Essays = DONE!

So I apologize for my lack of blog posts in the past couple of weeks. I’ll try my best to cover everything but I may miss a few things here or there. Things have just been really busy since my professors decided that they actually wanted to give us work to do. This entire semester the teachers have focused on what’s going to be on the final exams since that’s what our grades are pretty much based off of. Most of it is straight forward. In my English classes we get to choose essay questions to answer based off of the books we’ve read and discussed for the class. In Irish language we have a written and oral exam, and considering the fact that our teacher is pretty much great craic and very easy going it will be an easy exam. By the way craic (pronounced crack) means fun here in Ireland. The music class that I’m taking actually doesn’t have a final exam. Instead we have 2 papers that we have to write and hand in and those make up our grade. The first of the two papers was due today (March 11^th) so I had to write that. In the US we get numbers of pages that the paper has to be and here they use number of words. So it was a 1,000 (3 page) paper on my experiences and feelings while listening to traditional Irish music. I honestly felt like I was pulling teeth just to write 1,000 words. There are so many ways you can say how you feel while listening to music. It wasn’t even about the technical aspects; it was about the experience and what I felt. It was the hardest paper to write because I’m not very complicated about my feelings. I like the music, it lightens the mood, and I can understand why the Irish dance to it. That sentence sums up my entire paper. The other paper isn’t due until May 9^th and I have yet to figure out what I’m writing it on so I’m not going to worry about that just yet. The other class that I had to write a paper for was my Education and Welfare class. Actually I’m going to explain a few things about this class before I talk about the paper.

When I selected my classes at the beginning of the semester I was choosing from the list of classes that are meant for visiting students to take. That generally means that it’s going to be a general introduction class or a fairly easy class to take. Since I want to be a teacher, a class on education and welfare sounded interesting and worth taking, so I registered for it. We were given a time span of about 2 weeks to sit through our classes and see whether or not we really wanted to take them or if they would be too difficult, and if we didn’t want a class we could swap it out for another one. Well this class was actually really interesting and for the first few weeks I actually knew what the professor was talking about so I stuck with it and the last day to drop a class passed and I had no choice but to stick with it. The week after that happens the professor is talking about things that the Irish students had previously learned and I am clueless about. As she was talking it dawned on me that I was taking a course that I am completely unprepared for. It’s an education class for senior year students which would be the equivalent of a graduate student in NEAG. So I’m in a class that I really shouldn’t be in. that being said I’m a little behind or clueless about a lot of things, so when we had to write a paper I was completely lost. I had the option between writing 2,500 words where I critically analyze critical pedagogy and how it works in the school system, or 1,200 words describing a program that would help stop students from dropping out of school and get them to finish all the way through. I have no clue how to create an educational program for middle school or high school students that will keep them interested in school, I can do elementary aged kids and come up with something for them, but that wasn’t an option, so I pretty much ruled out creating the program. The essay… well first I should explain in normal terms what that means. Pedagogy is a fancy way for saying the science of teaching and critical pedagogy is the different methods behind teaching and the nitty gritty behind the way students are taught, how students think, the way the teachers think, the relationship in the classroom that different teaching methods create, and a lot of other methodology of teaching. So a 2,500 word paper critically looking at all of that and how it works in the education system. I wrote out about 3 sentences and didn’t know where to go or what to write about. A couple days before the paper was due I was sitting in one of my English classes when I got an idea for a program to create for middle school students that could keep them interested in finishing school. So when I wasn’t taking notes I was writing down the bits and pieces of the program and was able to go back and just write it all out and be done with it later that day. Since it was due the day after I left for London I had to figure out how to hand it in early.

Back home when a paper is due you hand it to the teacher at the beginning of class and it’s done with. Here it’s an entire process. You have to find the department that the class is a part of (i.e. the music department, the history department, etc., etc.) and drop it off in the main office. Each department is different. Some require 2 copies of the paper (of which the teacher doesn’t inform you of that the secretary in the office does) and some only ask for one. Then you have to fill out a form with your name, student ID number, class number, professor’s name, title of paper, word count, and your address. Why? I have no clue, but it’s a waste of time and if you don’t know the information or have all that you need, the secretary is of no help to you. They also go on lunch breaks where they close down the entire office for about an hour and a half and you just have to wait for them to come back. It is a very different system. I got my paper in though and hopefully I’ll find out what I got on it soon.

So now I have no more papers (until May) so I’m pretty much work free outside of reading poems which is enjoyable for me so I have no problem doing it. That’s really it for education related things. I’ll put up a bunch more Irish later on when I actually have my notebook on me. I’m currently in Killary on an Adventure weekend with IFSA so I have no work with me. Before I talk about any of that though I’m going to end this post and then I’ll cover all of London and other fun things that I’ve had the opportunity of doing lately.

With Love Always