We won’t lie – finishing a college exam for us usually meant hotfooting it to the local to celebrate, or straight home to get ready for a slightly later celebration (hangs Her.ie head in shame…). 

But for one student, this week’s Christmas exams sparked a protest that had nothing to do with grades.

Aoife Flanagan, a trainee primary school teacher at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, posted this message on the official Facebook page of her college Student Union late yesterday evening, and we have to say – we’re impressed, not least because she managed to sneak in a reference to one of the memes of the year.

Aoife was protesting the failure on behalf of the college to recycle unused exam papers, and the would-be educator became very passionate indeed. The student said that her relief at finishing her exam was cut short by the “horror of seeing the supervisor flippantly toss hundreds, maybe thousands of question sheets into the rubbish bin”. 

“Can somebody just please think of the trees?”, Aoife asked, after using both a wise old Indian and Barack Obama to back up her point.

As yet, there has been no response from the Students Union at the college, but the comment has drawn support from hundreds of others in the short time since it was posted.

We can’t help thinking if all Irish teachers cared this much, there wouldn’t be an education system in the world to rival ours…