As the fiasco that was the 2020 Leaving Cert drew to an undignified close there was but one crumb of comfort for those who would follow, for the class of 2021: It couldn t possibly be that bad again.
They had seen the impact on their predecessors, saw how the on-off uncertainty surrounding exams which were confirmed, moved forward and then finally cancelled had pushed their peers almost to breaking point.
They had looked on, aghast, as the calculated grades system spat out results arbitrarily, favouring some over others and reducing living, breathing, panicking students into binary numbers.
But they gained solace in the knowledge that lessons had been learned, that the class of 2020 were an outlier, the unfortunate ones caught in the eye of the storm.