Trinity College Dublin Open Day
Today I was at the Trinity College (TCD) open day. As I mentioned in a post yesterday, this college is the elite college in Ireland, and is held in very high esteem not only in Ireland, but across Europe and the World.
My first lecture started at 9.30 this morning, one of the first ones of the day. Unfortunately, I arrived in a little late, after a few complications in getting there, so missed that first lecture. A great start eh?
So we arrive at TCD and it’s impressive, as I expected. Absolutley huge place, but there were people all over the place in luminous orange jackets to show us around and help us find where we were going. I liked that, it was professional, as you’d expect from Trinity. There were also tables at the entrance, which had people handing out prospectus’ (sp?), timetables and maps etc. So far, so good.
My first proper lecture then, was about a course called MSISS. It’s a business orientated course, about problem solving and decision making and the like. Very very interesting talk. The lecturer was brilliant. Funny at the appropriate times, without effort, very well spoken and concise. He was clearly such an intelligent man. He told us a story of an lecture he was years ago, when this well spoken english man stood up and said :
“Ladies and gentlemen, what is the difference between seduction, and rape?
The answer? Salesmanship.”
I loved that. I had absolutely no questions at the end of his talk, which showed just how good a job he did. After realising we’d be too late for out next lecture, we grabbed some food and went back to the college a while later.
The famous economist and writer, David McWilliams was then due to do a lecture. He was late coming out, as he was ill apparently, but it was worth the wait. The room was the biggest one I’d been in all day, and it was packed, with people sitting on stairs and standing at the back. I think everyone enjoyed the talk. He was a clever man, and very funny in parts. He didn’t really talk much about the college though, but he hilariously pointed out this fault in his talk at the end, which I appreciated. Apparently he was signing copies of his books afterwards too, so fair play to him, he’s a very likeable man.
After that, in the same room, was the BESS course lecture. This is Business, Economics, and Social Studies. The course seemed interesting, but the lecturer didn’t quite captivate the audience as much as the other two lectures I’d been to that day. A lot of people were getting up and leaving, which annoyed me, but I guess it was understandable. The guy certainly knew his stuff, but with the day drawing to a close for many of us, we didn’t want a particularly long lecture, and it became increasingly hard to concentrate on what he was saying.
I have to seriously consider this college, it was just a really nice place, and the level of education appears to be top quality. Big decision for me to make over the next couple of months 
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December 15th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Mark, I would highly recommend the BESS course. Trinity is a great college. My sister does BESS and my girlfriend does TSM and they both love it.
One thing though, after the first few months of college in town, it really gets painful getting the bus in and out every day. If you can, live on campus. If you can’t, try a college closer to you.
Best of luck with your leaving cert too.
December 15th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Thanks for the comment David, and for that advice. Good to hear encouraging stories like that.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
[…] actually posted a while back about when I went to the open day in Trinity. That post received a recommendation for BESS from Dave Davis of Red Fly Marketing, which I was […]