Oh, class? I forgot about that....

Let me just tell you, after spending five days in a foreign country exploring, going on adventures and having somewhat sunny weather, the last thing that sounds remotely fun is going back to school or even worse walking to school in pouring down rain.

The view from my room.

Now, I know that for all my Washington buddies its like "so....that is a normal day occurrence here." I also know that for the Irish its the same story, but going back to school in the rain just really isn't how I wanted this semester to start off.

The classes here are much different from the ones at home. Even the structure. For instance you might take a four credit class, which would be two four day a week classes and that is all you do. show up on that day, do your work have papers and quizzes and tests through out the semester then you are done.

In Ireland, you attend at least two hours of lecture and this will be broken up into two one hour lectures. one at one day and time, and the other on another day and another time. So for my Intro to Irish Language we have a lecture from 4-5 on monday and one on 9-10 on Thursday. On top of these lectures you also have a tutorial, where it is a smaller class and you can work on all the problems you had and confusion. Most classes come with 1 hour of tutorials a week, giving you three hours of class, which ends up being 3 credits.

The Irish are also on a predetermined path when they enter college, so their time here is already planned out. Every fall semester all the third years take the same 4-5 classes. In america there is a lot more wiggle room and we can change majors halfway through our junior year and still graduate on time.

So not only do us American students have to find classes that work back home, we have to find classes that will work with each other from different departments. it is really stressful. They didn't tell us how the modules go or anything either so all the american students were in a panic on Sunday and Monday.

We had a sit down with our AIFS advisor though and she really helped us sort everything out.

I just hope this year isn't too hard and i can still graduate on time!