Classes officially ended last Thursday, over a week ago. Since then I have literally had no obligations. This has led to a nice, if somewhat disorienting schedule. The weather has been beautiful, so I've been spending as much time outside as possible. Especially in the last couple days though, I've been having trouble figuring out what to do with myself! It has been a great time to relax, but it also means that I've been getting basically nothing productive done (example: I've been free for over a week and am just now getting around to writing this blog post).
Speaking of the end of classes, I'm still having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the semester schedule here. At home at Wellesley, we usually have just a few days to study followed by a single week of exams. Here at Trinity, we have three weeks off to study followed by four weeks of exams.
For an international student such as myself this is kind of nice, because it means that I have lots of free time before the end of the semester to travel! (More on that in a minute.) However, from an academic point of view it bothers me. I realize that exams are more important here and that more time to study makes sense because of that, but I would rather just get them over with. My two main exams aren't until the final week of exam period, so I have 6 weeks total between the end of classes and those two exams. I feel like by the time I get around to studying I will have forgotten everything! I feel weird complaining about extra time off, but it kind of stinks that while I'm travelling and enjoying my time off exams are still hanging over my head.
Some of the different-ness of the academic schedule here comes from the fact that at home, virtually all classes last just one semester and finals take place at the end of both fall and spring semesters. Here, there are only exams in the spring, which means that there are a lot of full year classes. This has led to a few problems with being here for only the spring; a few of my classes were technically year-long classes that I joined in the middle. Generally Trinity is pretty good about making this work, but it has still caused some frustrations. Take my Latin class, for instance. There were two different versions of the course that you could register for, one with an exam and one without. The course without an exam is designed for single semester students such as myself. However, the department didn't communicate with us about what was expected to make up for the exam, and therefore the last week of classes a friend and I discovered that we were supposed to have been doing an independent study all semester alongside our normal classwork. Oops. (They honestly didn't tell us anything about this). They changed things around so we are taking a final exam after all, which I suppose is the best way it could have worked out. I was assuming that I was done with that class though, so it was frustrating to learn that in fact I need to study for an exam which will be worth 80% of my final grade.
Anyway, I really didn't mean for this whole post to turn into complaining. Sometimes it's so much easier to talk about the negatives of a situation. Despite how it might sound, I have really been having a great week. The weather has been spectacular, definitely the warmest weather we've had the whole time I've been in Ireland. Luckily this warmth has coincided with our break, so I've been taking advantage of my freedom to spend as much time outside as possible.
I've also been checking items of my list of things I want to accomplish and see while I'm in Ireland. On Wednesday a friend and I went on a bus tour of the Hill of Tara and Newgrange. The Hill of Tara is an ancient location where the High Kings of Ireland ruled from, and Newgrange is a Stone Age passage tomb that predates both Stonehenge and the Pyramids in Egypt. In all my pictures Tara basically looks like some insignificant grassy mounds, but it has a lot of history, and the view from the hill is incredible. Apparently on a clear day you can see nearly 3/4 of Ireland.
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| The Hill of Tara (click to see the picture larger) |
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| Waiting to go into the 5000 year old tomb |
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| baby lambs at the farm |
Yesterday a couple friends and I visited an old church in Dublin (originally founded in 1095 A.D.) that has a crypt underneath. We were brought down to see (and even touch) some of the mummies. The most interesting part to me was the fact that it is technically still an active burial site (several important families in Dublin still retain the legal right to have remains placed in the crypt) so they aren't allowed to light most of the rooms full of coffins or open any of the ones that have remained closed and intact. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any pictures down there, so you'll have to leave it up to your imagination. Or just google St. Michan's church, that works too.
The rest of my time here will basically be full of travelling and studying for exams. Next week I embark on a short trip to England (Bristol and Bath mostly), then the following week I go to Paris. I will do my best to share more details about these trips later! My only currently scheduled exams don't happen until the 18th and 19th of May, so in theory I will have plenty of time left to study after I get back from travelling. I will also have a Latin exam sometime in May though, and I am hoping to work out a trip to Scotland as well. I return to the US on May 21. Despite how much time it currently feels like I have left, I know it will come way too quickly! I will only have a couple of days between my last exam and going back home, so I have the feeling that I will be very exhausted from studying and packing and saying my goodbyes and such. But, I really don't want to think about all that yet.
I'm so excited for all my travels the next two weeks, I've been trying to make the most of my down time before we embark on our adventures. It's been great to just have some time to relax and recuperate!
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