Week 7: Finals and Final Week in Dublin
Hello, hello! Declan McGrath is back to tell you all what has happened in the final week of the Big 10 STEM Physics and Irish History Program at UCD Dublin. Oh man this is gonna be a tough one to write. As I begin to write this post I am currently sitting alone in my dorm listening to sad songs and reminiscing about everything that has happened in these last few weeks. Most of the people I have been hanging out with during this entire trip are on their flights home right now and the rest are packing. However! I still gotta finish telling you all about my Pisa and Paris trip.
When I last left off on this blog I was completely exhausted and boarding a flight to go to France. The flight was fairly uneventful, we got up pretty early so we pretty much all slept on the plane to make up for it. When we finally landed in France we were struggling pretty much immediately. See, Italy was a lot more English-speaker friendly; most signs were in Italian and English and a lot of times we were greeted in English. France had no such luxuries. We wandered around the airport trying to find where we could get a taxi to the train station after failing to call an Uber. Eventually, we managed to find one who almost immediately took a detour back to, what we assume to be, his house to help his wife get out of their driveway. He left us in the taxi with the meter still running while he helped her. He honestly must have just picked us out as easy marks to make some extra money while helping his wife because we did end up paying for that entire thing.
We did make it to the train station in time to catch our train to Paris, despite this detour. The train ride was over an hour long. Did I use this time wisely to study for my two upcoming final exams? Nope! I read a book and looked at the views from the window :)
We hopped off our original train to catch a different train for our first stop of our Paris trip: Musée d’Orsay. This museum was absolutely full of the most beautiful art I have ever seen in my life. There were paintings with more detail than you could ever dream of someone fitting on a single canvas, giant statues that towered over us, and metalworks that shone brightly. We spent hours here, just wandering from room to room, admiring all of the gorgeous artworks.
One of the most famous things housed here were collections of Vincent van Gogh’s and Claude Monet’s paintings. These works were stunning. It was incredible to see these original works of art that have inspired and entranced so many people for over a century now.
After a while, the exhaustion from the past three days of travel wore me down and I took a seat in a room with some nice paintings to look at as I recuperated. There was one painting of these beautiful ice glaciers with the most amazing deep blues that I really liked. As I was admiring this painting I noticed from the corner of my eye that someone had started drawing me. I thought that being chosen to be the subject of someone’s artwork while being surrounded by literally some of the most amazing art to have been created was a once in a lifetime opportunity so I sat and posed stoically for a while, admiring the art around me while moving as little as possible. No words were exchanged between the two of us, just a silent agreement made. After a short time the artist came over and showed me the final product and I was astounded. I really love this drawing.
We talked for a little after that before we had to part ways and it was onto my group’s next destination. Unfortunately, we did have enough time in the day to visit and enjoy all the places we wanted to visit so a couple of our trips were just cursory viewings of the outside of spots. One such place was the Louvre. When we arrived at the museum it was just about to close for the night so we only took a couple pictures outside the famous glass pyramid before moving on.
The next spot we visited was the Arc de Triomphe. This massive arch was covered in beautiful carvings that awed us all.
Our next stop was our hostel finally. We had been on our feet pretty much all day and were dead tired and we promptly collapsed into our beds.
The next morning we slept in for a good long while, which was absolutely necessary. This was the first morning we had really gotten a decent amount of sleep and we sorely needed it. When we finally did manage to peel ourselves away from our warm, comfy sheets we headed to a bakery called Le Pain Au Naturel. This bakery had a life-changing chocolate and almond croissant. I don’t think I can properly put into words how amazing this croissant was. I was nigh moved to tears by its flavors.
After that revolutionary experience we headed to the Paris Catacombs. We descended these spiral stairs that seemed to go on and on forever. Every time I thought we had reached the bottom there would be more stairs waiting for me like some kind of twisted human-sized hamster wheel. Eventually, we made it to the bottom and began to make our way through the claustrophobic tunnels. It was about this time that I began to be very thankful that we had another private hostel room and were able to leave our backpacks behind as the tunnels kept getting narrower and narrower and shorter and shorter. There were multiple times that I had to duck down to avoid hitting my head on some protruding rock. As we traveled down the tunnels, our footsteps echoing down the winding corridors, water dripped onto our heads and I began to realize how truly far underground we were. There was absolutely no signal down here and could be incredibly dark in some places.
After marching through the tunnels for about 20 minutes we finally reached the entrance to the Catacombs, marked by the passage “ARRETE! C’EST ICI L’EMPIRE DE LA MORT” (Halt! This is the empire of the dead). We stepped through the threshold and were instantly enclosed with death. Every single wall was hidden behind stacks of femurs, ribs, and dozens upon dozens of skulls. It is pretty hard to describe the feeling of being surrounded by so much demise so far underground but it was unique. It wasn’t scary per se. I knew this area was incredibly well mapped out and there was no real danger of getting lost or trapped but it was still very off-putting.
In addition to bones, there were also quotes on the wall in both Latin and French. It was about this time that I really started wishing I had paid more attention to my Latin classes in high school but there was no changing that now (and certainly no Google translating this far underground now). I wish I could show you all some photos from the Catacombs but I have no idea what tumblr’s policy on showing pictures of dead people is and I’d rather not get my post taken down.
Eventually we ascended the stairs and were greeted by light. Not sunlight, mind you, the fluorescent lights of the gift shop. There was some pretty cool stuff there and I bought about $40 worth of iron-on patches for my jacket. In addition to this little shopping spree we also lightened the somber mood by going back to Le Pain Au Naturel for another amazing croissant.
We next went to a park called the Luxembourg Garden. The park was filled with amazing statues and flower beds.
Near the gardens there was also a large house with a fountain out in the front. The fountain was full of small sailboats with various country’s flags on them. The boats could be rented from a nearby stand along with a short pole that was used to upright the boats if they got stuck on the wall.
Finally we decided to go get some traditional French crepes. We found a place called the “La Crepe Rit Du Clown”. True to its name, the creperie was filled with creepy clown statues. Why did they choose this as their theme for the restaurant? I will never know. But the crepes were amazing! I ordered a crepe with chocolate sauce, whipped cream, toasted almonds, and a fried pear. Because I had literally eaten nothing but sugary foods for the entire day, I split my crepe with my friend Brennen in exchange for half of his ham and egg crepe. Both of the crepes were absolutely phenomenal. The clowns could have come alive like some kind of messed up haunted house for all I cared as long as I got to finish my crepes.
Then we were back on the train heading to the Palace of Versailles. The Palace was absolutely beautiful. It shone with gold roofs and fences and was decorated to the nines. We took a tour of the inside seeing all of the amazing paintings and sculptures and history housed within its immense walls. As a Greek mythology nerd, I absolutely loved all of the rooms in the Palace that were themed around specific Greek gods.
We hopped back on a train and headed back to the hostel for a little bit for some rest as one of our friends had to do some work for her job. By this time the sun had set but we still had one more place we had to visit before the night was over. We hopped back on the train once again (we spent so much money on train tickets, I really wish they had a day pass or something like that) to see the monument that we had seen multiple times passing in the distance. Finally, we emerged from the subway tunnels and saw it, all lit up in all its glory: the Eiffel Tower.
The massive tower loomed over us (thank you thesaurus.com for that synonym of “towered”). The immense metal pillar was decorated with shining lights and decorated for the Olympic games. We took some pictures underneath the tower and then found a seat underneath the tower where we could watch the light show. We managed to arrive just in time to watch the 11:00 PM show and it was really cool! The whole thing had already been glowing but now it was twinkling (oooh… aaaaah).
The next morning was our last day in Paris so that meant it was time for a lot of walking to see as many sights as we could. We started off by walking to Sainte Chapelle. Sainte Chapelle was a chapel with some of the most beautiful stained glass windows I have ever seen in my entire life. The sun streamed through the windows, lighting up the room in a kaleidoscope of bright colors. The windows also depicted various scenes from the Old Testament of the Bible which were pretty cool to see and try to figure out which scenes I could recognize.
Next up was Notre Dame. We only had a passing glance at this historic cathedral as it was still undergoing reconstruction due to the fire a couple years ago (holy cow that was 2019 that is wild, I feel old now). It was still pretty cool to see even if it was surrounded by cranes and such.
You want to know what’s really cool after seeing two churches? A third church. Specifically, we visited Basilique du Sacré Coeur which was up a very very steep, tall hill which was devastating for our tired legs and feet. The trek was well worth it as at the top we were greeted with a panoramic view of a large portion of the city. The basilica itself was pretty amazing too with incredibly detailed paintings and sculptures inside.
Sacré Coeur was the last sightseeing spot we went to as we now had a train to catch. On our way Allie fulfilled her lifelong goal of buying and eating a baguette in France.
It was about when we got on the train that I realized I should probably start studying for my final exams as our first one was the next day and I was in an entirely different country with only a couple hastily made notes. I spent the train ride to the airport reading the course’s history book and taking notes. I had not actually brought my own book on this trip and was borrowing Allie’s so I really had to finish my notes before the train ride ended which I mostly did (sans some minor details like specific dates, proper spelling, and important figures).
We made it to the airport unscathed but the same could not be said for our flight to Dublin. In the last few minutes of the flight I rubbed my itching nose which for some reason signaled my nose that now was a perfect time to start gushing blood. My nose was of course wrong (really the only proper time to get a nosebleed is when you’re performing really intense telekinesis) and I had no tissues to stop the bleeding. I did however have my history notebook! I managed to tear a blank page out of the notebook and use it momentarily to stop the bleeding. I would like to point out that even though we were flying at night and the cabin was dark I was able to accomplish all of this without bleeding on anyone else and managing to only lightly smear the notes I had taken on the train with blood. When the plane finally landed I stumbled off the plane with a pocket full of bloody notebook paper and a face that looked like a vampire who only sort of knew what he was doing.
We rushed through Dublin customs (my face covered in drying blood and my nose still leaking, though now staunched with a tissue) and managed to show up to the bus stop five minutes after our bus back to UCD had already left. It was midnight at this point and the next bus wouldn’t be coming for another hour and our first final exam was in about 10 hours. That meant it was time for more studying at the bus stop, for everyone else that is. I was kind of loopy from slight blood loss and exhaustion so I spent the next hour just kind of wandering around and talking to people after I found a bathroom to clean myself in. Our bus finally arrived at five minutes to 1 and we managed to make it back to UCD at 2 AM, 8 hours before our final exam.
You know? It probably wasn’t the smartest idea to have our flight land the same day as our final exam but in our defense the earlier flight was about $100 more expensive so I would say that it was a pretty smart financial decision but maybe not the brightest academic decision. I managed to get some more studying in on the bus ride back and did really well on the exam! We had been given six topics beforehand for this history exam and were told to study two which made things pretty easy. I managed to succinctly answer the two questions in two four page essays.
At this point it was Tuesday, I was exhausted from traveling and I still had a physics exam to study for for the next day so I did the most reasonable thing I could think of. I took a nap. I tried, I really did, to study for the exam before napping but my brain was mush. I awoke from my nap and then spent the rest of the day studying for the exam.
The physics exam went pretty well as well! I had managed to cover most of the exam material before collapsing into my bed at midnight and I walked out of the exam confident I had done well and passed the class (though at this point I physically could not have failed the class as I needed negative points on it to fail but hey I am nothing if not an overachiever).
That meant that we were done with all the coursework for the program and still had three more days left in the program before we got kicked out of our housing. It was time to have some more fun. After another quick power nap and dinner to get our energy back we headed to the UCD Student Bar for trivia night. Almost every single week we had tried and failed to win trivia night and this time… was no different. It wasn’t even close, we lost so bad y’all.
However! The time had finally come for me to finally rid myself of the curse of the pancakes (for those tuning into this blog for the first time, hi, I promise I am a normal human being I just bought a lot of flour to make pancakes one time and have been desperately trying to not waste food so I just keep making pancakes over and over again). I had enough flour for 3.5 batches of pancakes and enough hungry college students to eat that much. I made chocolate pancakes, mixed berry pancakes, chocolate chip and mixed berry pancakes, marshmallow pancakes, and chocolate chip and marshmallow pancakes. My friends also made scrambled eggs and bacon. It was a veritable feast and was also one of my favorite nights on the entire trip. We devoured the pancakes, played some games, and just talked.
The next morning was the first day of the end of the program without any classes or exams so we all slept in pretty late. It was Thursday and as most people were leaving Friday morning that meant a good portion of the day was spent packing after a farewell event organized by UCD. Once everyone was finished with their packing we played a game of Jeopardy that Brennen had put together with categories based around things that happened during the program. It was a really fun time.
After we finished Jeopardy we went back to my apartment one last time to end the night in the same way we ended most nights, a game of cards. It was a sweet, melancholic ending to the program as a whole. We had all become such close friends over these past seven weeks and none of us really wanted it to end but at the same time we were all missing home something fierce. As one last thing we all began signing posters that we had all gotten at the farewell event and suddenly more and more people began showing up in my apartment. The apartment I lived in was on the ground floor so as people walked by they could see in and see us hanging out and saying goodbye and just decided to join in. By the end, our posters were absolutely covered in signatures and the night slowly came to a close as one by one people shuffled out of the apartment and back to their own to sleep.
The next morning pretty much everyone was gone. There had been a slight miscommunication between UMich and the other schools as Michigan told us our housing a day later than all the other universities told their students so there were only about seven people from the nearly 70 original people of the program left on campus, myself included. It was pretty weird walking to the dining hall for our last meals and seeing it almost completely empty. I spent most of the rest of the day packing and getting ready for my flight back home that day. I wanted to have like a really sentimental moment where I watched the last sunset I might ever see in Ireland but Irish weather decided “nah, it’s gonna be cloudy all day” so I kind of just wandered around campus at 9 PM, looking at all the sights I had become so used to seeing for the past weeks. I wrote a little of this blog and then went to sleep.
The journey home went off without a hitch. There was no catastrophic nosebleed this time and I managed to get some shuteye (despite the crying child in the seat in front of me). I landed in Canada where I met my dad and we began the drive back home to Michigan.
Well, I guess that’s it. This post is nearly 4000 words long and I have reached tumblr's limit for photos I can include in one post. I honestly do not know how to end this blog post. I am laying in my bed at home, I’ve got my dog next to me as well as a box of tissues (I am not crying I just got sick pretty much immediately after landing and have a horrible stuffy nose). Don’t fret though dear readers! I still have one more blog post to write next week as a post-trip reflection but until then, I’ll see you around.
Big 10 STEM Physics and Irish History Program at UCD Dublin
