Eagle's Flight Workshop

This was a beneficial and enjoyable workshop, in which a man came into our school from a company called 'Eagle's Flight Ireland', in order to show us their board game, 'Gold of the Desert Kings'.

This board game was actually intended to subconsciously teach us valuable tips and advice about effective project management, and did so through a lot of clever symbolism, which I enjoyed attempting to decipher.

The aim of the game was to collect as much gold as possible without dying (within the theoretical world of the game) with limited resources, including time.

There were various risks and many rewards and complicated rules for the teams to play by.

Luckily, none of the teams perished,

and afterwards, we were interested to hear the man explain what the symbols in the game represented and how we could apply them to projects throughout our whole lives.

I would be interested to see more games like this.

Garda Síochána Drugs talk.

This year, a Gard came in to talk to us about drugs.

However, although I expected this talk to attempt to persuade us against using drugs, the talk didn't really focus exceptionally heavily on this.

In fact, his talk only briefly touched on the possible negative effects.

Instead, he described how the drug scene works, how people get drugs at parties, how to grow cannabis and how various drugs are taken.

He also went into great detail to describe his job, and how he goes about it. 

I don't think this part was as relevant to us as young people unless he was trying to sell his job, but although he spent a very large amount of time on this aspect of the presentation, the way in which he described it didn't seem to suggest that.

Dublin Zoo trip

This trip was organised by the biology department in the school, and was originally planned to be open only to biology students, but it was later opened up to the entire year, and I'm glad that it was.

When we arrived at the zoo, we were given the opportunity to walk around the zoo, which we did mostly in groups, in order to see the animals which we wanted to see. 

Thankfully, there was a lot of interesting information to read about the animals.

We were advised to bring a packed lunch, as the restaurant food was quite expensive.

At one point, we regrouped beside the zoo's ecology house in order to take guided tours and to learn about the importance of preserving the natural environment and it's animal habitants.

All in all, it was a great experience and I feel it was a great way to spend the day.

Carol service

Every year, on the last day before the Christmas holidays, the school has a special carol service organised by the music department. It includes a number of traditional Christmas carols, as well as some more contemporary festive songs.

As I joined the choir this year, I got to be part of it. This year, there was also a small 'orchestra' playing (on certain songs).

There were several weeks of practice leading up to this.

Some of the songs from the carol service were songs I'd never heard before, such as the 'Angel's Carol', which I thought was lovely, and 'Christmas Gift of Love', although most of the really famous ones were there as well, such as 'O holy night', which was fun, and 'Somewhere in my memory' (from Home Alone).

I was in the bass section, so I had to learn all the bass parts, and 'we three kings'.

Eventually, when the day arrived, it sounded great, and in my opinion, I feel it truly was tremendous fun.

I am really glad that I joined the choir and I look forward to doing the Carol Service again next year and the year after.

GOAL talk

This year, our school was lucky to have John O'Shea, founder of GOAL, give us a talk on the importance of Social Entrepreneurship, and to explain the work of his organisation.

He outlined the story of his company. It was good to see how it was set up and the incredible difference it had made in people's lives in developing countries.

He showed us a lot of very emotional pictures of the conditions in which people have to live in many developing countries.

Seeing these pictures was very touching.

He told us how important it is for us to get involved in society.

I feel that we benefited from this talk.

Photography Course

This year, a professional photographer came around to our school to teach us about how to take good photographs.

We were instructed on how to hold a camera properly, in a way that hopefully won't likely break it, which is very useful information.
We then learned a bit about 'natural' and 'artificial' light sources, and some useful techniques on how to direct light well, in order to achieve pleasant photographs.

The course was focuses specifically on portraits, and we were given the chance to practice our photography and portrait-taking skills by taking turns photographing each other.
We were given jobs, and we rotated in ter,s of these jobs. One person would model while another person would help them pose and would direct light onto them, to the instruction of the photographer, who would, of course, take the picture.

We got practice indoors and outdoors and, later in the course, got to wear fun, ridiculously silly costumes for photographs.

We each received one photograph taken of us during the course, although I do appear quite irritated in my picture.

It was very beneficial and enjoyable, and I certainly learned a lot about photography. Hopefully, I will be able to use this advice well in practice.

Work experience week 1 (Citrus mix/Printagraph Scotland)

For my first week of work experience this year, I went to Aberdeen in Scotland with my Dad, who works there himself. I really enjoyed spending a week with my Dad, since normally we only get to see him on the weekends and when he is on holiday. However, I did not do work experience with his company.

The companies in which I completed my work experience were 'Citrus Mix', a marketing firm, and 'Printagraph', a printing company, both of which stem from the parent company of IOS (Integrated Office Solutions').

On the first day, I was brought into the 'Printagraph' building, where I was briefly shown around the workshop, before being brought to the 'Citrus mix' building, 'Citrus house'.

Citrus mix is a marketing company which handles various forms of marketing for many companies which are operating nearby in Aberdeen and the North East.
To handle these different types of marketing, they have different departments.

The first department which I was shown was the PR department. They were in charge of making sure that companies got positive press coverage.
Most of the work they had been doing at the time was for the Christmas lights and fair by Aberdeen inspired™.

I then spent the next two days in printagraph, which, unfortunately, I didn't find very interesting.
The workshop did have a lot of very fancy machines. They had a printer which could print on doors, which they use to print on Lego™. I was also surprised to discover that someone's entire job was literally just to operate the photocopier.

Then, I went back to citrus mix on Thursday in time to see them shooting some commercials for 'Gillies', basically the Scottish equivalent of 'Harvey Norman's'.
I was very lucky to even be allowed the chance to act in some of these commercials, as a customer hiding in the store, to get in early for the Boxing Day sale, and also as a guy carrying a green chair out of the door, which was fun.

The next day, I got to see them editing the advertisements.
I will put the videos here:

Ultimately, it was a good experience, however I don't think that I would like to work in a printing company as it does not seem like a very exciting or creative job.

Psychology Exams

This year, as part of my psychology course in DCU, we are required to take four exams in total, two for every semester, and one for each module.

Our first two modules, which ran through the length of Semester 1, were 'Child Development Psychology' and 'Cognitive Psychology', so since the first semester finished before Christmas, we had exams in both of those modules in January.

I had to miss school for the child development exam, as it was on a Wednesday.

The exams were the same ones done by the first year students in college, as the material which we cover in this course is equivalent to the first year syllabus.

I had studied a great deal for these exams, and I feel that I knew the information quite well.
I found the short answer questions quite easy, and they were multiple choice, so I think that helped too. The essays, however, were a bit more tricky. I think I may also have done okay in those.

I feel that the 'Child Development Psychology' exam may have gone better than the 'Cognitive Psychology' one.
I did find this module much more interesting and enjoyable than the other one, though.

I think this was a great experience for seeing what college life is like, and it wasn't as tricky or difficult as I expected. I found it much easier and more enjoyable to be able to focus study on one particular area which is of interest to me.

Next semester's modules sound even more interesting, 'Social Psychology' and 'Behavioural Psychology'.

We will have exams for both of those modules when semester 2 ends.

Martial Arts.

This year, a man came in to teach us practical skills for self defence.
He taught us many useful skills, such as how to protect ourselves against knives and guns.

There was also a large theoretical side to the course, in which we learned about different types of dangerous situations and how to avoid, escape or diffuse them.

The man who taught the course to us was a security guard, and I believe that we may have benefited from his experience.
He told us many stories of attacks and we learned a lot about how to deal with them.

We had to learn and practice a lot of 'moves' and 'strikes with foam padding, and with each other.
They were by nature less fancy or graceful than competitive martial arts, but more practical, as they are intended for a different kind of situation, and one involving much more risk.

It lasted for two days, while other years were doing their Christmas exams.

At the end, we all had to take an exam on which we were graded on several factors, amongst them, 'aggression'. However, I feel that due to my inherently un-aggressive nature, I may not have scored exceptionally highly in that particular category.

Dunno about this guy, though.

Selling CDs at the bazaar (for my mini company).

This year, as part of mini company, which was a recording studio, I recorded a Christmas single, a rendition of John Lennon's 'Merry Christmas, War is over' with a bunch of people from my year group who said that they would like to sing.

I had taken this opportunity to purchase some nice new equipment, such as some nice new microphones and a larger sound card, in anticipation of getting a lot of use out of them.

I had the task of engineering the recording, so I set up the equipment to record the vocal parts in the music room over two days, Thursday and Friday.

The singers were Anna Byrne, Georgia Ferguson, Mia McCarthy, Jane Loughman and Julia Serra-semis.
I recorded each person singing the song the whole way through and later edited in all their best parts,
similar to the editing on Band Aid's 'do they know it's Christmas?'.
I also recorded some group vocals for the background in the music room.

I did not sing on the song myself, but I did play guitar, bass and jingle bells, which I recorded later at home.
I then had to produce the song (mixing and refining the sound and making sure everything sounds good together), which is something that I really love doing. I spent a lot of time doing this because I'm always quite perfectionistic about how it sounds.

Eventually, when I was satisfied with how it sounded, I burned the song to CDs to sell at the Bazaar.
I had bought a really handy kit for printing labels for CDs and Jewel cases to make them look nice and professional.

Although I was initially not allocated a stall at the bazaar, fortunately, my friend, Cian Kelly-Lyth, had decided against selling his mini company at the bazaar, and instead decided generously to not only let me use his stall, but to help me to set it up and sell the CDs.
In return for this very generous gesture, I let him wear my christmas jumper, along with a joke hat which I had lying around, and some tinsel from the Santa's Grotto.


We sold around 27 CDs, which I felt was really quite good.
All the money we made (in total, 81 euros) went to the bazaar fund.

I really enjoy this kind of stuff and am even considering it as a potential career option.
Luckily, I am very pleased and excited to have one week of work experience confirmed in Windmill Lane studios in Dublin, so hopefully, that will be a good way to gain some more insight and experience of this kind of work.

BT Young Scientist Exhibition Trip

This year, thanks to the school's science department, all transition year students had the opportunity to visit the RDS in Dublin in order to see the annual BT young scientist and technology exhibition.

It was quite a cold day, so I wrapped up warm in a jacket.

Upon arrival, I soon realised that the food was very overpriced. My 5 euro budget for food ended up being spent on a sandwich.

Two students from our year,  Evelyn Clinton and Joshua Dargan-Hayes, both had stands in the exhibition. I was very impressed with the work they had put into their respective projects.

Although my favourite category was 'behavioural and social sciences', which contained most of the more psychological ones, I did not find the stands this year as interesting in general.

Psychology essays.

For my psychology course in DCU, I had to write two one thousand and five hundred page college-level essays, one for each of two modules I have just completed this semester.
The part which I learned most from and found most challenging to adjust to was the citation.
They were very good experience to do. They count as 30 percent. I hope they will help me to prepare for my exams in January.

The first essay is for Child Development Psychology.

In it, I explore the effects of a child's environment on it's development.

The second essay is for my other module, Cognitive Psychology, in which I attempt to show the importance and influence of research on amnesia on our current understanding of memory.

I should hopefully have put both of them up here.
Psychology of Child Development Essay