Trans-Atlantic Tuesday: Finals

This week began the start of finals here at UCC.  Last week we had the entire week off of classes for study week, but this week and next are the two weeks when your exam could be scheduled.  I had my first Irish final exam experience yesterday and it was just that; and experience.

At Holy Cross you get one day off for your study period, and then exams start the following day.  It is an incredibly stressful, pressure packed time; however it is all over in a relatively short period of time.  At UCC, you have an entire week and the process is more of a marathon than a sprint. I never thought I would say this, because I always complained about it at Holy Cross, but you have too much time at UCC, who wants to drag out the finals process for any longer than necessary?

Finally, I had my first final yesterday.  At this point I was very anxious to actually take the exam and finish another class. However, there was a huge hurdle for me to just get to the exam center.  UCC has you take your finals in exam venues, not your normal classroom.  So here is my schedule yesterday.

7:15- Wake-up, eat breakfast, get ready to leave
7:45- Leave my apartment
8:00- Arrive at the bus stop to catch a bus to bring me to my exam center
8:25- Arrive at the Neptune Exam Center
9:30- Exam beings
10:30- Exam finishes
11:15- Bus departs Neptune center
12:00- Arrive back in my apartment

*you will notice that it was almost a 5 hour ordeal for a one hour exam

Upon arriving at the Neptune center I understood why we could not take the exam in our classrooms.  It was a large gym arena with 500 desks set up on the gym floor.  There were about fifteen UCC staff members there to make sure everything went according to policy, and they had many.

Exam Rules and Regulations:

• Only acceptable materials allowed in the exam center
• Mostly consisted of just pens, pencils and water
• Needed to have a printed copy of your exam schedule so that during the exam a UCC official could come around and check that you were the right person, in the right place, taking the right exam
• Needed to be in the exam center 15 minutes prior to the start of your exam, if not you are banned from the exam, and if you do not take your exam you automatically fail your course, and there are absolutely no exceptions
• You are not allowed to leave when you are finished, you can only leave between 10:30-10:40, or at 11:00. When you are done you have to sign and seal your exam and give it directly to one of the UCC officials 

The whole process to me was a little cold; literally and figuratively.  The door we entered from the street into the gym was open the entire exam and the heat was not on so I was freezing.  I actually took the exam in my winter coat with my warm weather headband on the entire time.  That was not fun.

But it was figuratively cold because I am used to finishing my exam and physically handing my final to my professor.  I say thank you for the semester, and wish him/her a Merry Christmas.  With the UCC experience, you never see your professor and I left the exam center and my class was finished that abruptly. I most likely will never see my professor ever again, although she most likely has no idea who I am, but it seemed very strange to me.

1 exam down....1 to go, and then I am home! I can't believe how fast this semester wrapped up all of a sudden, I am just so glad that I will be back next semester.  There is so much left that I want to do, try and see in both Cork and the rest of Ireland. Also, after having experienced UCC for a semester I feel like I have gotten some of the kinks out and will make better decisions regarding classes, scheduling and exams next semester.