Aaaaaaah the relief of it all!
I know that I've said this before but you know what, I'll say it again :
the amazing unreal feeling when you walk away from your oral. I had mine in the afternoon today. And I'll be honest, I spent the majority of the day going over some notes. I was defiantly nervous before hand. So much so that when the examiner said it's finished thank you for talking with me and extended her hand for a hand shake, I had to apologies and wipe my hand dry on my skirt before shaking her hand. Talk about embarrassing!
The exam itself went well, well as far as I know anyway.
I walked in and the examiner greated me, told me to sit down, asked my name and checked if it was my correct exam number on the role. (At that stage the adrenaline was running so high that I couldn't even read what was on the page. Lol, I just auto-responded
"Oui, C'est moi!"
Examiner then proceeded to record and turn on the timer.
"Oh God" I Thought, there is no running away now!
The examiner then asked if i had a document prepared to which I responded yes and she said we would talk about it later.
What I Got Asked:
- Age & Birthday.
To which I included the year i was born in and where. This got the conversation rolling into where I'm from.
- Talk a little about Brazil.
- Where was I born & What type of city is it?
- Do I prefer life in Ireland & Why?
- Difference between education here & Brazil.
- What language do we speak there & the literature of Brazil.
- Tell me a little bit about your family.
- Do I do some household tasks.
- Talk to me about your school.
So I cracked on the jokes about the lack of boys in my school. Brownie points for making the examiner laugh!
- Document:
- I did mine on my blog so she asked how did I start it.
Got another joke rolling because I told it all started because I was procrastinating.
- Do I have a lot of visitors, told he since Easters I've counted over 1000. & rambled on about how I think its interesting because I received views from other countries and listed all the countries out.
- What do I write about.
- What do visitors ask me.
- Do I know if other students write blogs about the LC
- Do I blog about romantic things & my love life.
- Why don't I blog about romantic things.
- What will I do with my blog after the LC.
- What else do I do on the internet.
- What will I do next summer?
- How many point I will need for my course.
- then we were laughing again because I said I took the HPAT for the laugh an you never know. She asked If I found it hard and what do students think about it.
- What did I do for Easter.
And that's was it. The Timer bell had gone off around the romantic stuff question but we continued on.
She told me that she only had one more question before she asked it and that how I knew it was over. lol
The reality of orals is that you need to over prepare yourself and you will never get to say 100% everything that you prepared for. You've got 12-15 minutes to talk. You never know if the examiner is going to turn around and ask you about what clothes you wear. Yep, she asked a few of my friends what clothes they wear at the weekend at home and when they go out to pubs. Or what material do they use to draw and colour pictures! So if you still have to do you're oral, BE VERY CAREFUL OF WHAT YOU SAY, the examiner could pick up on some odd things you say!
Glad I've it over and done with. Would really really love to burn my oral notes but hey, better not, never know if I may need them again next year!
The idea that I did well in my orals is really encouraging. I feel like this whole leaving cert business is not so daunting after all! Hope this feel will last because I've got another maths & economics mock coming up next week! It's seeming more and more survivable! ")
Bonne chance, to anyone out there still waiting to do their orals!
