• Question: What helped you decide on your choice of degree and what did the course consist of?

    Asked by Eva-Brennan to John, Emma on 8 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by cj109.
    • Photo: John Gleeson

      John Gleeson answered on 8 Nov 2015:

      I’m very much a serendipitous person. How I got where I currently am, is all due to falling down the rabbit hole. I originally planned to do Molecular Biology in UCD (it was number 1 on my CAO). And boy did I bomb the LC. So I didn’t get it. But was offered Pharmaceutical Science in DIT. So I did that for a year then I was friends with people in a course in Nutraceuticals and then I put in paper work to transfer. So I am so glad that the wrong poets came up in the LC 🙂

      My course covered a lot of pharmaceutical science, food science and nutrition. So I’ve friends working in each of these industries after our course. We got to have labs in food production (we got to eat our homework) and medicinal chemistry (where we made drugs you’d find in pharmacies…. which we definitely weren’t allowed eat)

    • Photo: Emma Feeney

      Emma Feeney answered on 13 Nov 2015:

      Ha, well mum sort of told me!! I applied for art course and for genetics course, and got offers for both. I was considering which one to pick and she said she couldn’t handle the house if I did art!!! (I am a bit messy). But I am very glad I chose the science route – I really enjoyed my degree. In first year, we did lots of general biology, chemistry and physics, with some ‘electives’ where you just pick anything.

      I did Paleo ecology, where we learnt loads about the earth in paleo times, what people would have eaten , what the weather was like, how people made tools etc it was really cool. Then the next three years were a lot more genetics-specific, but I did some food micro as well, and we got to do things like clone genes into bacteria (not as fun as it sounds).

      We did a lot of lab practicals, and they were great because you learn so much in them when you get to do it yourself. I also did a module in behavioural ecology, where we studied the behaviour of other animals.

      I hate spiders with a passion, but we had to go to a place that we nicknamed spier island, and watch how spiders build their webs and stuff and write a paper on it. Now, I thought I would hate it, but I ended up really enjoying watching them tipping their little legs on the webs as they communicate with each other!

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