I’d thought I’d have a blog about my experiences in Ireland for some of my close friends. I stole the idea from my cousin, who is now currently rafting down the Mississippi to St. Louis with some of her friends.
So here's how I know I'm NOT an alcoholic - my flatmates (I guess I have to use that term now) are going out to get piss drunk at 9:45 on a MONDAY. Hmmm... Even in my weakest moments, I never got drunk two nights in a row. I also found out that two of them are frat brothers (although they both assured me that the frats are much more respectable at private schools and that I should refer to them as fraternities) - one of them already dislikes me because he thinks that I let his pizza burn or some shit like that. The Americans here are very cliquey - it feels a lot like freshman orientation, and I’m a little out of my element because they are all serious binge drinkers and party sluts - I could quite possibly be the only virgin on the program. Another factor is that the overwhelming majority of them are going to private schools, usually the same ones. Three of my flatmates are from Washington University, there’s a bunch of Americans from Holyoke in Massachusetts, and they all know each other already - I’m kinda the odd man out. If I really, really made an effort, maybe I could ingratiate myself into one of their cliques, but it’d be difficult, and I really don’t have that kind of stamina. The others may be comfortable going out and drinking every night and getting two or three hours of sleep, but I need more sleep than that. I also tend to think that my Asperger’s traits are getting in the way of socialization - I get the impression that some of these people think I’m a little odd, just in conversation. The tone and body language of a lot of the American women, at least, seems to be… cold. I dunno, we’ll see how this develops… I was kind of afraid this would happen - I’m not sure that Ireland has attracted the most serious students to its shores. On the plus side, any sort of inferiority complex about my intellectual abilities has gone by the wayside - if this is the best that Holyoke, U Penn (except for one guy who seems pretty on the ball), and Washington can offer, than I can say that private colleges are essentially expensive baby-sitters.
On the plus side, the coursework appears to be phenomenal. The college is undergoing a prolonged period of modernization, and it’s very interesting to see the contrast between this system and the public universities in America. I’d say that our facilities are generally better - I had a look at their science labs, and they definitely seemed more dilapidated than the labs in Minnesota, and to be honest I was rather unimpressed with their library. Most of the other students were disappointed that the buildings weren’t open for 24 hours, but that didn’t bother me, as the U of M libraries aren’t open all hours, either. What did surprise me was the restrictive lending policies that their library system has in place: only some books can be checked out, and they can only be checked out for a week at a time, with 8 possible renewals, and only four books can be checked out at a time by undergraduates. This comes as quite a contrast from my experience, where I’ll have up to 30 books checked out at any given time, some of them quite possibly for years. I also wonder really how extensive their collection is - Wilson may not be QUITE as big as their three main humanities and social sciences libraries, but it comes pretty damn close, and I’ve seen all of the stuff that the U of M has down in its stacks. I gather they have off-site archives, but I don’t know how large they are.
The faculty and staff I’ve interacted with have been nothing short of fabulous. Perhaps the most personable people I’ve met.
Well, I think that’ll do it for this blog post - I’m sure I’ll have other topics to write on (and probably other complaints, too), but I’m open to suggestions. What else do you want to hear about?
