Ireland – Roxy
Student: Roxy
Course: Bachelor of Forensic Science/Bachelor of Criminology
Program: Trimester exchange T1 2024
How did you spend your weekends?
Limerick University had students from so many different counties in Ireland living and studying there, meaning the weekends were very quiet as most students went home. At beginning of my time, I would use the weekends to catch up on school work, visit limerick city which had a milk market every Saturday and overall take time to settle in and relax. As my time went on and I made more friends, I was able to spend my weekends camping and surfing with my friends or staying with them in their home counties which was an amazing way to see lots of the country.
How did you make friends and what sort of things did you do together?
I was lucky to meet my closest friend at the Deakin abroad orientation session, from which we spent almost every minute together in Ireland. We joined the surf club together and this introduced us to many other people who soon became close friends. Many of our friends were Irish students who loved to surf so we spent lots of time surfing, camping, going to surf events and competitions, going out in limerick city, watching sports games, movie and dinner nights and so much more.
What is something that challenged you?
Something I found very challenging was arriving in Ireland only knowing one girl who at that point I was not extremely close with. It was also winter, meaning it was very cold, dark and depressing when I arrived, so for the first week or so I felt very lonely and out of my depth, and anything negative that happened felt much more extreme as I had no one super close to me to go to for comfort. As time went on and the people I had met became some of my best friends I no longer felt this way and I had the most amazing time however I wasn’t prepared for how I would feel when I first got there.
One piece of advice for someone studying study abroad? How should they prepare?
My big piece of advice is saying yes to things from the start and then if you don’t like it you no longer have to continue. For example, I joined the surf club not wanting to, however my best friend convinced me to give it a go and if I didn’t enjoy it, we could leave. Joining this club turned out to be the best thing we could have done, allowing us to go on many trips and make introduced us to some of our closest friends. Another thing I would advise is to try to make friends with the locals. You’ll get to experience so many more things with them than you may have otherwise, for example we found out about all the surf competitions in the different counties that we may not have known about, my friend was invited to teach young Irish girls in a surf class, we saw the secret views of all the tourist spots and we were shown around many of the beautiful counties in Ireland where our friends lived.