the way things work at NUIG
It's a cloudy, windy day in Galway. The circus is in town, and they're set up about two hundred feet from my apartment. I can hear the music in my room. It's a lazy kind of day: I've spent most of my day in my common room, drinking black tea and watching movies. I really should be writing papers, but I'm procrastinating.
I have four papers due and an exam in the next three weeks, and two papers due a couple of weeks after that. Unlike Willamette, where for most of my classes the workload is spread pretty evenly throughout the semester, here at NUIG I have had virtually no homework for the last eight weeks of classes, and now I have tons of work. Also, whereas at Willamette my final exam or paper for any given class would probably constitute 30% or 40% of my total grade for the course, it is standard at NUIG for 30% of your course grade to be based on what they call 'continuous assessment', and 70% of the course grade is based on one final paper or exam. It's very nerve-wrecking; If I mess up badly on a paper, I have no chance to redeem my course grade.
Decision-making and responsibility at the University is very confusing to me. All the departments at NUIG are very autonomous: the deadlines for final papers, whether or not international students take exams or write papers, course registration, and stylistic guidelines for paper writing are all controlled by individual departments. I'm taking English, History, and Irish Studies courses, and for information about each class, I must contact the departmental secretary for each department. Professors have very little control over assignments: they must defer to departmental rules.
Departmental secretaries play much bigger roles in the running of departments at NUIG than at Willamette. Professors rarely have the information you want about a paper deadline or other specifics: for most questions, the departmental secretary is the best source of information. Whereas at Willamette, I have no idea who the History secretary is, I've practically memorized the NUIG History secretary's email address. Papers are usual turned into the departmental secretary, not to your professor or lecturer.
The exam system is particularly foreign. There is a special exam office, separate from all other departments, that organizes all final exams. professors have no control over exam schedules. The exam schedules are rigid and unchangeable; there is only one time you can take the exam for any given class, and exceptions are rarely given. there are also a lot of strict rules about what you can bring into exam rooms, and when you can leave; you also must show your college ID and prove that you in the class to come into the exam room. While these rules are intimidating and sometimes hard to understand, they are probably in place to minimize cheating, and make exams fairer and more equitable for all students. Exams here are quite difficult; it's not unusual for a third of students in any given class to fail the final exam. Luckily, because I am an international student I don't have any exams, just final essays.
So, over all, I would say that the educational system here is much more bureaucratic and more difficult to navigate than at Willamette. I definitely prefer the way that classes are structured at Willamette, and I like that less emphasis is put on exams and final essays in Willamette classes. I also feel that the classes here are in general less challenging, in spite of the difficulty of the final exams.
However, an Irish university education has one big advantage for Irish citizens: it's free. If you enter NUI Galway right after graduating from secondary school, and you finish in three or four years (depending on your program), you don't pay any tuition. This may change in the next few years, as there is talk of reinstating fees for Irish students. But right now, tuition is still free, and that's an amazing opportunity for students who otherwise would not be able to afford a BA.