Third-level’s new arrivals remind us all of our youth

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

It’s the academic year’s equivalent of Spring – the season when the new young Leaving Cert lambs gambol across the NUIG lawns and pitches, eager to embrace every form of their new life and freedom.

You can spot them instantly on the morning walk to work from the westside of the city; gazing in awe and wonder at the map of the huge campus after years of confinement within the four walls of a secondary school.

For the first week, they had their new college to themselves – apart from the world-weary lecturers who make their way back after a well-earned long summer – and they’d have you convinced that the world was their oyster.

Which of course it is, even if they might have to wait a little while to conquer it just yet.

For now, they’ve freed themselves of the shackles of second-level where the attendance roll is called every morning and all misdemeanours are reported to your parents as though you don’t actually exist.

They are living away from home, in flats, shared houses or college accommodation – or indeed, these days, sleeping on floors or couches or living in hostels – but wherever it is, it’s not home.

And not being home means there are no parents; so, for the first two weeks at least, the back pain from the floorboards seems like a price worth paying.

There’s an innocence in their eyes, that sense of wonder as they enter a whole new world – of learning for sure, but just as much of partying, socialising and making the best friends you’ll ever encounter.

This is Freshers’ Week at NUIG, which – for those of us of an older vintage – might suggest it’s a tribute to a popular tangy sweet of our youth or it’s sponsored by them. It’s not; Freshers are First Years and this is to build on Orientation Week by truly immersing them in college life.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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