Contrary to popular belief...

...I do actually attend class in Ireland. In fact, I'm so intense about school that I camped out at 4:00 this morning to register for a class. I woke up at 3:30 with my alarm and immediately wanted to go back to sleep. The thought of being shut out of my first choice English seminar, though, was enough to make me drag myself out of my warm bed and greet the pre-dawn air. Molly, Kirsten, and I were the only three from Niland House to make the commitment so early.


Here we are waiting outside the quadrangle. We were numbers 8, 9, and 10 in line which pretty much guaranteed us our first choice. The first few hours consisted of me shivering and complaining and listening to the Sweeney Todd soundtrack on loop until my mp3 player died.

By 5:00, there were at least thirty people in line. The smarter ones had worn hats, gloves, and scarves or brought blankets and snacks. I amused myself for about two minutes taking some nighttime pictures, very few of which actually turned out.


This is the line of people at around 5:00. We started a list with the exact order of everybody so that no one could cut the line. The list ended up getting suspiciously lost but we made another one because there was NO WAY we weren't going to be among the first in that building.

In the end, everything worked out. Everyone I knew who was there before sunrise got the classes they wanted. By registration time (9:00) there were over two hundred students waiting and I know most of them at the end did not get their classes. I heard from my roommate that the English department was inventing new courses on the spot because they ran out of room in the others. It was a very different registration experience than those we have at St. Joe's. I am so glad I got the seminar I was hoping for. (For all who are interested, it is a study of Jane Austen and her works.)
The final image for today is of the quadrangle building before dawn. There's a picture of this same building in daylight in one of my earliest posts. I thought it would be interesting to see a nighttime picture of it.