Penneys at Dundrum Town Centre in Dublin 14 is a hive of last-minute Leaving Cert holiday shopping on Friday morning. Among the recently graduated Leaving Certificate students is Isabelle Hawthorn Byrne, who is picking up “bags, sunglasses, jewellery and all those bits” before jetting off to Zakynthos, Greece on Saturday for her Leaving Cert holiday. The post-Leaving Certificate holiday, where students head off after completing their final exams, has become a quasi rite of passage, with thousands of Irish students hitting up party hot spots in southern Europe each year. Popular locations include Albufeira in Portugal, Zakynthos or Zante in Greece and Magaluf in Spain. Each destination has the same winning formula: easy beach access, villas and hotels with pools that cater to big groups, and buzzy party strips. For Hawthorn Byrne, the holiday preparations are ongoing. “I’ve done a Shein order and then I was panic buying yesterday. I feel like everybody is trying to look the same basically,” she says. “I’m just about to get my nails and brows done. It’s so expensive. My nails are €70 alone.” Ella Clune, another recent sixth-year student, has taken the matter of the cost of nail treatments into her own hands. “I decided to order myself an at-home DIY nail kit in the summer of 2024. My goal was to learn to do nails on myself so that I could save money,” she says. That idea has since blossomed into a business, though it is on hold in order to prioritise friends and family customers.Clune charges €25 for a set of “biab” nails (a “builder in a bottle” technique which uses a self-levelling gel allowing nail growth underneath) that last three to four weeks. “The last two weeks have been very busy as I have been doing schoolfriends’ nails.”For her own trip, she says that she has her nails done and “got some new summer clothes leading up to the holiday, but I try to reuse the clothes I already have to avoid over consumption”.Clara Jennings is in Penneys with her mother, also picking up “the last few bits” and planning a trip to Boots for toiletries. Her colourful biab nails were done in Sunflower Nails Dundrum, where biab treatments with nail art can set customers back about €50. “I spent a lot of time buying my clothes ... and doing tan and all, but I don’t think anyone is actually putting the pressure on. I want to do it.”She says the trip has been something to look forward to throughout the stressful exam period. “I think going through exams, it was the one thing that all of us every day were like, ‘just remember we have Albufeira coming up’. So it’s nice to have something to look forward to when you are finished.”Grace O’Kennedy, who is heading to Zante this weekend, shares the sentiment. “I think after all the hard work we have done and then spending time with your friends, it’s very exciting. It’s the first time spending time away from home as well,” she says. On the beauty preparation, she says: “I think we kind of put pressure on ourselves. It’s not really pressure put on us.”