On Irish Graduations

Because of the delay in grading (no scantron sheets here, it's by hand, and mostly essay!), no one finds out how they did on spring exams until early September. Their majors here require them to take a set track of classes (first year science, for example, requires: chemistry, biology, physics, and first year maths), and from those classes they need an overall passing grade (40% I believe) to be able to move on to second year classes. If they don't pass, they either retake their exams, or retake the entire first year of courses. Which means they don't know if they can move on to second year or not until September, which is when they're returning and moving in, and which I would think would lead to a great amount of stress. It doesn't seem to, though, so I guess it works. Anyways, fourth years are just now graduating, as they just found out a little over a month ago if they actually could graduate, or if they'd need to retake fourth year exams, and there are graduates in graduation gowns all over campus, which is kind of cool to get to see.