{"id":13381,"date":"2025-08-21T07:32:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T07:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/13381\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T07:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T07:32:07","slug":"i-was-commuting-from-meath-for-three-hours-a-day-so-i-know-that-it-can-be-hard-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/13381\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I was commuting from Meath for three hours a day, so I know that it can be hard\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keeping up a social, academic and work life balance can be tough while studying at university. However, students \u2013 and third-level institutions \u2013 are finding creative solutions to make sure students don\u2019t miss out on clubs and societies. <\/p>\n

Prof Celine Marmion, of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI<\/a>), explains how their student engagement and partnership (StEP) programme sees students and staff work together on research projects, with students paid for their time. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen some with transformative results,\u201d she says, \u201cincluding a project led by a Brazilian medical student to allow Latin American students to be screened for Chagas disease<\/a>, so they may be eligible to give blood.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Long commutes and working hours exclude students from an important side of college lifeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking with our students, we also co-designed a student leadership development programme. This sees student council, club and society leaders receive leadership training, self-care and resilience skills, information on data protection and, also, equality, diversity and inclusivity training.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the start of this process, they do a self-evaluation and then, at the end, we ask them to do it again. They also write a reflection. We\u2019ve seen a statistically significant increase across 12 of the 14 themes covered on the training.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although students don\u2019t always have the time to get involved in college life, smaller class sizes can help too. At RCSI, larger classes are broken up into learning communities of 60 students; this group of 60 is further divided into five groups of 12.<\/p>\n

Amelie Treacy, a second year student on RCSI\u2019s advanced therapeutic technologies<\/a> (ATT) course, says that academic life can be busy, but she gets a break through involvement in clubs and societies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was commuting from Meath for three hours a day, so I know that it can be hard,\u201d Treacy says. \u201cBut I found the lecturers were very understanding about this, and the clubs and societies are accommodating with meetings often held online. <\/p>\n

\u201cI really enjoyed being class rep last year, and I\u2019m heavily involved in the Gaelic Football Association and the ATT Society.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think students should try to join as many clubs and societies as possible, as it\u2019s a great way to make friends and explore different interests. Doing the RCSI leadership course was a great opportunity to work on personal development and self-reflection,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keeping up a social, academic and work life balance can be tough while studying at university. However, students…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,12552,18,13,14,2215,6,19,17,11,12,12550,15,16,5,12549,12551,1420,12548,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-13381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-classroom-to-college","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-for-you","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-leaving-certificate","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-rcsi","25":"tag-second-level","26":"tag-students","27":"tag-third-level","28":"tag-top-stories","29":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}