Read on to find out about my semester in Ireland...
My semester abroad in Galway, Ireland during the Fall of 2003 was an amazing experience beyond all my expectations. I couldn't have asked for a better study abroad experience--I made some of the best friends of my life, and saw some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. Best of all, the Irish people were as friendly as everyone says, and it proved to be an amazing opportunity to learn about the Irish people and their culture.
The following pages detail my time there. Feel free to contact me, Jennifer Kelm, with any questions at jkelm@uiuc.edu.
Click the links below to see some of my photos
Background
I'm a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, majoring in mechanical engineering and bioengineering. I plan to graduate in December 2003. Studying abroad as an engineering student for a semester or year is entirely possible--it just took some time to find a University that would offer the courses I needed to fulfill my requirements here.
I attended the National University of Ireland - Galway, and my study abroad program was organized through the Butler Institute for Study Abroad. They were very easy to work with, and it wasn't much different than going through one of U of I's study abroad programs. There were approximately 50 other students from all over the U.S. in the Butler program studying in Galway, which was a great way to make immediate friends. Our group had a week of orientation together in Limerick before moving into Galway, and I became great friends with the other kids in my program.
I lived in Corrib Village, which is a student housing complex that housed mainly foreign students and first-year Irish students. I had three other American roommates who were also from the Butler program. We had four bedrooms and three bathrooms in our flat, along with a living room and kitchen. The flat was completely furnished, including a TV, kitchen supplies, and laundry facilities.
I took classes with third and fourth year mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering students, including heat transfer, finite element analysis, biomaterials, Fortran programming, and bioethics, all of which will be used for course requirements at U of I. The biggest difference between courses at home and abroad is that we had no homework--just labs and one final exam determined your grade for the course! That created a lot of free time the first three months I was there, and a ton of studying during the last few weeks. I was the only American student in my classes--and the Irish kids all knew me right away. They take all of their classes together, and noticed immediately I was the new kid--everyone knew my name and where I was from before I'd met half of them!