Mid-term break a welcome respite for exhausted TYs

IT WAS just as well that the week's break was coming up for us, the Transition Year class at Presentation Currylea, Tuam, as we are all exhausted. On Monday, a lawyer from the Yes for Children campaign spoke to us. She explained the necessity for such a referendum and the implications existing from this Constitutional change. We are currently organising a mock referendum in the school. The purpose of this exercise is simply to raise awareness and to encourage parents to cast their vote. Four of our students are entering an entrepreneurship course in Galway from November 5 to 9. They hope to make the best of this amazing opportunity and acquire new skills which they can use for future projects in Transition Year. Sadly, this means that they will not be able to attend the Galway Film Fleadh with us on November 9. We have finally completed our articles for Press Pass, after causing much stress to our poor co-ordinator! We discovered that it is very difficult to write an article when given a specific number of words. We learned how to structure articles correctly and to stick to the facts â€â€ a chore that some of us more opinionated found difficult! Speaking of writing competitions, we have also entered short stories for a competition organised by the marketing department at John West. We now have fingers and toes crossed as the overall prize in this competition is a tablet. Some of us have also begun training for Paired Reading with the 1st Years. It is a lot of responsibility and is more complex than we expected. We hope to start next week and are looking forward to a one-to-one mentoring relationship with the 1st years. Last week we made two short films. One was entitled 'The Milky Way'. In it we took a humorous look at the connection between milk consumption and good teeth. It was a strange sight in a secondary school to see a table lined up with glasses full of milk and false teeth! The second short focused on the stigma around depression. Vincent O'Sullivan assisted us in making these films. We realised just how important these competitions are when we saw all of his expensive equipment. I doubt that they film our favourite soaps much differently! It took us a full day to make a two to three minute film because we had to take every scene in tiny parts over and over again from different angles. The shorts will be up on YouTube soon and we hope that they get a lot of views. Although we have a break from school this week, we don't have one from Transition Year! We will be spending the week searching the shops, hoping to find everything for our Fashion Show in December. We will also be meeting up to rehearse the choreography. That's it from the Pres TYs for now, but I'm sure we'll have plenty of news by the end of the break. â€â€ Eva Gavin