"I'm doing Business, Geography, French, Classical Studies, English, Irish, Maths," rattles off broadcaster Stephen Byrne, aged 27, who for various reasons has decided to re-sit the Leaving Cert and is making a documentary about it.  He joined Ryan Tubridy to talk about the reasoning behind his decision and about the experience itself, both first and second time around. One thing Stephen is not aiming to do is to specifically improve on his previous results, because Stephen never opened them.  "I ran home and I stuck them in a shredder!" he said.  He will be opening a copy of them, along with his results from the 2018 exam, in the documentary.

During sixth year, Stephen's head was whirring with a plethora of emotions and conflicting feelings. He had moved school due to bullying, was grappling with ideas of sexuality and coming to terms with the fact that he was gay and he had started working in RTÉ in September of that year.  Mix that with a normal helping of teenage angst and you've got a recipe for Leaving Cert disaster.  Ryan asked why he never opened his results.

"It was a mix of feelings…  I knew I'd let myself down.  I knew I hadn't done the best that I could… I got all A's in my Junior Cert and I knew that it was going to be the complete opposite…  I knew I'd let my parents down, so that was a huge thing to admit."

So why go back now?

"I always knew that I was still running away from that time in my life…  I almost said to myself that it was something I didn't have to confront anymore because it was so many years ago.  There was still this idea in my head that, oh, I could go back and do that… and see if it was the situation, it wasn't me…  Then last year, I went through a really bad break up… I felt like I needed something to focus on and I felt like I needed to confront a lot of things about myself and in a way I thought maybe that's the best way."

On top of the study, Stephen has the day job on 2fm and is still jetting back and forth to London for movie interviews, then hits the books every evening after all that.  He's aiming for a H1 in Maths, much to his own surprise, but much more than an academic exercise, this is an exploration of self.

"The results for me don't really matter but I want to do the best I can."

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