Leaving Cert Results Day

You’re gonna be ok. What I understand career advice and career guidance to be, is to carry the belief with you, till you can carry it forward yourself. Developing skills and capacity with you to step forward with confidence, and face trials with tools to help you manage your career. Today. 

It's that day. Leaving cert day. People may view it as a mile marker in their life. The end of one chapter in your career learning journey. The bridge from school to whatever you hope develops. A step towards college, apprenticeship, studying abroad, or pathways on to employment. Endings and new starts, often associated with young developing lives. Yet students of all ages work towards this one fateful day each August. Opening your results paper, checking what you get. Hope, fear, joy, regret, disbelief, questions, possibilities, all in one envelope. In recent times people receive their results from their exam portal online. Blinking eyes open to see and gaze upon the results of efforts made and hopes cast on screen. Stop, breathe, you’re gonna be ok.  

It is a challenging day for students of all ages. As a careers advisor, supporting the leaving cert helpline, I have shared in joy to despair, triumphant belief to a confused whats next? The leaving cert opens many different doors, and with each door a question. CAO applications to college, FET Community college (PLC), Apprenticeship applications, UCAS (UK & Northern Ireland), Unicas for study in Europe, and application progress to Employment. Ireland and the media seems to have an obsession with making it, one option more favourable than others. All those voices beckoning you towards them, educators, recruiters, employers, are cheerleading for you to invest your time and story with them. Many options, many doors to open into your next chapter of your story. You do have options, you will have questions, you may face challenges, tasks to do, steps to take. Write your story one page at a time. Your results day, your next few weeks, are just individual pages in your story. You are already the hero of your story for facing challenges you have faced up to now. Maybe you did your leaving cert, maybe you didn't, maybe you got what you wanted, maybe you didn't. You can start from the step you are at right now, and rewrite, edit, and move forward. I guess using a writing metaphor from my Storypower writing colleague, Trevor, August is his Birthday month, so comment ‘Happy Birthday Trev’ on our social media pages from the below, if you want. But to refocus, I think a careers advisor is like an editor working with you on your story. Offering encouragement as you edit and write your story, with each different twist and turn in your story, supporting you along the hard yards towards writing your career story. If you feel challenged, get support, if you face doubt keep writing, if you are unsure draw inspiration. 

There may be chances for you to consider and rewrite your story. Each day a page, each chapter a turning point, developing onwards with you as the hero. Every hero faces challenges, growing in skills and knowledge with each challenge faced.

You can move from doubt to belief, confusion to clarity, not knowing to skill building, from today till tomorrow. Start with what you can do today, then do tomorrow, and onwards. It sounds simple when said like this, but each day a page, write what you can. 

Every hero seeks support, before moving from ‘regret to regreat’. Keep going, you are gonna be ok, keep writing, your story is just beginning. I look forward to learning how your story develops.