Ben Healy, CBC.
I recently completed a week long transition year course is UCC’s School of BEES. The course was put together for our benefit by Dr Emily Goldstein. Over the duration of the week we took part in many different activities, lectures and experiments.
On our first day on the course we received an introduction to the School from Dr Goldstein from there we continued on to various talks and lectures on an assorted group of biology and earth science related topics such as a geoscience lecture, a mammal identification experiment, a presentation on marine biology and many more activities based around the same theme. However the highlight of the week in my personal opinion had to be the bird ringing. Albeit the process initially seemed a bit cruel it wasn’t long before I learned the birds would leave the situation unharmed. The experience of handling the animals and seeing technique of a professional up close was quite interesting.
A close second my next favourite class was Ecology/Zoology lecture from Professor Gavin Burnell. Here we focused mainly on sea urchins, their habitat and their effect on their ecosystem. After the presentation was finished with we proceeded onto an experiment. Dotted around the classroom were white buckets and in them were sea urchins. This class worked particularly well because after learning about the sea urchin from a distance we then were given the opportunity to work with them up close. As we previously learned sea urchins are very cautious creatures and so will cover themselves up with anything they can find, to prove this we placed some shells and rocks inside the bucket and closed it after some time had passed we returned to find the sea urchin had made its way across the bucket and had covered itself in shells and rocks. I found it quite fascinating that such a strange looking animal was so sentient.
One of the most useful things we did over the week was the tour of the main college campus. Although it had no major usefulness for this particular course I hope it will come in useful over the coming years and was a treat to hear all the college myths and legends. The library was spectacularly big holding books almost 600 years old.
Overall I loved my week at the School of BEES the lecturers were the perfect combination of strict and lax, it helped give me a real insight to what life in university is like and especially what life at the School of BEES is like.