One of the most important elements of this semester is housing.  I decided to live off-campus in Dublin City rather than living on the UCD campus.  Overall, I am quite happy with this decision.  I have access to a variety of restaurants, pubs, specialty stores and other shopping venues that would not have been available to me had I lived on campus.  I feel I have also been able to really immerse myself in the local Irish culture of Dublin.  Living in Rathmines Village has given me the opportunity to get a birds eye view of life in Dublin for a young person.  This has been especially important for me as I think I would like to return to Dublin to work in the future.  In addition to the local Irish, Rathmines also has a considerable international population.   This has helped to introduce me to cultures that I had previously not been exposed to.  My only complaint with the housing I was given is that I live with all Americans.  I had expected to live with other international students or at least a mix of internationals and maybe a few Americans if necessary.  I want to make it perfectly clear that this has nothing to do with the Cornell students I am currently living with.  On the contrary, I find them all to be intelligent, respectful and generally fun to be around.  My concern is that my international experience is somewhat lacking because of the fact that I am living with people who come from the same country and college as myself.

Perhaps the second most important element of this semester, or maybe the first depending on how you look at it, is the education at UCD.  My first class at UCD may have been one of the most enjoyable classes of my educational career simply because I had never had a class like it before in my life.  One of the things I was most looking forward to about this semester in Ireland was the opportunity to learn from and get to know students from all over the world.  Within the first few minutes of class I realized I was sitting with students from France, New Zealand, England, Italy, Germany, the Middle East and of course Ireland.  The wide range of national and cultural backgrounds of my fellow students was precisely what I was hoping for in my classes at UCD.  Concerning the professors at UCD, I would like to single out Roland Erne and Anne Coughlan as being both particularly impressive and helpful to the ILR students thus far.  I will not get into details but I would just like to say that Professor Daniels and Brigid Beachler, as well as Dean Katz and the whole ILR school, should feel very confident about the ability and commitment of the UCD faculty involved with this program.

Finally, I would like to comment on the lunch meeting that was held with Dean Katz last Wednesday.  I thought the meeting went very well and that there was a lot of good constructive communication between Dean Katz and the students.  We were able to voice our concerns without feeling restricted and I think that was very important.  While everyone would like this program to be absolutely perfect the first time around, that just isn’t realistic.  That being said, I think the fact that Dean Katz came over to Dublin to speak with us in an open discussion about both positive and negative aspects of the program shows the commitment that those at ILR have to making this program a complete success in the future.

Dublin is great and that is all for now.

Robert Woods

Anyways, things have been going well here. The classes are all going well. So far European HR and Globalisation are mostly indistinguishable. I’m sure that’ll change after the second lecture. I guess that Globalisation is going to focus on the broader aspects and HR will show how the process of globalisation has effected European Industrial Relations. Irish History looks to be fascinating, but that’s only because I’m a history dork. Unfortunately, the class seems to be a little too industrialized. But I suppose that’s to be expected for any mandatory class. Multinationals in the Global Economy is probably going to be the most challenging class. It’s unlike any other class I’ve taken at Cornell. I’m looking forward to how the class works and the visits to Ulster Bank and Microsoft.

I’m feeling pretty good about the choice to live on campus. It’s not restricting, since the dorms here are really more like apartments. It’s incredibly conveneint (5 minutes to the Quinn School, 6 minutes to the bus stop) and makes it much easier to get involved in extracurriculars (not that I’ve actually done any of those yet, that comes next week- Fresher’s Week). I haven’t managed to get into a real routine yet, but I’ve only had one week of classes. It’s late, so I’m off to bed. More later.

-Sam

The ILR/UCD experience blog is ready for content. The blog is located at http://ilrucd.wordpress.com/. Once you have content posted, the ILR Web Group will link to the blog from the ILR School Dublin Program site.

To login click the “Login” link near the top of the right column. Once you’re logged in, click “New Post” in the blue stripe near the top left. Then, start writing or explore the simple options for managing posts, which include editing and deleting.

If you need any help setting up or managing posts, please let me know.

Happy blogging!

Chris