then you'll be grand. You might get an exam or two that throws you off (for me it was music, which I'm actually fairly good at. Most of the questions on it though were the ones that any teacher would say ''dont worry about that, it never comes up'')
Some other bits of advice:
- chillax whenever you can. at the end of the day its only the junoir and it wont impact your future. I went through a horrible depressive episode and hated everything for a good few months because of the stress of it all. Take good care of your mental health and always talk to someone if you're struggling. I know it's cheesy, but it's true.
-Don't listen to the stressful things your school will probably say. Think of the JC as summer exams. Like I said, it won't impact your future, as long as you do the leaving, that is. Don't feel like you have to do after school study if its offered too. I did one term of it and hated it but I still feel really confident about my results, I didn't struggle to much in all the exams.
-keep on top of your CBAs. Seriously. Keep a folder for them if you have to, I know too many people who lost their practice one week before the write ups and ended up with a booklet they were unhappy with. Same goes for your english portfolio, keep all your drafts together and put them in the moment you can. A week before mine was due i couldnt find my bag from second year that had my short story draft in it, so I couldn't write it up. A few weeks after I had turned it in, I found it in a closet. Sick to say the least.
-During the exams get rescue remedies or a bottle of CBD oil. they both help with stress (although CBD is slightly controversial, it comes from marijuana but it only had the health benefits, no highs. It helped a lot with my stress during the JC!)
-Try your best to know as much as you can going in to each exam, especially english. With the new junior cycle, theres no real format to the exams anymore (for example, in history you have your pictures, documents, short qs, reference, PIH and section 6. in the new JC you could have ANYTHING come up, things can just not show up) this is really bad in english. Know all your quotes and techniques because you could study poetry and neglect your novel, only to get a novel question and an unseen poetry question instead, much like this years paper. Know your stuff as best as you can.
-Listen to predictions but don't put all your trust in them. This year in history, the archaeologist and martin luther were predicted for the PIH. We were all chuffed and learned them all off, only to open the paper and find out that they WERE there, but they were in the same section, so we could only do one.
-Don't get obsessed with levels. I know a girl who did HL maths all year. Her teacher was pregnant and she had 3 weeks of free classes while waiting on a replacement teacher. She struggled to stay in HL, failed her mocks and couldnt understand most of the course because of those 3 weeks, but stayed in HL because she 'was already doing OL irish.' She dropped to OL the day of the exam. You're better off getting an A in ordinary than a D in higher, I dropped to OL maths early in second year and I don't regret it a bit.

This is already a huge a wall of text, but I just wanted to share some of the stuff that I wish I had known before going into third year. If you every get down because of it during the run up to june, just think about being able to finally throw away all your papers and textbooks. Theres literally nothing more satisfying than chucking them all into the bin and never seeing them again.