Having received their Leaving Cert results and subsequent CAO offers last week many Tipperary students are now turning their attention to college.
However just like their Leaving Cert college life has changed significantly due to the impact of Covid
Dr Geraldine Brosnan is Director of Student Life at Mary Immaculate College which has campuses in Thurles and Limerick.
She says while there will be restrictions they’ve done all they can to ensure that students get the most from their time at Mary I despite the Covid-19 restrictions.
“There won’t be as much free movement of students around campus – that will be much more structured. And we can’t have the same volume of students obviously on campus.”
“So we worked very hard over the summer period to try to work how we can support students and engage students and find mechanisms so that they can get to know each other and have a student experience and hopefully will enjoy their time with us.”
Meanwhile the change to blended learning has left many Tipperary college students with a dilemma when it comes to accommodation.
They face paying significant sums in rent despite the fact that much of their course will be online which could be done from home.
Aisling Cusack is President of the Students Union at Mary Immaculate which has campuses in Limerick and Thurles.
She says there are differing views among students but many still want to get the campus experience.
“We’ve been telling students firstly don’t put themselves under any financial difficulty and try to just get accommodation for the weeks they are actually going to be on campus.”
“But I’ve been talking to a good few students over the last few weeks and a lot of them do want to stay in Limerick or Thurles for whole semester. It’s literally 50-50 between people who are staying just for the week they’re going to be in college or else they’re actually going to stay down.”
Listen back to Dr Geraldine Brosnan and Aisling Cusack on Tipp Today with Fran Curry :
