I figured I would go through a week of school before I wrote down what my impressions of it were in order to allow myself to come to a more substantial and comprehensive judgement of Dublin City University and classes in Ireland.
So far, I have noticed that, contrary to what they told us at orientation regarding the rigidity of the Irish education system, it seems to me as though many of the students in our classes don't take school very seriously. In fact, we have one prof that has not shown up to class on time yet! He is a very nice prof and a lot of fun to talk to, but when telling us what he expects from us on the exam, he states that all we have to remember is the bare minimum! As it turns out, this will suit me perfectly since I have quickly come to terms with the fact that doing my thesis here is going to be A LOT of work!
Last Monday, I finally met my supervisor at DCU (Dr. Fiona Regan), who brought me over to her lab right away and introduced me to James, the Post-Doc student I will be working for throughout the semester. I am expected to be at the lab every day of the week between 9-5 and whenever I don't have lectures to attend. It's already quite challenging and I am mostly stressed because I want to live up to James' expectations and fulfill all the tasks he assigns to me as efficiently as possible. But I am quite fortunate, I think, to be working for him as he treats his undergrads like equals and even expects us to throw around our own ideas for the project we're working on, which I will describe in more detail at a later date.
The one lab story I DO want to share right now is the sampling trip I got to take part in on Tuesday with James and Ciprian, a doctorate student also working in Dr. Regan's lab. I met up with both of them at the lab and they gave me the least heavy things to carry to the car (although I fully expected they would load me up since I'm the little undergrad). And we drove about 5 minutes away from the University to a park through which the Tolka river flows. Once there, Ciprian was the lucky one to have to get into the freezing water to take sample, while I distracted the malicious and territorial swans by getting them to nip at my purple boots instead of Ciprian's hands, with James rounding up the expedition by taking videos and pictures on his iPhone while laughing at us both. After this challenging 20 minute task, they both agreed a coffee break was in order so we stopped at a local coffee shop and spent a good 30 minutes chatting! All in all, quite a fun way to start my days at the lab.
In other news, the suitcase saga has yet to be resolved and I am feeling more and more frustrated by my restricted wardrobe, but I am fortunate to have Amila on the other side of the ocean harassing the airlines for me! <3. But we did manage to move into an apartment on Friday, which turned out not to be the one the manager had shown us, but a much bigger one, which is costing us 10 Euro/day in electricity and we're being extremely conservative! It's a very old, badly insulated, huge space and we've complained to the manager in order for him to give us the apartment he said he would in the first place... More news to follow on that front soon enough.
All in all, a fairly long an tiring school week, which Tra, Judith and I decided to end in style with dinner at the Thai Orchid downtown, which was completely worth it and a good start to a fun weekend. I also had a Tiger Beer, which was really tasty! Sure could go for one of those right now! ; )
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