Sorcha Howard, Christ King Girls Secondary School
For my transition year work experience I came to University College Cork and did a course on Biological, Earth and Environmental Studies.
One of my favourite experiences during the BEES programme was when we did some practical work with a postgraduate from UCC. During this class, we were split up into different groups and each group had a different postgraduate teaching and helping us. In my group we went outside, the postgraduate that we were with had planted six or seven traps to catch small animals, in the UCC grounds, the night before. The traps were small metal boxes but were big enough to hold small animals, they had a tunnel and when a small animal entered the tunnel it would hit a trip wire which would cause the door of the trap to close. It was placed slanted so that the animal would not get cold from the ground and so any liquids could flow out. As a group we went and found all the traps and got to see what they were after trapping during the night. Out of all of the traps, we had caught 3 wood mice. We put them each in an individual bag and took a look at them and learnt some interesting information as to how you could figure out the population of small animals, such as wood mice, in a certain area. We named the mice we had caught and then let them free where we had caught them.
It was like a mad scientist’s lab.
It was great to experience the life as a college student, and for the social side of college. I am really glad I applied for the BEES programme and hope to come back and study here in a few years.