I’ve been really busy recently and haven’t even been able to post about my classes!  I am taking six modules (which are what they call classes here in Ireland).  I am taking three psychology modules: Lifespan Development, Counseling Psychology, and Visual and Social Cognition.  These are all relatively large classes of between 50-100 students (two are in lecture theatres) so it’s a lot different than Richmond.   Visual and Social Cognition seems like the most interesting to me of these classes as it’s topics are the closest to my interests in psychology.  For these classes, there are not too many assignments over the course of the semester so the few assignments count for a large portion of the grade, a significant difference from the US.

For my other three modules, I am taking a variety of topics.  For one, I am taking Health Economics, which will count as an elective class for my economics minor.  It seems like an interesting class because it incorporates economics, political science, and psychology topics.  I am also taking Irish for beginners.  This is my smallest class of about 20 students with all international students, which is a nice change from my other classes.  Irish is a difficult language so far and I’m not the best at foreign languages to begin with.  I find the class really interesting though so it should be a fun experience.  The last module I have is called Discovering Ireland: Landscape and it consists of just two field trips.  There are no lectures, we just go on the two trips and make journal entries about our observations from the landscape, buildings, etc. since it is an archaeology class.  I’m really looking forward to class because it seems like it will be a great excuse to see new areas of Ireland!

Overall, I’m looking forward to my classes and seeing what else I will be learning.  It is interesting to see the different teaching styles in Ireland, as there is virtually all lecturing and no class participation because of the much larger class size.  There are, however, smaller tutorial sections that meet a few times a semester for a couple of my classes that go over the topics in a smaller group.

The UCD campus!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 10th, 2014 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Austen in Ireland, Spring 2014. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.