In Which Aisling Cannot Understand Timetables
On a campus built for 11,000 students only populated by the 300 or so international students, orientation began January 26th and I felt very much like the freshman I was three semesters ago, being herded into lecture halls to be told the ins and outs of attending Maynooth University – somehow learning no new information except that I never want to do another college orientation again.
The one handy part of orientation was getting further info on registering with the Garda, which is essentially us going to the Garda station, paying them 300 Euros, and saying “hey I’m in your country for 4.5 months kthanksbye”. We also received our module (aka course/class) forms for the archaic process of registration. They still do everything on paper here, which involves all of the students gathering in the gym, standing in line for 20-30 mins to get a signature from a department head saying “yes! this person has the ability to register for a course in my discipline”, which we already knew because you have to figure out what classes you can take before you show up for the signatures.
Here’s the catch: how the Irish schedule classes makes NO SENSE. As I was planning out my courses, getting them pre-approved for transfer back to SNC, and looking at the timetables online, I totally misread them. For example, one of my courses was listed at three different times of the day in three different locations on three different days of the week, so I naturally assumed you picked one, correct? Wrong. Those are all of the times they meet during the week. Thus, when I was deciding what to take, I now had half of my classes at conflicting times. That was annoying, but I figured it out, and I really like the courses I’m taking, so it’s all good (though I really wish I could’ve taken that class on the Vikings...).
So, here are my courses – Greek and Roman Civ. II: Making Rome; Women in Greece and Rome; Thucydides, Aristophanes, and the Peloponnesian War; Ireland Since 1800; and Cultural Heritage and the Irish Literary Tradition (which takes field trips!). My favorite part about my schedule is that I have no class on Fridays, which means three-day weekends! Also, one of my classes doesn’t have a final exam at all, and another is scheduled during the last lecture rather than during finals, which makes my life a lot easier (I have so many 3500-word final essays to write though, I already want to cry).
The Irish students finally arrived Sunday night/Monday morning, and classes began on the 30th. They do a sort of sample-your-classes thing the first week, meaning I could go to whatever classes I wanted before I formally registered for them – thank god they have this, because I escaped what was turning out to be a pretty boring class after attending its first lecture.
Because a lot of the Irish students go home on weekends, party nights here are Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Thus, my roommates and I went out to the campus pub for a few drinks Monday night. The rest of the week was pretty chill, spent attending lectures, registering for classes, and going to the Fairs Day to sign up for clubs and societies (I’ll let you guys know what I’m joining as soon as I do). Today (Saturday the 4th) my roommates went on a pre-booked trip to the Cliffs of Moher, and tomorrow we’re planning on heading into Dublin!
