First Day of Graduate Studies

My class was scheduled to begin on Tuesday morning at 10AM, less then 20 hours after arriving in Cork.  I left my apartment early.  I was convinced I was going to get lost.  Miraculously, I found the archaeology department with ease.  The building is located only 5 minutes away from where I am living.  I'm sure this will come in handy when I am inevitably running late.  The building itself is nothing special.  I was one of the first students there.  Soon, the other students arrived at the Human Remains Laboratory.  There are 7 students in total.  All, but myself, are female. There is one other American student who graduated from UCSB.  She doesn't fully count as a foreign student as she did one year of her undergraduate studies at Cork.  That makes the group 5 Irish girls who all know each other (except one), one half-American girl who knows Cork well, and me, who knows nothing at all about anything going on. 

Shortly after all the students arrived, I meet the professor of the program.  He seems very nice and approachable.  He welcomes us all to the program and passes out a packet containing the overview of the courses.  We spend the next hour going over each of the courses that we will be taking.  In total, I will have to take 7 courses plus a dissertation.  Those courses include:
     Regional and Topographical Anatomy (aka Gross Anatomy)
     Mortuary Theory
     Archaeogenetics
     Biocultural Approaches to Human Remains
     Paleopathology Seminar
     Quantitative Methods in Bioarchaeology
     Osteoarchaeology Laboratory (aka Osteology)

None of the classes worry me too much as I have been exposed, in some degree, to each of them already. Each course is graded by a multiple choice examination, an essay/ paper, or a combination of both.  The professor made a point to emphasize the difficulty of the anatomy course.  This scared everyone in the room, except for me.  I am hoping my previous anatomy course and the 5 years in pathology will help me out.

After wrapping up the introductory session, a group of us went to one of the food areas on campus and got lunch together.  Everyone seems very friendly and I think the group will get along just fine over the next year.  There is one girl who has already distanced herself from the group.  She is difficult to figure out and declined our invitation to join us at lunch.

After lunch, we had our first lecture in Anatomy.  The class is located in a brand new building and took us about 10-15 minutes to walk to from the Archaeology building.  It's a large course with approximately 75 students in it.  The course is made up of students from 3 different programs, 1st-year physiotherapy, 3-year neuroscience, and master's osteology students.  This further calmed my nerves as I figured if 1st-years are in this class then it can't be that difficult.  But, I am not going to become lazy because of that.  The class had begun and the student who did not join us for lunch was not there.  She finally arrived several minutes after the class had begun.  I'm not sure how well she is going to do in the program.  Over the next hour, I tried to entertain myself as I listened to a very boring lecture on anatomical position and directions.  I hope the course stays this easy.  We were informed that the class schedule for Wednesday (tomorrow) was canceled.  As that is my only class on Wednesday, I now had a day off.

Class ended and I had one final thing to do before I could go home and sleep.  I had to sign and submit some papers to the International Students Office.  It didn't take too long and soon I was back at my apartment. 

I think the program is going to be a good fit for me.  However, I am afraid that it will be mostly review and I wont actually be learning new material.  I guess that is to be seen.  Its easy to underestimate a course in the beginning.  Either way, I will be getting my Master's Degree and that all I really care about.