Straight A student puts notes up for auction

A RECENT Gort Community School graduate is using eBay in an attempt to raise money to support him as he starts life as a student.
Eighteen-year-old Cillian Fahy collected his Leaving Cert results from the school last week and is now offering his notes, which helped him achieve seven As, to the highest bidder.
The young entrepreneur, who has accepted a place in Trinity College Dublin’s English literature and maths course, put his study notes up on online auction site eBay late on Monday night.
“It probably won’t fund my way through college but I hope this will give me a bit of a kick-start to get even a small amount of finance. With the economy the way it is now, students have to be a bit smarter about money and hopefully this will make me something and perhaps if it works out, it will encourage other people to do something similar,” the New Quay man told The Clare Champion.
Cillian has set a reserve of €40 for the notes in each subject, a price he thinks is more than fair.
“There are thousands of euro spent on grinds and the real value of these classes are the notes you get. I think offering my notes for sale at €40 is good value compared to money spent on grinds and it is of benefit to me and the person who is buying it.
“It gives me a good start in college and these people spend the money that might be the price of a single grinds class but they get what might be the equivalent of a year of grinds notes,” Cillian said.
Cillian didn’t receive grinds himself. “I didn’t go to a grinds school, just a regular community school. I did most of these notes myself. I am not auctioning my physics notes, for example, because most of the notes for that subject are from my teacher and I wouldn’t want to try and pass those off as my own,” he explained.
According to Cillian, there is no secret to doing well in the Leaving Certificate.
“I did a lot of studying over the past two years. I got good notes and then I got a bit lucky as well. I don’t have a magic formula,” he pointed out.
He said his notes are not a panacea but rather augment pupils’ own notes.
“eBay is a very handy resource and I think a lot of Leaving Certificate resources could be online. I don’t think the internet is used enough for the Leaving Cert. I’m not talking just about eBay but grinds too and notes could be put up online. If people see me do it, they might do the same,” he remarked.
Cillian is adamant that selling his notes will not result in an easy way out for the buyer.
“I think a lot of the trouble with grinds in this country is that there are thousands of euro spent on grinds and you are told ‘do this’ or ‘study that’. By buying my notes, you get the notes but you have to go through them yourself.
“I don’t advise studying one thing over another, I am simply presenting the notes and different people will take different things from them and maybe get ideas. I wouldn’t expect them to do their answers in the exact same way as mine but they might learn things from the notes that I have,” he outlined.
Unlike many second-level pupils, Cillian is adamant his notes are in excellent condition.
“I’m rather meticulous. The notes are well organised and put in poly pockets and separated by dividers and everything like that. A lot of the notes are typed but some are handwritten. The timed ones, for example exam questions, were handwritten but the volume of handwritten ones varies by subject. English has mainly handwritten and history has more typed.
“This is the Leaving Cert and people don’t have the time to go and reorganise notes. The time I spent doing the work and laying it out and analysing the papers and writing the notes, if someone handed this to me when I was doing the Leaving Cert, it would have saved so much time and I would have been a few steps ahead of the game,” Cillian surmised.
The young Clareman has been working towards selling his notes since beginning the Leaving Cert cycle two years ago.
“That has always been in the back of my mind really. That is why I would have typed up a lot of notes but I suppose part of it was down to my own neatness anyway. I always thought they were good quality notes and then I got the results to back it up,” he stated.
While there are some changes, year on year, in certain curricula, Cillian believes his notes are relevant to those undertaking the exams next year.
“The Irish curriculum doesn’t change. In the English course, the comparative texts remain the same. A lot of the poets would be the same. Paper 1 is similar every year. It would only be the Shakespearean text that would change. But in the likes of history there would be no real change at all,” Cillian outlined.
Though Cillian is confident that a demand exists for Leaving Cert notes, he is reluctant to speculate as to which of his sets of notes will make the best price.
“I would say maths will prove popular because it is one of those awfully difficult subjects. My history notes, to be honest with you, would be the best value. In history you more or less learn off essays and you produce them, as the paper requires on the day.
“I would have 35 to 40 handwritten essays and some typed. That would be the best value because you get past exam papers and two revision books with them and I got an A1 in my history exam,” he explained.
The auction ends next Tuesday.