TY2013: “It made me realise how intelligent birds actually are”

I really enjoyed my week in the School of BEES. It was really interesting, writes Dearbhla Murphy of Christ King Secondary School, Douglas.

On Monday we were introduced to the kind of work the School of BEES does. One of my favourite things from the first day was our trip to the Cooperage. We saw many preserved animals such as a cheetah and a kitten with two heads. We also had a Geology lecture and practical. The practical involved drawing some fossils.

On Tuesday we were in the Cooperage again for a Zoology lecture. It was extremely interesting. We conducted an experiment on Sea Urchins which I really enjoyed. After that we had a talk about birds. It made me realise how intelligent birds actually are. We also had a Plant Science lecture that day. It made me realise that plants are a lot more interesting than I thought. We had a practical after that and learned about genetically modified plants.

On Wednesday we had a tour of the Boole Library and the UCC campus. It was really fun. We were shown some of the oldest books in the library. Some books were worth 750,000 euro! We went to a lot of places on the campus tour. One of my favourite places was the Observatory. It was pretty cool to see the massive telescope and see the roof being opened. We then worked with some Postgrad students. It was really interesting to see what they do on a daily basis.

On Thursday we had an interactive careers talk. I found this extremely useful. It showed me that there are many jobs out there if you were to do a degree with the School of BEES. We then went to the Eureka centre where we learned about Chemistry and did some fun Chemistry experiments.  I really enjoyed this week and I would like to come back here again.