College Life

As l said in my introduction, I was studying Computer Science at UCC. Its a good course and I've learnt a lot. I find it a bit difficult because l went back as a mature student (which means that I'm over 23 years old, actually I was 27 at the time). The last time I really studied for anything was for my Leaving Certificate (or high school diploma in United State's terms), and that was 10 years ago. I'm actually taking a few years off at the moment because l have to save a load of money in order to pay the college fees, which is a pain in the arse. It can be quite expensive to go to college, the fees themselves are nearly six thousand euro's, and then there's books on top of that, and then there's the odd night out. Lucky I'll be staying at home with the parents while l go to college, otherwise I'd have to pay a fortune in rent and bills and the like, l tell you one thing l don't know how they do it.

The social life in the college is quite good, a little too good for my liking. There are a number of clubs and societies that are held in the college of which I'm a member of, and these include:-

The Mature Students Society. This is a relatively new society. It has been going, on and off, for the past couple of years, and its has never been officially registered as a society until this year. I'm Science Rep of the society and is a good experience (as well as great fun) to start up a new society and see it grow in front of your eyes. The general idea of the mature students society is to represent, and lobby for, mature students to various bodies like, The Students Union, the Governing Body of UCC, and any other body that may be deemed appropriate. I'm trying to build a website for them at the moment, and as soon as that's done l put a link to its pages.
The Philosophical Society. This is thee oldest society in UCC, now active for 155 years. The Philosoph, as it is called, is the main debating societies in UCC, and host some of the best debate's in cork, like the cork intervarsity, the madains debate's, and the schools debates. Details of various activities can be found at there website.
The Law Society. This is another old society in UCC, going for about 75 - 80 years. The Lawsoc, as it is called, is another one of the debating house's in UCC. It is mainly for law students, but anybody can attend their weekly debates. This society also helps out with the intervarsity and other debate's with the Philosoph, and many of it's members are also members of the Philosoph. It also runs The Cork Online Law Review.

The campus itself is fairly big (by Irish standards), and is home to 14,000+ students many of which have lectures on and off campus. There's always something to do in the college, and if you get bored with being on campus all the time then there's plenty of off campus activities to alleviate that as well. I know that l must sound like a sales person but this is what its like on campus. You do a couple of things, attend lectures, labs, etc, go to a couple of societies, and study. We did a lot of stuff here like Systems Organization , Internet Computing, Marketing and Management, Introduction to Programming (using Java ), and Discrete Mathematics for Computer Science. I have linked some of these courses to the course homepages, but, unfortunately, most of them don't have one so your going to have to find notes somewhere else. But that should be easy to do if you know how to use Google, or another search engine.

The lecturer's are quite good and you receive quite a good education here. Luckily for me, most of my lectures are on campus, which is about 15 minutes walk away, and is very handy. I get a lot of free time around lectures as well, which is also handy because it gives me time to sit down and study. However the course's that we do can become pretty intense, and you can get bogged down on the silliest of thing which will put you behind on that subject. But other than that, if you work hard and do what is needed then you should be able to pass the courses and come out after four years with a Computer Science degree. I fail first year, and l didn't manage to get the money to repeat the year. But I'm working on it, maybe l can get a job doing something in the computer industry, although we'll see what we can do. I'll be putting up my CV soon, so if anyone is interested in hiring me then they could give me a bell. I'll do pretty much anything.

Just in case you are wondering what the white band in the top corner is for, then it is a link to a website that is trying to make poverty history as soon as possible, if anyone wants to know what they are about then click on this link, or this link, or this link, to see some film. Then you can decide for yourself if you want a white band on your website. You might also get a blocked content notice from your browser. This is due to the white band, and is nothing to worry about. You can look at the code of this page, if you really want, to check it out for yourself.

Just remember that this site is still under construction, and not all elements are here yet, especially pictures. So please bear with me for the moment.

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