Turn Your F'ing Music Off

Let’s see- what has happened since the last time I wrote?

Well I had my first couple classes in my ‘History of Ireland’ course- which have all been fabulous! I’m so excited to get to experience taking a college course in a different country. I’m interested to see what kinds of similarities and differences I see between the American and Irish teaching styles. Also, I’m interested for the overall subject matter. But even more than that, I’m interested to learn the history of Ireland from an actual Irish perspective. (But mostly I’m interested in finding another word for interesting because I just said that one about five times!) Anyways, I’ve obviously taken history courses on other countries and regions before but they’re still always from the foreign, American perspective so it’ll be cool to take this Irish history course in Ireland!

The first thing to note is that in Ireland college “professors” are called ‘lecturers.’ The term professor is saved for someone who is truly accomplished in the academic field and is not tossed around as much as in America. My lecturer is great and she really makes all the lectures interesting. Plus, she always ends with a full-class debate/discussion where she really works to get everyone involved, and I really love this. The first day she addressed how many mixed abilities there were going to be in the room because everyone was from different colleges, different majors, and different ages. I liked this because catering to mixed abilities is something we talk about so often in my education classes. So to hear this Irish lecturer address the issue was actually kind of cool. So far I think she’s done a good job of catering to the different abilities. Although I’m a history major I don’t find the class too easy and I think it is probably a great level for those that haven’t taken history in a couple of years.

We recently had our lecture on the Irish potato famine, which led to a great discussion on if it was misguided policy or passive genocide. I tend to lead towards the former of the two. We also watched a bit of Irish Riverdancing, which I loved! The first week of July the history class is taking a walking tour of Dublin while the music class is going to see Riverdance. Well the history class is now really interested in going to that also, so some of us are going to look into how much it would cost for us to go!

Outside the Natural History Museum of the National Museum of Ireland. (Please note: This picture was taken from the internet and not by me.)

I also had my interview on Wednesday for my internship. For those that aren’t aware, I’ll be doing my internship at the Natural History branch of the National Museum of Ireland. I was a little bit nervous because the day before we had someone come in to talk to us about the interviews. He was talking about the differences between the Irish and American workplace and for the first time I really began to grasp that I’d be working in a culture entirely different from my own!

Some of the things he brought up seemed so weird to me. For instance, in Ireland it’s customary to ask a question three times, because once just isn’t enough apparently. So if I were to ask someone if they wanted a cup of tea- I’d have to ask it three times if they say no the first time. Because apparently chances are they really do want the tea but it’s polite to say no two times first. So do you want some tea? No I’m good. Are you sure, it’s no problem. Oh no thanks. Oh come on, how about you have some tea with me? Okay, that sounds nice. I thought that was pretty funny when he told us about it!

He also talked about how the Irish are less direct than Americans. So in the past they had an intern who was listening to her iPod at work and the boss said, “You really like your music, don’t you?” The intern assumed he was just making conversation and said that she did. Apparently, what he really meant by that was “Turn your F’ing music off” and the intern was let go after that! Crazy!

So I was pretty nervous going into my interview- but it wound up going great! I talked with the ‘keeper’ of the Natural History Museum for over an hour and a half! He gave me a tour of the museum, which is currently closed for renovation.

Apparently about two years ago one of their staircases collapsed (with eight people on it! Luckily they were all okay). Well after that the microscope was put on the building and they found that it wasn’t up to many fire codes- though it was built back in the 1850s so that’s to be expected! Finally they had to close the building in order to take care of all the problems.

The building is supposed to reopen in September but with only the first of the three floors opened. Apparently to bring the second and third floor up to code is still going to take another five or ten years! So they figure in the meantime they’ll open up the first floor. Which means they now have to decide what exhibits to bring down to the first floor and display, and which to not display at all.

Inside the Natural History Museum of the National Museum of Ireland. (Please note: This picture was taken from the internet and not by me.)

It sounds like I’ll have quite a few tasks throughout the summer, including cataloguing items and assessing exhibits. The keeper, Nigel, is really big on the idea that I’m free labor, which means he’s very open to whatever I’d like to do. He said that if he has me on a task but I see another one that looks interesting to just tell him and then I can do the other task! He also said that he could get me into the other museums for a couple of days if I want and other areas as well- such as their educational programming department and preservation of artifacts. FYI there are four branches of the National Museum-- Natural History, Archeology, Decorative Arts & History, and Country Life.

I start Monday and I can’t wait! It should be such an amazing experience!

written by

kmr788 on June 4, 2009 from Dublin, Ireland

from the travel blog: Dublin, Ireland

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