Matthew

Higher Level

Piper’s Hill College, Kildare

It would be fair to say that every Geography student sitting the paper today let out a massive sigh of relief as soon as we opened the paper. All our predictions, our last minute-studying, our desperate prayers were answered at 9:30 am this morning!

The changes to the exam meant that Geography students could potentially leave out half of the course, answering just three questions from four sections (two questions being able to be answered from the same section). For me, I focused on Regional Geography and the Higher Level option - Culture and Identity, as well as the mandatory short questions.

The short questions were quite nice and fair, covering various topics like weather maps, graph interpretations and plate tectonics. Glaciation didn't feature too heavily in the short questions - a topic I had learned off 3 minutes before the exam.

Both the Regional and Option sections were similarly fair. I answered Q4 and Q6 from Regional and Q20 from the Option, and was quite happy with all my answers. Overall, I think Geography went very well, and was definitely a big confidence booster for the days ahead!