Patricia Maguire, Third Year Arts student talks about her experience as a Mature Student at NUI Maynooth.
Transcript:
Patricia Maguire, Mature Student
So what made me go to College in the first place? Where I worked business was getting slacker and there were redundancies being offered, voluntary redundancies being offered to people. I was sitting there at the desk one time and I was kind of daydreaming as to what it would feel like, knowing that youre going to finish your work in months time, not by your choice. First of all I thought it was horrific; I thought it was going to be absolutely awful. I really felt sorry for the people that were getting the redundancies. Then the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a great idea, a great opportunity. You had a time limit of a month to go and get yourself another job and plus you would be getting some extra money. Then my view of it changed to this is a great idea. Then when I was at home I was looking through the newspapers, looking for jobs all with high pay; I thought why not, I have taken the step to pack up my bag and leave work and I decided, why not look at all the jobs with high pay? The only problem was that they all needed qualifications, which I hadnt got. Then somebody suggested to me about going for a degree and I just laughed at them and thought dont be ridiculous, it was a mad idea. Then as time has gone on, I kind of briefly checked up about going for a degree and then at the last minute I applied to the CAO for a place in Maynooth University. Not really believing that I was going to get a place, and not even believing that I was actually applying for a degree because it was always just something that was out of reach, something that didnt match my education, my thoughts, my belief, anything. It didnt match anything about me.
The interview was quite relaxed, it was quite informative and quite short but I felt that they asked all the relevant questions and made me feel very comfortable about talking about myself, about my qualifications, about my past experience of any courses I had gone on from when I had left school. Just taking note of everything that I had gained, whether I was working or not, just what I had gained that would benefit me when I was in College. I found that was actually quite good.
When I started here I was on cloud nine; I felt like Miss World, Miss Ireland, Miss Professor of Everything. I just felt I was gorgeous, I just loved everything about life, I was absolutely fabulous. I felt I had got an injection of something, it was absolutely brilliant. I was on a high 24/7 and I came out and the crowd here was absolutely chaotic. There were so many students around, all busy hustling around the place going from here, there, everywhere. It was literally a case of follow the crowd or youre going with them anyway. It was brilliant. The atmosphere was just fantastic.
One of the subjects I chose in the first year was psychology and the reason for that was because when I was doing my Social Studies in Inchicore College, I took Psychology as one of the subjects and I found that rather interesting. Really really interesting! The second subject I chose was French. And I did French in school and I absolutely loved it! When I was doing French at school and when I was doing Irish, we didn't do aurals so it was literally all written work. And I still remembered a lot of the grammar from French and I though "that was my true love when I was younger' and thought 'now is your opportunity to go and learn something. I thought, this is the perfect opportunity to go choose the French. So, I chose French as my second subject!
Then I found that because I had not got familiar with the grounds of Maynooth, I found that that put on a lot of stress. Because of the fact that I didn't know where I was going. There were codes for the room, codes for the different buildings and I thought 'Am I supposed to be in that building over there or that building over *there*?' The because I'd be running from A to B, I'd lose time and arrive at the class late. And you think 'Ah, holy god, here's your one!'. So I thought a lesson to be learned from that is to get familiar with your surroundings so that you're more relaxed, you know where you are going, you don't have to think twice, you're not wasting time or energy.
[Interviewer: So, now tell us really why you went to Maynooth?]
[Laughter]
END.
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Noel O'Rourke - Student Testimonialby NUIMAccess354 views
Well done Trish, this took a huge amount of courage and determation to take this step of going to NUI Maynooth. Everyone that knows you, they have the same response when they hear about you attending college - "Well done Trish & Best of Luck with all the hard work & study it must involve".
Your interview is down to earth and honest, so very proud of you & wish you lots of success. We think your the best !!
Janet & Rob
quickstudy08 3 years ago