By Aine Fogarty
Welcome back everyone to my first-year diary. I hope you all had an amazing Christmas and New Year. Christmas flew by way too fast for me and I would love to go back and experience my Christmas dinner again!
I have a goal set for myself, maybe you could call it a New Year’s resolution. I’ve never been one for resolutions but this year with all its twists and turns has given me the idea to try it out for the new year ahead. Since all activities have been moved online, I’ve avoided interacting with other students and making more friends. Zoom activities terrify me and I’d like to overcome that so I’ve set myself the goal to participate in more society events and SU events like the Hoolie. Hopefully by publicly announcing my goal it will motivate me to actually go through with it. I will keep you all updated!
I have been lucky enough to more or less avoid exams this semester due to Covid-19. Most first year students were given the opportunity to submit assignments in place of your usual exams. Most of my Christmas break has been spent worrying over when my next essay is due and impatiently waiting for the day when all have been submitted. Thankfully, I managed to submit them all on time and I hope to get a semi decent grade. I hope you all did great and will be happy with your results!
With the mention of exams, I feel I should mention the exam repeat fee problem students from above years are facing at the moment. NUIG have decided to charge any student that failed an exam €295 to repeat. Even if this exam was an oral exam and would only take five minutes, a student will still be charged that amount. Even though exams take place online and would not cost that much to repeat, NUIG is focusing on its financial interests and ignoring the wellbeing of their students. The #RipOffNuig campaign on Twitter, and the concerns raised by other universities around the country shows how badly NUIG students are being treated. This fee is the equivalent of 10% of a student’s fees to the university and could be put to much more practical use. Many students commute and this money could have been used for travel expenses. Many students also live in accommodation and have food they need to buy. This fee is wildly unnecessary and needs to be removed like most other Universities have done.
I would like to end this diary entry by saying I hope everyone had a wonderful break despite the problems you may be facing and to be proud you have made it through semester one of a worrying year. Let’s hope 2021 will be better.
