Thursday and Friday were orientation days for international students at NUI, Galway. Thursday was mainly focused on making sure the students knew how to access the university’s services and take care of all our requirements as international students. Friday was dedicated entirely to presentations by all the academic departments at NUIG about how to register for their classes and what modules are being offered this semester. Things aren’t quite as organized or efficient at NUIG as they are GW. To begin with, most of the students had already viewed a booklet of modules that would be offered this semester, but the class schedules here aren’t actually finalized until right before teaching begins so many of those were not actually being offered. Also, there is no online registration here so everything has to be done the old fashioned way. Each department has its own day in which students sign up for seminar classes on a first come, first serve basis. Regular lecture classes are less complicated to register for but registration for those doesn’t take place for another two weeks. The point of such a long pre-registration period is so that the students can “shop around” for classes and see what they can handle. One drawback of this though is that we don’t have access to Blackboard until registration happens. This laid-back system has caused some anxiety for myself and the other American students who are used to knowing what classes they have right away. There is also very little communication between departments and this means that when each department made their presentations, they gave students information that affected the university as a whole so each one was very repetitive. By the end of orientation, most of the international students (or at least the American ones) were a lot less confident that they could actually successfully register for the classes that they wanted to take. They way that they determine who gets spots in smaller classes didn’t really seem as fair as the American system to a lot of us and rely a lot on students being honest and following the rules. The uncertainty of the whole process is also unsettling for students who need to fulfill certain requirements at their home institutions. The Irish attitude towards all of the confusion involving registration seems to be a lot like their attitude towards everything else: alarmingly nonchalant. They seem to be aware that things will probably go wrong at certain points while students are trying to register but don’t seem to have any desire to implement a more efficient system. This led me to realize just how neurotic American college students can be. We really like to know exactly what classes we will be taking and when they will be. Not knowing that we can have everything just right REALLY makes us nervous. The Irish students on the other hand are a lot less concerned about it. I couldn’t help but wonder if I will start to adopt a more “Irish attitude” about things when I get back home or if I will simply be relieved to back in a world of certainty.
