Yes, we’ve survived the second day of foundation week. The second day has been ‘friendlier’ then the first. The first day seemed like the most daunting. A few days before the class, we received information that we had to complete a five-page report, digest three voluminous reports and edit a 303-word piece.
My first though was, “O my God! It’s just the first day of foundation week and we already have a homework!”. Well all the best to all of us. We chose to board the MBA ship here, so we’ll just have to swallow the seawater of homework, readings and assignments.
For most international students, like me, the information was only digested the night before the assignments were due. Some stayed up until 4 am to finish them up.
Apparently, Prof Niamh didn’t individually check any of them. We were just asked us to discuss the assignments. But not doing them would have been a waste of time because of the investment we are paying to join the programme. The important part of was learning how to critique and edit our own work so the lecturers wouldn’t have such a hard time grading our reports. Or we wouldn’t be so surprised to see so many red marks in our papers. Haha.
There’s a great mix of classmates. More than sixty percent of the full time class is international. As an international student, it makes me feel more at home, though none of the students are from my home country. But the plus point is that the Irish are very friendly. So even if we didn’t have the large number of internationals, it would be easy to feel at home with the warm reception from the school and most of the locals. As the international student advisor mentioned, “The Irish are said to be friendly to make up for the rainy weather. “
– Nur Zahira M Sukran, FT MBA 2012/13