From Leaving CertiFiCate to Leaving SChooL a Longitudinal Study ...

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From Leaving Certificate to Leaving School
People are putting pressure, like comparing you maybe to someone
else, you know.
… My auntie does it all the time, she compares me with my sister all
the time. (Dawson Street, coed school, mixed intake)
In contrast, other students reported that they did ‘not get much [pressure]
from home now, it’s more in the school’ (Fig Lane, coed school, middleclass
intake).
The pressure to study and complete homework appears to impact on
young people’s relationships with their friends as they have no time to
socialise and ‘get to know people’:
I just hate this year because it’s changing my personality and stuff. I
don’t have time to like get to know people. If something happened
over the weekend, like nobody is ever going to find out because I’m
too busy going to class, doing my homework, doing study like. And I
find as well loads of my friends and stuff like that, you don’t have a
laugh anymore, sure you don’t. (Harris Street, girls’ school, middleclass
intake)
Teachers at this middle-class school also recognised the increased level
of stress among sixth year students but felt that it varied with some students
becoming far more stressed than others:
I think there are some students who definitely exams stress them out
more than others, I mean there’s a sort of a level of stress that’s ok,
that we expect but there are one or two students who really find exams
particularly difficult. (Harris Street, staff, girls’ school, middleclass
intake)
Another staff member in this school similarly felt that a small number of
sixth year students would get very stressed in sixth year which would
often manifest in ‘tears’ or the students giving a ‘sharp rude answer that
wouldn’t really be in keeping with their personality, being unusually
rude’. This was considered more common among females:
I don’t want to sound sexist but I think girls in general tend to be
much more conscientious and they bring an awful lot of stress on
themselves, you know. (Harris Street, staff, girls’ school, middleclass
intake)