Review: June 2016

Hi all! So, obviously there was one thing that absolutely dominated my June, and that was the Leaving Cert. The Leaving Cert is effectively the culmination of your entire second-level career so, y'know, pretty important. But there were also a few other things - I saw my bestie, took part in an international collaboration for high-ability students and went to Inspirefest!

EXAMS: I blogged about how I think the Leaving Cert went here, but overall I'm hopeful that I got the points I need (515). I really hope I got either that (Science at TCD) or my second choice (Science at UCD, 510), because I missed the change-of-mind deadline so now my 3rd choice is still Maynooth and I really don't want to commute that far. Anyway, it's just a waiting game now and I have to try not to regret moments of awful exam technique and avoid guessing what I got more than I already have. I think overall my performance reflected the work I put in, so hopefully the results agree! I'm going to write up a Leaving Cert tips post but I won't post it until after the results, just in case it all goes up in flames. The main point, though, is: keep the head. Don't get intimidated, just keep the head. 

Oh, also, in the first few days of June I totally burned out, and honestly I still haven't fully recovered and gotten my drive back. I really miss it - I never appreciated it until it was gone! But I'm soldiering on and hopefully the proper self-motivation will come back once I'm over the whole Leaving Cert thing.

CTYI/ECHA: I was absolutely delighted to be chosen a few months ago to represent CTYI in a European collaboration along with Gabi. In late June, I had a call (at 7 am! Timezones are awful) with people from the Czech Republic, California, Spain and others to talk about a virtual reality space that's happening and likely to be trialed on high-ability students from various talent centres around Europe. So that was pretty cool. 

BESTIE: I got to see my lovely bestie Ben for the first time in about three months, once we'd both finished our Leaving Certs. Such a great reunion. Pity he then immediately fecked off to Gran Canaria for two weeks!

INSPIREFEST: I've written three blog posts about Inspirefest 2016, so check those out here - Highlights
- the Speaker Experience
- Inspirefest's Winning Formula


Overall, as a month it wasn't particularly busy as in there weren't loads of little things I was running around doing all the time, which is because the Leaving Cert was so important it gave me an excuse to focus only on it. Finally, in terms of entertainment -

READING: Political analysis, stats and news on fivethirtyeight.com and politico.com
WATCHING: Stand-up comedy on Netflix - nothing like burnout to send you to Netflix for the first time. I especially enjoyed Bo Burnham's Make Happy, Michael McIntyre's Showtime and Ali Wong's Netflix special