School?

Contrary to popular belief, I actually do go to school while I'm here! I know all I've ever written about are the fun things I've been doing, but I promise I've been doing the "academic thing", too. I can't deny that I've had it really easy compared to Purdue, though. This is what a typical school week looks like for me:

Monday- no classes for me!
Tuesday- two classes at 3:00 and 4:00
Wednesday- three classes at 10:00, 1:00, and 3:00
Thursday- three classes at 11:00, 1:00, and 2:00
Friday- lab at 10:00

Not too bad, eh? For the most part, I really like it. It took a little getting used-to at first. It's run very differently than Purdue. It actually reminds me a little bit of highschool in that most school days are from 9:00am- 5:00 pm for the regular students, we have lockers, the classes are all in one building, and the students travel from class to class with the same people! The girls in my class are really sweet and it's been fun getting to know them. There are only about 22 all together! DIT has campuses all over Dublin, but ours is the School of Science building. Another difference is that they don't run on a semester schedule. Instead of getting new classes at the start of a new semester, they continue the same classes throughout the entire year. Because they have the same classes all year, some classes only have one lecture a week instead of two or three like at Purdue. This has made it a little bit challenging to make sure that we are getting enough information while we are here to transfer back to Purdue as full credit. It'll all be fine I think, but I'm definitely getting off easy! I know some of the classes I'm taking here are so much harder at Purdue! Honestly though, I'm learning a lot and it's really interesting to get the Irish view of nutrition which is something I never would have learned at home. The EU has their own RDA values, so we are constantly discussing those as well as the American ones. I've noticed they incorporate a lot of American view points in their lectures.

I'm taking five classes: Nutrition (equivalent to Metabolism at Purdue), Dietetics (equivalent to Maternal Nutrition), Statistics, Microbiology, and Communications. Microbiology and Stat. are definitely NOT my favorite classes, but I'm managing. The prof. for micro. is so incredibly helpful. Kayleen and I have not had any microbiology experience so we're a little behind the rest of the class in that sense, but our teacher has been meeting with us outside of class to give us extra help! This is pretty typical of the professors there and I think it's like that because DIT operates on such a smaller level. It is much more personal and the professors are more than willing to be flexible with us because they know we're traveling and such. It's been great. For the most part, I really love my teachers. I'd have to say that my two favorite are my micro. professor "Paddy" McHale and one of the dietetics teachers, Mary Maloney. Mary has gone so out of her way to come up with health seminars and such for us to attend. In a couple weeks, she has arranged for us to go to a seminar in southern Ireland with her! She even cleared it so we could miss classes for the day! Also, she arranged for Kayleen and me to observe in a couple of maternal hospitals which is something we are really excited about! Originally, we were going to do a geriatrics project in one of the local hospital for class credit, but that fell through due to specific permission we had to have from the government. Instead, we are doing a survey for the maternal dietetics class about folic acid. Should be interesting.... We have Mary to thank for putting it all together for us! She has been more than helpful in getting us everything we need.

DIT doesn't have set exams before Christmas like Purdue does, so some of our professors are going to have to make up special exams for us to take. I'm a little nervous about how those will be. They don't really give exams throughout the semester. It's all mostly independent study until May comes around and then they're tested over a whole YEAR'S worth of information. I cannot even imagine that! And I thought semester exams were bad.... Anyway, because we won't really have tests until the end, I have no idea how they are formatted or really how to study for them. It'll be an experience for sure.




This is the outside of the building. Not much to look at, but I've been informed multiple times that the other DIT's in Dublin are much nicer and ours is just old and hasn't be redone yet.









The second floor hall where are lockers are located :)

















This is the recently-redone main entry.