BellTIME attend , take a roll or even can cut your grant if don ’ t show up ; and for others with small classes you will be missed . But generally you are looked upon as an adult and are free to come and go , but you are expected to keep up with the work .
BellTIME attend , take a roll or even can cut your grant if don ’ t show up ; and for others with small classes you will be missed . But generally you are looked upon as an adult and are free to come and go , but you are expected to keep up with the work .
Level of Work Along with coping with this freedom and doing all this work there is the level of work involved . You know the step up in learning you had to take from Junior Cert to Leaving Cert , well now at third level there is an even bigger step . As we mentioned doing English in school you might cover a poem or two by Keats , in college you will study all of Keats poetry , or Dicken ’ s novels or read Proust , Goethe or Cervantes in the original language . You move from just knowing things to understanding things , debating and arguing , analysing and creating . So you can ’ t just learn it off or get the notes or spoof your way through , you will need to do hard , demanding and intellectually and creatively challenging work .
Living and working away from home Along with the freedom , increased workload and independent learning you might have to do a lot of this away from home . Yes this is appealing to be away from the constraints of home but it is not without its difficulties . So along with not having the structure of the school to support you , the support of home can also be absent . So you have to organise your own accommodation , sign leases and agreements , negotiate relationships with fellow tenants and organise factors like electricity , broadband , refuse and transport .
Are you ready for all this ? Moving to college is a challenge and you should be preparing for it if it is on your radar . If you want a quick test of whether you are prepared for college or not , consider how you react on a night when you have no homework . Do you cheer and go off to catch up with your soaps and football or do you cheer and say “ Great , this gives me on opportunity to catch up on and explore these topics I ’ m interested in !”
Can you work and study when given the freedom not to do it is the key test .
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