Preparing To Fail The Leaving Lol

yeah so i like things and bagels

[221bluescarf]

Get Stuff Done! ADHD Edition

You know all those post-it notes that populate your world? I figured out a great way to get all of those things DONE. - I know someone else may have thought of it already, but oh well :)

Step 1: Write all the things you need to do on your sticky note

Step 2: On the back, write a number (these are points)

Step 3: Every time you do a task, take down the note and collect your points

Step 4: Once you collect enough points (10, 20, 50) cash them in for a treat! Make it fun! ADHD brains love fun!

If I want my afternoon cappuccino, I must collect 15 points.

Remember, keep it simple. Don’t just write “clean the house”. Try smaller pieces like “empty the dishwasher” and “take out trash”.

**This can be for anyone, not just ADHD folks. That’s simply who I had in mind writing this post. Enjoy!

[rachelcartonn]

Finished my lc mocks but basically everyone found out the Irish p1 titles before the exam and then the teacher pulled a fast one on us and changed them (literally glued a page over it) & everyone chose an essay title we’d looked at before but instead I chose one on a topic we’ve literally NEVER even discussed?? I’m actually such a retard

[klaascows]

Hide and seek 2016 - 2018

Some people asked me if I still play hide and seek with the cows. I rather wouldn’t, because the concept of hiding stays a bit beyond their grasp, but when I see those pleading eyes, full of anticipation, I give in every time.

[highlandcattleofsaarela]

Cute Calf in the Forest <3

Full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQVMVNKjrFc

[leavingcertsucks]

higher level maths more like are you trying to make me cry in front of my entire class i can’t even answer the first question

[leavingcerthangovers]

Irish Sraith Pictiuiri 1-10

1-5

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2ZO_cUI9A9YWWlaVDVuSEU2UFU/edit?usp=sharing

6-10

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2ZO_cUI9A9YYlRoMnZvdEJwVjg/edit?usp=sharing

**For some reason the majority of the writing looks bold on the internet, but if you download the file to your computer you can see the PDF normally.

[leavingcerthangovers]

Structure of Flowering Plants

[leavingcerthangovers]

Elizabeth Bishop - First Death in Nova Scotia

Like Sestina, this poem is written from a child’s point of view. The poem explores the child’s feelings of confusion as it is her first experience of death. Death for the child is chilling, frightening and mysterious.

 The structure of the poem follows the confused child as she tries to make sense of the reality of death. The child’s mind work by association. She repeats ideas and makes unusual connections between things. 

 There is a fairytale element to the end of the poem as the child imagines royal couples welcoming Arthur into their Kingdom. In the child’s mind, young Arthur will be surrounded by people and perhaps this consoles her now that she has thought about his death.

‘They invited Arthur to be the smallest page at court’

 However the last four lines of the stanza portray the child’s fears that Arthur won’t be able to leave his coffin and enter this world. The child tries to empathise with Arthur’s feelings. We are left with a tragic image of a young boy, vulnerable and afraid, surrounded by the dead.

‘But how could Arthur go, clutching his tiny lily, with his eyes shut up so tight and the roads deep in snow?’

Style 

 There are a number of images which evoke the coldness and stillness of death, e.g. ‘cold’, ‘white’, ‘frozen’, ‘marble’, ‘lily’, ‘frosted cake’, ‘frozen lake’, ‘Jack Frost’.

 The coldness of the house may suggest that Bishop as a child lived in a world devoid of emotion. If this poem reflects Bishop’s own childhood, then it would be a very bleak view. The house seems cold and the only warmth she feels is within the world of her imagination.

 There is a contrast between the cold imagery that is evident throughout the poem and the warmth conveyed in the final stanza. The visual imagery and use of colour makes the poem attractive to the reader.

‘A little frosted cake, and the red-eyed loon eyed it from his white, frozen lake’

‘The gracious royal couples

were warm in red and ermine’

[leavingcerthangovers]

Elizabeth Bishop - The Filling Station

This poem reveals Bishop’s optimistic view of life despite her own difficulties. She realises that beauty can be found in even the most banal and mundane things. The poem has a universal appeal as it shows that human beings, no matter what their circumstances, need to have beauty and order in their lives.

 Bishop uses exact and precise language to portray the filth of the filling station. When she looks at the filling station, it is as if everything is shiny and black. The oil has created a glistening sheen over everything. She even adds that this excess oil is ‘disturbing’ or dangerous.

 After observing the details of the filling station, she wonders about the family who lives in such dirt, and begins to notice small attempts to create a sense of home amidst the filth.

‘a set of crushed and grease- impregnated wickerwork; on the wicker sofa a dirty dog, quite comfy’

 She notices comics which have been preserved from the grease, and a doily, which shows that some-one is trying to create beauty  and domesticity in spite of the dirt that surrounds them.

‘a big dim doily draping a taboret’

 Bishop asks a number of questions as she probes beneath the surface of what she sees. She wonders why somebody makes an attempt to make the place beautiful when it’s all going to get dirty anyway. Bishop realises that ‘somebody’ is trying to make more ordered life for themselves. In the midst of dirt and untidiness, ‘somebody’ tries to create order and beauty.

‘Why the extraneous plant? Why the taboret? Why, oh why, the doily?’

 She ends the poem with a proverb – that in spite of our failings ‘somebody loves us all’. For the reader and for Bishop this is a comforting thought. Even the dirty, greasy filling station can reveal this truth or insight to us.

 The poem makes us question our life and our place in the world. The poem is an allegory. It can be interpreted on a symbolic level. For example, the filling station represents the world and life in general; the grease and oil represents the disorder and chaos in our lives; the doily and plant represent our attempt to create beauty and order. It is part of human nature to find beauty. The ‘somebody’ represents a God or presence that is always looking out for us.

Style 

 Bishop gives us a lot of detail about the filling station and in particular she relies on visual images so that the reader can see for themselves the scene she is describing.

‘this little filling station, oil-soaked, oil-permeated’

 The repetition of the word ‘somebody’ suggests that there is always a presence, a person who cares even of they are never named. It would seem to suggest that a mother’s presence can always be felt even if she is not actually there.

 The arrangement of the cans so that they read ‘So So So’ has been done on purpose to calm and sooth those who live there and those who pass by. The word ‘softly’ also suggests we need a calm presence in our lives.

[leavingcerthangovers]

Elizabeth Bishop - The Prodigal

The poem explores the wretched, miserable existence of a man who’s life is controlled by alcohol. The poem deals with the exile of the alcoholic. It explores the isolation, deception and lack of control experienced by a person battling with their addiction. Bishop gives us an insight into a person’s state of mind. She explores the spiritual and physical loneliness felt by an alcoholic. The poem tells the story of one individual but also appeals to people on a universal level.  There is enormous human understanding in the poem. Bishop feels sorry for the prodigal and her imagery makes us feel sympathy towards him too.  

 The prodigal lives in dire conditions where the ‘enormous odour’ is so overwhelming and overpowering that it has impaired his judgement. He has lost all sense of there being another world other than the one he is living in. The prodigal has lost touch of the world in which he is living, and the only world he knows now is the one in which he is living with pigs. Some mornings after he has been drinking, the rising sun transforms the ugly pigsty into something beautiful. Bishop admires the strength of the human spirit where he can find beauty in the midst of great filth. She celebrates the fact that in the midst of despair human beings can find a glimmer of hope.

‘the sunrise glazed the barnyard mud with red the burning puddles seemed to reassure’

 The world of nature, and in particular the rising sun, has become a source of consolation for him. It made his life more bearable and helped him to cope with his suffering and loneliness. His exile is both literal and metaphorical. He is physically isolated from his family, and he experiences a spiritual isolation.

‘And then he thought he almost might endure his exile yet another year or more’

 The lantern gives the prodigal a sense of hope. He compares the light from the lantern to an ‘aureole’ or a halo. The religious image could suggest that the prodigal begins to think of his spiritual life.

‘The lantern - like the sun, going away - laid on the mud a pacing aureole’

 The prodigal is constantly searching for meaning in his life, but the image of the bat suggests that this search is futile and ‘uncertain’. The physical darkness and blindness experienced by bats reflects the spiritual darkness of the prodigal.

‘he felt the bats’ uncertain staggering flight’

 There is an image of hope at the end of the poem as the prodigal decides ‘to go home’. As is evident in the fist stanza, the light makes the prodigal realise and accept that he must change his life. Once again Bishop admires the human spirit as he makes the brave decision to return home and ask for forgiveness.

‘But it took him a long time finally to make up his mind to go home’

[leavingcerthangovers]

Elizabeth Bishop - The Fish

This poem is a seemingly simple poem about a speaker who catches a fish, scrutinizes it, and lets it go. It shows Bishop’s process of thinking and how that changes when she looks at the fish. The fish is transformed from something ordinary into something that represents bravery, strength and heroism.

 At the beginning of the poem, Bishop feels quite detached from the fish, but as the poem moves on she becomes conscious of the fact that she is in control of what happens to the fish. It unnerves her when she sees the fish dying in front of her eyes.

‘While his gills were breathing in  the terrible oxygen’

 Bishop realises that the fish has qualities she longs to possess herself. The fish is no longer just a physical object but is now a creature possessing qualities which she finds admirable. She admires it’s strength of character and it’s determination to survive.

‘I admired his sullen face’

The symbolism of the rainbow shows Bishop’s awareness of beauty in a world of danger. The rainbow is symbolic of her illumination, of something being revealed to her. Bishop has a moment of epiphany where she achieves an insight into the world around her.

‘Everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!  And I let the fish go.’

Style 

From the poem it is obvious Bishop has a keen eye for detail. She uses colloquial language to describe the fish but does so with great detail.

‘his brown skin hung in strips  like ancient wallpaper’

‘irises backed and packed  with tarnished tinfoil’

Bishop is portrayed as an observer and she uses great detail to describe what she sees.

She vividly describes the fish so that the reader can picture clearly what she is describing.

‘a tremendous fish’

‘he was speckled with barnacles’

A personal dimension is added to the poem with the use of the word I . It also adds credibility and realism to the poem.

‘I caught a tremendous fish’

‘I looked into his eyes’ 

The run-on lines convey the poet’s excitement and her delight in catching the fish. The run-on lines could also convey the movement of the fish from the water into the boat.

She uses war imagery to portray the fishes heroism.

‘Grim, wet, and weaponlike’

‘Like medals with their ribbons’

[leavingcerthangovers]

Sylvia Plath - Child

Plath’s son was born in January 1962. A year later, shortly before her death, she wrote Child, a short poem which reflects her intense feelings about motherhood. The poem shows Plath’s sensitivity to the needs of her child and also includes her wishes for the child’s future. The poem begins by celebrating the wonders of her child but end with a startling image of Plath overcome by tears and agitation. It tells of her wish to create a beautiful, better place than in this flawed world, and her inability to create this world for her children.

Although there are dark undertones in all of Plath’s poems, we see a contrast in the poem Child, where Plath hopes to fill her child’s life with ‘colour and ducks’. The first sentence is an unambiguous statement about her child’s perfection: his vision is ‘clear’ and ‘untainted’, unlike her own. She also describes her child as a ‘little stalk without wrinkle’, symbolising his innocence and how his life has not yet experienced stress or worry.

While the poem begins on an enthusiastic, upbeat note, the tone is increasingly anxious and troubled. Where the first three stanzas concentrate on the child, the fourth stanza again reflects Plath’s personal insecurities. The image of a ‘troublous wringing of hands’ is much more intense than those of flowers and animals mentioned previously, and suggest helplessness in the face of the misery the future may bring.

Even a poem about another person, her own child, becomes deeply personal and confessional. The poem is one of the least disturbing of Plath’s poems, as it shows that she sees the beauty in the world around her and perfection in something as simple as a child’s eyes. However, I found it incredibly sad that amidst such wonder and beauty, Plath was overcome by her own insecurities, her ‘ceiling without a star’.

While I can understand her pain and anguish in dealing with issues such as aging and marital infidelity, it is upsetting that she remained so hopeless even when she was surrounded by warmth and prosperity. The realism that she will not be able to create a world of ‘grand’ and ‘classical’ images for her child overshadows her hopes completely. The early celebration has been replaced with anguish and an overwhelming sense of failure.

[leavingcerthangovers]

Sylvia Plath - Poppies in July

The poem Poppies in July was written in 1962, around the same time as Elm. Both poems deal with Plath’s struggle with her self, a force she can’t describe because she can’t fully understand it. Consequently, she uses images from the world around her to portray her attitude and her feelings toward her inner self. While the title suggests a poem about the beauty and richness of nature, this is in fact one of Plath’s bleakest poems.

The poem is littered with intense, surreal imagery to convey Plath’s anguish and turmoil. The ‘little poppies, little hell flames’ harass the troubled speaker and cruelly offer no release from the suffering that she must endure. Plath offers us graphic, unflinching accounts of the extreme emotions we are all capable of experiencing. Her pain has become so overwhelming that is has almost made her numb, so much so that she longs to feel something, anything at all. She describes how she puts her ‘hands among the flames’ but ‘nothing burns’.

This numbness seems to be due not only to her the mental anguish which followed her throughout her life but is particularly due to the realisation of her husband’s affair. She feels as if she has been mentally, if not physically, abused, and her mouth has been ‘bloodied’. She is desperate to escape from her numbed and neutral existence, and longs for her mouth ‘to hurt like that’. And if she cannot suffer such pain and injury she wishes to lapse into a com-like existence where she will feel and experience nothing at all. She longs to forget the pain her husband has caused her, for oblivion and nothingness. She begs the poppies for ‘opiates, your nauseous capsules’, which will allow her to enter an oblivion where she is not aware of herself, her feelings, her surroundings or her husband’s infidelity.

Throughout the poem Plath uses long, broad vowel sounds to convey her depression, her lethargy and her desire to find a numbed state. She juxtaposes the broad vowel sounds with more lively slender tones to describe the flowers. The short, choppy lines convey her agitated state. The vividness and vitality of the flowers contrasts with the dull oblivion she longs for.

Poppies in July is a deeply personal and confessional poem, and it could be argued that its numerous drug references and dark imagery – ‘if I could bleed, or sleep!’ – are quite disturbing. Though these images and concepts are quite unnerving, the poem aptly describes the pain of heartbreak. Plath did not seek to create comfortable illusions with her poetry, but to unfold the truth of mental and emotional suffering, and she has done so perfectly in this poem.

[leavingcerthangovers]

Sylvia Plath - Mirror

Mirror was written in 1961 as Plath approached her twenty-ninth birthday. Mirror is one of Plath’s darkest, most haunting poems, which reflects the prevalence of her own self doubt and feelings of inadequacy. It is Plath’s only poem which employs a person, a technique which introduces an element of confusion and obscurity.

Plath’s poetry offers a vivid and stark portrayal of emotional struggle, of fears and uncertainties that we all experience at some point in our lives. This fear is predominantly evident in Mirror. Here Plath offers a valuable insight into the complicated feelings of inadequacy and growing old. Although the poem is written from the perspective of a mirror, it is clear that the mirror symbolises Plath’s relationship with herself and her attempt to confront her own imperfections and failings.

The mirror is ‘silver and exact’, it has ‘no preconceptions’. It is ‘not cruel, only truthful’. Perhaps Plath needed to use a strong physical object, ‘unmisted by love or dislike’ to confront these emotions on insecurity because her own inner psyche was much less stable. The mirror seems to also represent her inner voice, mocking her failings and inadequacies.

                   ‘She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands’       

Unlike the mendacity of ‘candles or the moon’, the mirror ‘faithfully’ reflects Plath’s true nature, something which awakens great anguish in the poet. Plath’s insecurities go beyond the mere surface to the far ‘reaches’ of her soul, where she struggles with the realities of ageing and her identity as a poet.

The notion of inadequacy brings to mind the depiction of the mirror as something threatening and menacing; as something that swallows what it sees, as an exacting God, or as a lake with treacherous depths. These images, particularly the image of old age, which ‘rises’ towards Plath ‘day after day, like a terrible fish’, are intense and deeply personal, as they convey Plath’s struggle to accept her failings and to come to terms with aging.

The poem addresses the dangers of self examination, particularly the modern pre-occupation with image. What is most disturbing about this poem is the complete lack of hope or respite; the poet ‘comes and goes’, always returning to be disappointed and unfulfilled upon encountering her own true image. In some ways the mirror has become a voice of a society which values women only for their looks and youth, rather than for what they are capable of achieving.

Plath felt constantly under pressure to conform to the ideal of the 1950’s American young woman: to marry, have children and to be a successful mother and housewife. Yet she harboured the burning ambition to write. She worried that these two goals were incompatible: ‘Will I be a secretary – a self-rationalising housewife, secretly jealous of my husband’s ability to grow intellectually and professionally while I am impeded – while I submerge my embarrassing desires and aspirations, refuse to face myself, and go either mad or become neurotic?’

[leavingcerthangovers]

Cell Structure

[leavingcerthangovers]

Ecology

[leavingcerthangovers]

Study of an Ecosystem