On Irish Mobiles

All of the visiting students have the little pink Nokia from Meteor. Originally there were also silver ones, but they sold out right away (none of the guys wanted pink, I guess, so there was demand from both the girls and guys for silver, while only demand from girls for the pink). So pretty much everyone has pink the ones. You can buy them at any Meteor store, and they only cost €70, including €20 of free calling time. So basically that's €50 for the phone, which considering, is pretty darn good for expensive Ireland. Texting is free from Meteor to Meteor, and texting other phones is only €0.09 per text. Calls are more, but honestly, who calls anyone at college? Sure there are the family calls, but those are with Skype or calling cards, not cell phones (it'd be silly). Texting can be done in class and at the library, and is the way to go. Calls to the US are €0.50 per minute (outrageous, I know), but texts are only €0.15. It's all pay as you go, pretty much everyone's is. Other phone companies here are O2 and Vodafone. My favorite part of the phone though? The battery. I charge it only once every week and a half to two weeks, which is much better than the once every couple of days the phones at home require. And I pretty much never turn it off. There you go.

On Irish Graduations

Because of the delay in grading (no scantron sheets here, it's by hand, and mostly essay!), no one finds out how they did on spring exams until early September. Their majors here require them to take a set track of classes (first year science, for example, requires: chemistry, biology, physics, and first year maths), and from those classes they need an overall passing grade (40% I believe) to be able to move on to second year classes. If they don't pass, they either retake their exams, or retake the entire first year of courses. Which means they don't know if they can move on to second year or not until September, which is when they're returning and moving in, and which I would think would lead to a great amount of stress. It doesn't seem to, though, so I guess it works. Anyways, fourth years are just now graduating, as they just found out a little over a month ago if they actually could graduate, or if they'd need to retake fourth year exams, and there are graduates in graduation gowns all over campus, which is kind of cool to get to see.