The Importance of Rugby

For his Work Portfolio in Transition Year, Luis Diaz Pines Cort wrote about the importance of rugby in his life (as a new pupil this year), an essay he read out at the TY English Evening last month:

Good morning everybody and welcome to “Luis On Air”. Today we’re going to talk about the importance of rugby in our own lives. Quite often people thinks that rugby is a hooligan’s sport and that rugby players are just big beasts without brains, but that’s completely wrong. Rugby is a very intellectual and complex sport that not everyone can play.

Rugby has taught me a lots of things, and not only things related to sport, but values and principles that are very useful for life. To be more precise, I have learned from rugby values like effort, humility and the desire to excel. 

To be honest I think that rugby has been more important in my education than various classes and teachers that I have had during the years. Once an Irish monk said: “Rugby is my main tool to teach the children a good way of life”. I strongly agree with this sentence because I think that if everyone has played rugby for a couple of years this world would be better.

Rugby plays a very important role in my daily life. My life is sometimes stressful, above all during exams time or when I have an especially important essay or whatever. Rugby helps me to relax and get out of my life for a couple of hours. When I’m down the pitch, whether playing a match or training I don’t need to think about my problems or responsibilities.  It’s just do my best and, after that, I feel really good and relaxed.

Actually the thing that makes me be more thankful is the friendships that I have made thanks to rugby. Almost all my friends play rugby and definitely all my best friends play rugby. This is not because I don’t like people who don't play it, it’s just because when you play rugby with someone that makes a kind of a brother relationship, you protect that person and you trust him completely, first on the pitch, and then off it. 

 

To keep playing rugby through the years is one of my goals for the future. In Spain the level is lower than here in Ireland so I think I will be able to join the Spanish Selection and play in a professional league to earn some money while I’m studying a career in the university, because I would also like to do so.

It’s pretty obvious listening to this speech that I think that rugby is a great sport that could help everyone and  make the world a better place to live. 

Thank you all for listening and I hope you enjoyed it! 

European Standards of Beauty

Transition Year are finishing their academic year today with the annual Actiontrack show. Some have already left, and they completed their academic work at the end of May. Coming up, some Work Portfolio pieces they did over the last two terms.

First, here is Seyilogo Braithwaite's 'European Standards of Beauty', which she read out at the TY English Evening:

As a child, I grew up thinking that my nose, lips and my tummy were too big, my hair too frizzy and ultimately, my skin too dark. I was exposed to television and media at a very young age and so were all the other children I knew.

All the television shows, cartoons, movies and even dollies depicted the same beauty standards: a slim woman or girl with long, straight hair, coloured eyes, a pointy nose and thin lips. As a young dark skinned girl, I obviously lacked all of those features and soon, I began to desire to resemble those beautiful women I saw on TV.

There was a point in my life when I aspired to be Caucasian. I was around the age of six. What I did first was convince my mother to let me relax the incredibly frizzy and curly mane of hair sitting atop my head. I remember thinking to myself that "no one on TV has curly hair so why should I?" I wasn't the only one who thought that. All my friends where perming their hair as well in our struggles to look more "beautiful". By the time I was eight, I knew just two people with unrelaxed hair. It was almost like a trend amongst us.

Can you imagine six year olds hating themselves and their skin purely because of what the television shows them? It's awful. Women of colour are so underrepresented by the media and it is so unfair. Whitewashing was so common that even the dollies that we were supposed to have fun with imposed European standards of beauty on us forcing us to feel inferior. All the Barbies I owned were white with blonde hair and blue eyes and I too wanted to look like them. I remember the first black doll I had. I thought it was incredibly ugly and wanted to throw it away. When my mother asked me why, I told her I thought it was ugly. The only reason I didn't want the doll was because of its colour. If the doll was white, I would have taken it with open arms because the only reason it disgusted me was because it was black. A doll the same colour as me disgusted me.

Thinking back, I am horrified by those actions and how much I wished to wake up white and beautiful. It wasn't my fault though. It's what the media depicts as beauty. It is unfair to subject black children to just those standards of beauty. The lack of black actresses, models and dolls in my childhood taught me to hate my skin. Not everyone is like me. I was able to get back up from that there is nothing wrong with me but some girls aren't so lucky. I have friends that bleach their dark, beautiful skin in an attempt to be lightskinned. People don't really understand the psychological damage these beauty standards can do to young, black children. They grow up hating the skin they're in because they aren't taught to love themselves. The media etches images into our heads of what we should aspire to look like instead of teaching us how to love ourselves.

It took me years to accept myself and I am finally at that point where I love myself. My skin is dark, my hair is curly, my lips are big, my eyes are a dark brown, and I love it. I am sick of subjecting myself to the European standards of beauty because I am not European. I am black and I am beautiful.

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The Consequences of Love

In her Transition Year Extended Essay this year, Ciara Dempsey gained a distinction for her writing on 'The Consequences of Love', comparing two novels - Arthur Golden's Memoirs of A Geisha and George Orwell's 1984 - and two plays: Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Ciara writes:
"I hoped that with these stories I would be able to view as many different kinds of love as possible, to give me a better amount to compare, which I guess should have made it easier. The reason I chose this topic is really quite simple, I thought it would be easy. Unfortunately for me I found that not to be the case. That’s not to say that the topic has to be hard, but I know I personally found it difficult to write anything for it. However, in the end I hope it has all come together to be enjoyable for you to read."

Read the full essay here.

Extended Essay: Hemingway, Remarque, Faulks

The second in a series of the best literary Extended Essays written by our Transition Year pupils: Liza Kozhevnikova wrote about war from the point of view of men fighting in it. She looked at Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western World and Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks.

She writes: "These three books are linked together by a theme, and they also are all set during the First World. I chose my three books so that they will be set in different places and written in different countries, because it gives me a point of view on the war of men from different countries."

Read Liza's full essay here.

Extended Essay: Salinger, Bryson, Ishiguro

Last term Transition Year pupils completed their major literary Extended Essays. Over the next while some of the best will be appearing here.

First, a fine piece by Harvey McCone. In his introduction, he writes

"I always had a big interest in books when I was younger. In fact I used to read almost a book every week. Many of these books, probably the vast majority, were about children. I was obsessed with books about young boys who were heroes such as The Alex Rider books by Anthony Horowitz and The Young Bond books by Charlie Higson. I wanted to be the characters in these books. I also found it easy to connect with them and to form feelings for them. And I suppose this interest has stayed with me ever since.

As soon as Mr. Girdham described what Never Let Me Go was about to the class, I was instantly hooked. An alternate world where child clones exist is something that I would always want to have read about. I had heard about the book before but I had never known it was about clones! So that was my first choice. Next I had to find a second book. While reading through the list of recommended books, I stumbled across a book that sounded strange. It was The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. When I found it and read the back I was so happy. For some weird reason I am fascinated by everything to do with 50’s America. The cars, the music, the cinemas and theatres, the fast food restaurants and many other aspects of life. So to find a book that was an autobiography of a man’s childhood in 50’s America was also a perfect match.

Then I had to try and find a theme that I could connect these two books with before I chose my third book. This theme was childhood and growing up or coming of age The third book I chose was The Catcher In The Rye. It takes place once again in America in the mid-20th century. It is about a boy who is attending a boarding school. It is interesting because Holden is not a very ‘normal’ boy. His way of thinking is a little different."

Read Harvey's full essay here.

The Beauty of the World

At the recent Transition Year English Evening, Sofia McConnell read out this piece, which was composed for her TY Work Portfolio:

The Beauty of The World

Sunrise. I watch it from my bed. A golden-red, enormous African sun comes creeping up over the blue-green hills, around it a ring of orange, yellow, pink, and then the blue, blue sky. The world is lit up within minutes. The twinkling stars have hidden for the day, allowing the sun to revel in her glory. The moon, realising it is time to go, slowly, reluctantly hides her face.

I rise and run downstairs; the cold, marble floors are a welcome shock to warm feet. The kitchen sizzles, bacon and sausages fry happily in the pan, spitting at anyone who dares to come too close. Only Gichuki can get way with it: the skilled and laughing man cooks happily to his heart’s content, adding aubergines and tomatoes to the already crowded pan.

Outside a table is laid for four, with cold lemon juice, tea and milk lie, waiting to be drunk in the centre of it. Sitting around already are a young man of about seventeen, eating a mango and reading his book, a small girl of three, sucking the juice out of an over-ripe tangerine with a hole in it, and an old, old woman, recently widowed, whose only consolations are her three grand-children.

I walk out to join them and am greeted by smiling faces and yapping dogs at my feet. Down below the veranda I see a small herd of elephants coming for a drink and maybe a splash in the water hole. I heave a happy, happy sigh and take my seat.

The day that follows is filled with sunshine. The market is buzzing with shouts, laughs and boasting old mamas comparing delicious, ripe bananas. Vibrant colours meet my eye wherever you look. The hot earth warms the soles of my feet through worn, leather flip-flops.

A visit to the village school is welcomed with the huge smiles, wide eyes, screams and shouts of overjoyed children. The afternoon spent on horseback is just as happy and even more exciting, galloping up a long succession of hills, over fallen logs, through shaded valleys and dams, checking fences and livestock with a laughing older brother. The impalas and other gazelles watch us ride from behind small acacia-tree clumps, leaping away in graceful arches when we get too close.

A delicious dinner of beans and stew in the dining room awaits us that evening. The sun has finished her journey through the sky and the stars and moon are back in all their glory. Bath and bed are welcomed after the day’s course. I smile as I drift to sleep, looking forward to whatever tomorrow may bring.

Birdsong, Catcher, Crucible: conflict in fiction and drama

In his Transition Year Extended Essay, Samuel Clarke wrote about the theme of conflict in three very different books. For this outstanding piece, Samuel was awarded a Commendation. He writes:-

In the first text that I read, Birdsong by English novelist Sebastian Faulks, the theme of conflict was by far the most protruding within the novel. The story, set in the early 20th century, with its main character Stephen Wraysford living through four years of the horrific First World War, saw scenes of what many consider to be the worst conflict ever seen. Yet the war is not the only conflict that one comes across. There are many smaller conflicts woven into the overall story. Examples of these are the conflict between Isabelle and Stephen with Isabelle’s husband Azaire, and the riots that take place in the town of Amiens between Lucien Lebrun and Azaire’s workers.   
 
However in the second book which I chose, J.D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the author portrayed conflict in a completely different light. Unlike Faulks who looks at the theme with a backdrop of a horrific war in his novel, Salinger looks at the mind of his principal character Holden Caulfield. Holden seems to be constantly faced with an internal conflict, an on-going depressive struggle with himself. The story tells of the sixteen year old boy, after having been expelled from school and having had a fight with his Pencey School roommate known as Stradlater,leaving the college three days early without his parents knowing. The depressed teenager takes a train into New York where he spends the night in a hotel, and the following days in the city.  

However, for this essay I have decided to choose a core text which I aim to describe in great detail while still relating, referring and comparing the text to the other novels I read. The core text I have chosen on which to write about is the highly acclaimed modern classic, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a play dealing with conflict in the highly religious town of Salem, in 17th century America.

This play based, on a true incident which Arthur Miller described in an introduction to the text, as “one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history,” saw, in my opinion, both of the types of conflict visible in each of my other texts. - Like the war in Birdsong, in The Crucible there is an open conflict – the Salem ‘witch hunt,’ where in the town, a court is set up to try people suspected and accused of having conversed with, and been possessed by the devil.

Read the full essay here.

Love: Kane, Rivers, Leroux, McMullan

In her fine Transition Year Extended Essay, Iyobosa Bello-Asemota examined four books dealing with love - The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane, A Voice in The Wind by Francine Rivers, The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (original), and The Phantom of the Opera by Kate McMullan (revised edition). 

In her conclusion, she states: 


"Having spent so much time writing an essay with its focus on love, I finally feel as though I now have a better grasp on what it truly means to love something or someone. I now understand what motivates people to do things onlookers would regard as irrational, things that they normally would not have the strength or courage to do. I also understand why some would look upon the notion of love or being in love with disdain or would regard rash acts born of this love, to be foolish. While I do not hope to justify the evil acts people do in the name of love, regardless of whatever form it manifests in, I must admit that love’s influence is as wide and as deep as any ocean."

Read Isoybosa's full essay here.

'The Submarine', March 2013

You know it's approaching the end of term when the latest edition of the Library magazine The Submarine appears. The March 2013 edition is the usual mixture of interesting commentary (in the editorial), pupil reviews and staff writing.  For instance, this time Dr Bannister writes about The Pilgrim's Progress, Alina Stiehler about Bad Karma, Ally Boyd Crotty about Markus Zusak's The Book Thief and Mr Brett on Irish Classrooms and British Empire. There's creative writing by Sofia McConnell and Iyobosa Bello-Asemota and lots of fine illustrations, as well as more junior pupils commenting on their current reading.

Read the magazine online above via Issuu, by clicking once for a closer view, once more for still closer, and by using the arrows to navigate.

My First Time Away from Home

In his recent exam for Mr Jameson, I former Nevin McCone wrote this as his composition:

It was my first time away from home and family. I was five years old at the time and I was staying at my granny’s house.

The daytime was always great with Granny. We would run around the garden and play with the dog. In the summer we would listen to the lone cow’s moo in the field. When we heard it we would fall to the ground laughing in the bright, dazzling sun. 

I had never slept at Granny’s house before but I did always stay for tea. There was always a smell coming from Granny’s marvellous kitchen. Whether it was delicious cupcakes or scrumptious roast beef, Granny knew best! All the family would be at the table enjoying a piping hot cup of tea. But this time it was different….

Mum and Dad had just left at eight o’clock. Things were still going well. Soon the moment I had been dreading came around. Bedtime. I don’t think I got a single wink of sleep that night. First of all the bed sheets smelt of the horrible stench of old people. Already being freaked out I heard the most terrible sound I think I have ever heard in my whole entire life! Granny was taking out her false teeth. 

She groaned as she attempted to get them out, like a wolf howling at the full moon. Then came the plop as the teeth went into the glass of water.  Now I was freaked out and traumatised. Just as I thought it couldn’t get any worse, good old Gran started snoring. The windows, walls and doors must have been made of titanium because how she didn’t wake up the county is truly beyond me. Like a roar of a steaming locomotive she went on into the night. Finally after counting 5,672 snores Granny eventually awoke.

It was a miserable day and was raining, not cats and dogs, but mammoths and elephants. When I hauled myself out of bed and carried my legs downstairs, Gran was back to her old self, making me a bowl of Coco Pops and roasting hot milk. Surprisingly Mum and Dad came just before lunch, which was an extremely great relief to me. Driving away with Gran’s frail hands waving at us in the near distance I looked out the window and was asleep before you could say “dentures”.

Book Report: Downham and Rosoff

In her Junior Certificate book report for last term's exam, Darcy Maule compared two novels with not-dissimilar titles, Before I Die by Jenny Downham and How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff.  

Darcy writes:

The book I preferred is most definitely Before I Die because I related to the book more than How I Live Now. I chose these books because they seemed to have good storylines that appealed to me. How I Live Now is about a girl called Elizabeth who calls herself Daisy who moves to England from New York City to live with her dead mother’s sister and cousins. A war breaks out in England while the aunt is stuck in Oslo and the children are separated by gender. Daisy then escapes with her younger cousin Piper to find the other family members including her cousin Edmund who she has fallen in love with.

Before I Die is about a girl who is 16 called Tessa who suffers with leukaemia. The doctors said to Tessa “I’d encourage you to do the things you want to do.” Tessa takes that quite literally and makes up a bucket list of things she wants to do before she dies with help from her best friend Zoey. Tessa’s parents are divorced so she lives with her loving Dad and her honest little brother Cal. Tessa’s dad is stuck in denial about her illness and just wants to spend time with her while her mother is very supportive about her list. Tessa’s main point on her list is to fall in love which happens when she encounters her neighbour Adam.


Read the complete book report here.

'The Return'

In her recent English Transition Year exam, Ally Boyd Crotty wrote a story under the title 'The Return'.

It starts:

You sit across the aisle from me. One leg crossed, over the other. Your hands are clasped between your thighs. You seem cold. You shiver and look out the window, as if at nothing.

I only noticed you as we were queuing to board. Your khaki uniform stood out and the colour almost shone into my eyes. I couldn’t help but notice the two tickets in your bag - inward and outward journey. Two six-hour flights both on the same day? Only four hours apart? You must be going to see someone.


Read what happened next here.

Under the Hair

As part of her Transition Year Work Portfolio, Helene Peters wrote this piece, which at the Transition Year English evening guest speaker Tom Doorley praised as being worthy of Radio 4 (Helene herself read it powerfully). Click 'Read More' for the full piece if necessary.

I hate them all. The way they move, so self-satisfied. The way they scream and laugh about everything. The way they throw their hair back.

I was always described as 'unusual'. My Primary teacher said so, and after a couple of years, so did my Mum. She was influenced by those cheap hair-throwers.

But what they really mean is that I'm crazy.

 

It's because I like to wear shorts and sandals to church every Sunday, and because I sing the loudest. It's because I eat dinner at breakfast and give names to my furniture. Ted is my table, Stella my lamp.

I don't do everything in order.

The Submarine, June 2012

Open publication - Free publishing - More fiction
The latest edition of our Library magazine, The Submarine, is hot off the presses, and here it is in e-form via Issuu (click once for a closer view, once more for full screen, and use the arrows to scroll).


Librarian and Editor Tom McConville's introductions are always thoughtful and interesting. This time he challenges the notion that "the library must necessarily cease to be a place of silence, thought and reflection and instead become a kind of feisty information stock exchange" and passionately defends the value of silence: "It encourages a calmness and thoughtfulness that is vital to the absorption of knowledge. It is a calming energy which does not exist in a computer room or Chapel or in any other part of a school - they have their own, equally valid, energies - and it is also good for the soul." Much of this echoes the Sub-Warden's ideas in his recent Chapel talk on the value of reading, the text of which opens the edition (see below for the full talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which prompted that piece).


Elsewhere in the magazine are Sadhbh Sheeran's 'Solstice' from her senior poetry prize-winning portfolio, junior poems by Mark Russell, Thomas Lyster and Hollie Canning, a lively report by Oyinda Onabanjo on the Inter-Schools' Library team quiz, the ever-entertaining 'What's Reading Me' feature, a review by former English teacher Morgan Dockrell of the book Southern Ireland and the Liberation of France by Gerald Morgan and Gavin Hughes (particularly pertinent given this very recent news), Jack Dunne's review of Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design and Mr Morris's of Jo Nesbo's thriller The Leopard, junior pupils' quick reviews of Quick Reads, a report on World Book Day 2012, and news of one of this year's innovations, the Library Committee.


Finally, on the back page in the 'Shoot the Messenger' slot, V former Niamh Faulkner gives her scathing angle on sharing on social networks (an essay prompted in English class by this original article in the Guardian, 'Sharing Can Make You Happy'. Niamh doesn't agree).

'I am a Feminist'

Congratulations to Sadhbh Sheeran, winner of this year's Transition Year English award at the TY Prize Presentation last night. As winner of this year's Peter Dix Memorial Prize for Poetry as well, she read two poems at the occasion. Here is the text of her essay on feminism, which she read at the Transition Year English Evening, and was part of the Portfolio which helped win her the award.

TY Extended Essay: Seamus Deane, Jennifer Johnston, Khaled Hosseini

Jennifer Kim in her TY Extended Essay last term took on three fine books which have all been at one time or another on our comparative Leaving Certificate course, Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane, How Many Miles to Babylon by Jennifer Johnston and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

Her reflection on the experience: 

This essay has taught me many things. First, never to rush writing. It just gets worse and worse. Second, new words that I didn’t know before. Third, it gave me a feeling of accomplishment at the end. Honestly, it also gave me fast typing skills as well. Furthermore, it made me look deeper into the books. It helped me look inside the story and understand it fully. And I think that’s the reason why it made me easier to write about each books. Last, from these books about childhood, I learnt that childhood affects so much in our lives.

Although it may be a story, fictional and sometimes true, I completely agree with the authors who tried to express how childhood affects someone's life. Childhood may sound like a tiny bit of your life, and sometimes you don’t even remember it, but it affects so much in your life that you wouldn’t even notice it. People’s personalities, minds aren’t the same. In my opinion, it comes out from the surroundings you lived in, and the people you grew up with. The extended essay was a great opportunity for me and whenever I think about it in the future, I’ll be proud of myself.

Quite right: here is the complete essay.

'How I Live Now' & 'What I Was' by Meg Rosoff

For her book report last term, Junior Certificate pupil Ali Boyd Crotty wrote on two novels by Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now and What I Was.  She comments:-

Altogether, I really enjoyed both books. I had never read anything by Rosoff before I read these two books but I already can’t wait to read more by her. How I Live Now isn’t the most uplifting, happy story, but it drew me in and made me laugh and also almost cry. What I Was is a very slow starting book, but soon it made me never want it to end. I would recommend both of these books to anyone my age, and older, I really enjoyed reading them.

Read the full comparison here.

Extended Essay: 'The Penance Room', 'Room' & 'The L-Shaped Room'

Sadhbh Sheeran was awarded a Commendation, a special recognition, for her outstanding Transition Year Extended Essay this year.  Unusually, her chosen three books share a word in their titles...

She writes:

The characters in my chosen novels, The Penance Room by Carol Coffey, The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks and Room by Emma Donoghue, range in age from just eight years old right up to their early twenties. All of them however have one thing in common; they are all growing up and learning about life and its hardships. I chose this theme as growing up is something I can relate to. Although I, compared to the characters in these novels, have not had to deal with the difficulties they have experienced. I admire the main characters greatly as they are not only struggling with the normal pressures of growing up but all have to struggle for their mere existence and they all long to be ‘conventional’. Their determination and their rejection of defeat are awe inspiring.

Read the full essay by Sadhbh here.