UCD Exams

Like everything else, UCD does examinations a little bit different than the University of Illinois. Starting off, the students get a whole week for "revisions" or studying time. At home, we get one day to "read". So we took advantage of the week given for studying and went to Italy to study Italian cuisine and culture. Then exams take place from May 4-May 15 which spans over two full weeks and one bank holiday. My 5 exams all took place over a 3 day span in that two weeks which actually was fine with me. I had International Marketing at 9 am on Saturday, Irish History at Monday morning at 9 am, Understanding Entrepreneurship at 6 pm Monday Night and then Cross Cultural Management at 3 pm Tuesday and Business Excellence at 6 pm. Done.

It was a lot of information cramming but nothing worse than any of my exams at the University of Illinois. The grading system is much different here so it'll be interesting when I finally get my grades (in late June) to see. All of my exams were essay format, so the grading is rather subjective.

The next difference is that exams take place off campus at the Royal Dublin Society. It's about a 40 minute walk from UCD. The University provides a shuttle bus every 20 minutes. ONE shuttle bus. That fits about 40 students. The exam hall holds over 2,000 students. Not really adequate transportation and some people have seen people get into fist fights and shoving matches to get on this bus. Not the way I want to start off my exam, so I took the nice scenic walk to the RDS Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. I enjoyed the walk, and usually had my signature Eminem pre-test music pumping. The Royal Dublin Society is pretty much a large barn. It is the type of place that would usually hold craft shows or horse competitions, but for two weeks in May, UCD drops off 3,000 desks and it becomes exam central. I was at desk 2,283 for one of my exams. You are not allowed to bring anything into the room (or arena rather) and it smells faintly of livestock. One man announces for all the exams, and he likes to crack bad jokes about how many people we have taking tests. But like most Irish he tends to mumble so no one is really sure what he is saying. I tend to think he is like the University President because he is always rocking a suit, but who really knows.

The exams went fine. It's hard to say because their expectations and grading scales are so vague that we weren't really sure how much to write, etc. But it was so nice to finish on Tuesday evening, that I didn't even care that I had to walk/run home in the pouring rain. When I stopped at Centra to grab a sandwich for dinner, I was literally dripping wet. Nothing like playing in the Dublin rain.

Junior year. Done. How did that happen?