It's all over in a flash..reflection on my module.

Well it really feels like only yesterday that i was lining up in registration in a nervous panic;didnt know anyone and found it very hard all together to get used to the college.But in what was really only a matter of weeks i have gone from feeling very much that i wasn't the college type to really enjoying my education for once.In secondary school you learn because you have to but in college you learn,maybe not necessarily because you want to,but because you you have a longing to;a longing to understand,and to ultimitly enjoy the course you have chosen.
I think i have achieved this in the last few months as ive really got stuck in to the course.I have made some very close firends already and really find that i have been blessed with an incredible class of people.As for my c.i.t. module i really did have a stroke of good luck to get put with the group i am with,they really are a great punch of people who i found it very easy to get along with.Sarah was of course a fantastic leader.With her we were able to do the work needed without feeling to much pressure or feel restrained by time.The whole group i found worked well together and i only hope others in my class had as good a time as i did with my group and i wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.

reflection of CIT module

Its been a great first term, this module was a learning experience, first IT module without a computer class but it has given food for thought, a tough task given without any help along the way has helped forge some of us and dishearten others. On the whole though the "herbals" have all come out the other side with new skills that will stand to us in the future. finding time in the day for BLOG entrys, seting up mahara, researching for news letters, holding interviews and putting together group projects out of college hours wasn't easy especially with all the study time needed for our other "heavy" subjects. with all this heavy work load the snow was a nice sight last wednesday in clone (bit mad having a class that day wit the roads like ice), ended up havin snow ball fights, laughin and playing around, it was a welcome break in between exams which are finnishing this week (have to cut it short for an exam in 5 mins, goodbye BLOGGERS) 

Having a look to see whats inside

These weeks and months rolled by without being marred by angered confrontation or even a trace of ill-will, with any random assortment of students, such an outcome must be noted and appreciated. It took a part time project to get one step into the minds of  of 3 other people, to see what drives them and what, if left to their own devices, they would think and write about a shared experience. clonakilty every wednesday for a few hours, shared anxiety before and after exams. I found that the blog was an excellent outlet to stay in contact with the goings on in college day to day, having missed some time in college during this first semester. It was also very helpful to see what may be the future of education, with the use of online resources furthering my views on what may and may not be integral to tendering for employment and experience.

It will be great disappointment that this will see the end of this particular grouping, with excessive help from Jess Peter and of course team leader extraodinare Miss Sarah Fox. Without each of these folks i surely would have shaken and toppled under the strain, to see others excell encourages you to do all you can.

Through the looking glass....a reflection on the last 12 weeks....

So it began all those weeks ago...strangers with one thing in common..a long road of herbal science ahead. For the CIT module we got randomly assigned to groups of class mates to work with toward the common goal of blogging, researching and presenting and all together figuring out some "new fangled" technological advances in the form of blogspot, prezi, mahara and wallwisher.

To reflect on the CIT module as a whole I have to say that I learned a lot about different media resources available that I think will be beneficial to me in the future and I also learned a lot about team work.

The point, I suppose, of being assigned the group was to initially to get us to mingle and get to know each other and learn team work, and taking responsibility within the team. I definitely think that these aspects were achieved as I now feel like the people in my group are friends, people I can count on and people who I look up to for there vast range of skills and assets.
I could not be happier with the group I was assigned as they each brought very important qualities to each part of the module, the course itself and to my progression in the entire semester.
Peter, a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the sciences and always an interesting mind to pick when confusion arose in any subject, is a good guy to have nearby especially when scientific calculators are in danger of being smashed to pieces in anger. His blog entries were a great compilation of what we were learning and how to apply it to daily life and were a great read which I always looked forward to.
Tom, a quick witted genius, was a pleasure to work with and to blog with, as he absolutely cracks me up with wondering just what he'll come up with next. Toms approach to the presentation took a turn that I wouldn't have thought of when he took the topic of memory to it's futuristic outcome and it was both interesting and informative. His newsletter contributions were again informative and light-hearted at the same time, bringing in aspects of his great knowledge of science and his sense of humour.
Jess, all I can say is thank god for her computer skills when it came to the presentation..as prezi seemed to disappear every time I touched it she calmly and collectedly fixed and compiled everything and made, what, I think, was a pretty good presentation and her genius idea of the interactive audience participation with prizes went down really well with the rest of the class. Any time I needed some help with Botany I only had to look at her collection of blogs which showed fantastic study resources.
As for myself, as I got voted in as Team Leader I was initially scared as I didn't think my delegation skills were very good (I know Peter will laugh at this bit as it turned out that I was a master delegate, maybe one might say that the power went to my head! haha) and what I fell I learned about myself is that I think I am pretty much a control freak so I was delighted to have last editing preferences over the newsletters and prezi. As I said to the team in our last CIT module..."what'll I do now that you don't 'have' to do what I say anymore??!" hahaha. I'll miss the power! Wikipedia describes leadership as the "process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task." Yep..I think I nailed that one ;)


Teamwork is defined in Webster's New World Dictionary as "a joint action by a group of people, in which each person subordinates his or her individual interests and opinions to the unity and efficiency of the group." This does not mean that the individual is no longer important; however, it does mean that effective and efficient teamwork goes beyond individual accomplishments. The most effective teamwork is produced when all the individuals involved harmonise their contributions and work towards a common goal. I think that my group are the epitome of this concept. As a whole I think that we reached every goal we set for ourselves in the module and worked really well as a team each instilling a different je ne sais quoi and produced some great work (in my opinion anyhow) and I think the whole module was really good fun, it definitely beats studying Inorganic Chemistry (which is what I'm off to do now.)

So to finish I want to really thank the rest of the team for being productive, interesting, and utterly brilliant and I hope that we get put together for projects in the future because I couldn't think of better folk to work with.

Team Leader Sarah, over and out!

Snow Balls and Ilex aquifolium

Well our last wednesday in Clonakilty came and went in a flash of plants names and snow.After a very nerve wrecking trip on the icy Bandon roads we made it to the college which was covered in an extra thick layer of blinding snow,the best thing to help calm the masses on a very stressful day.After a quick nip round the greenhouse(religiously naming the plants,Teraxicum officinalis,Phormium tenax,Lavendula,Mentha x spicata...)we got stuck in to the written part of the exam.Two years of learning that carbon dioxide and water under light/chlorophyll makes glucose and oxygen definately came in handy and made for a pretty good test.The flowers on the other hand were shall we say somewhat tongue tieing,even after a good study of the plants i found that under the pressure of a moving line of people and the exam situation it was difficult to recall the many flower names sprinting through my mind.Nevertheless the test could have gone a whole lot worse and i was happy to end the day with a snow ball fight and saying goodbye to the cows at the college:-)

disaster in the form of neck pain :-(

It seems the lecturers skipped a week and decided to give us our tests somewhat earlier than i would have thought,nevertheless we struggle forward as a team!Or so i thought, It seems an unfortunate bed related incident(or rather the getting out of the bed)lead to the pulling of a muscle in my neck that has rendered me near useless.This lead to a very long and painful Monday. As much as i hoped it would not hinder my work i fear it may have not helped in my physics lab exam and my presentation in c.i.t. I did as well as i possibly could with such a sore neck and i hope it was good enough...and i hope the candy canes idea helped :-)
As the pain is getting quite bad i decided why not look up more natualy ways to deal with it and came across this helpful site. I hope it helps you with your alements in this winter season :-)
http://health.discovery.com/

Let it snow let it snow let it snow :-)

The winter weather is slowly but surely making its way to cork and we've seen our first few speckles of snow on the cars,only,it has arrived at the wrong time all together!Just as all our tests begin,all our write ups reach their dead lines and all our projects near completion the snow begins to fall,blocking roads,closing schools and worst of all distracting my from studying!With a long week of tests ahead lets hope the snow waits just a week or two before blanketing ireland,because we all know study wont happen when theres a snow ball fight to be had :-)

Oh my god its christmas day!...kinda

From the buzz around campus you'd think that it was the last  day of the year, there's a  smile and and an anxious expectation from the vast majority of the students that i have had no choice in overhearing. from expected pints per hour (5-10) to whether or not a 'supernaggin!' was a suitable sink for your money instead of the despicable prices expected in bars for the day, todays events will be remembered. The cold snap that seems to have taken root here certainly seems timely and appropriate
Clonakilty was a success yesterday, but instead of a practical, another 2 hours of theory in lectures was administered by our buddy Joe. I think it is safe to say that interest in the subject matter disintegrated around 3 hours in, the longing for freedom palpable.
I missed over a week of college due to recent berevement, and the work is piling up around me, but with the incredible help offered to me by the people in the course around me i  feel like it will very much be possible to get it all done, without too much stress. I only hope that i can be of such help to them in the future.
no christmas drinking for me today

maybe next year

Presentation

Just spent some time in the computer room working on the Prezi with the team. I think our presentation is looking quite good. I love all the different aspects that each of the team has put in. I think the hardest part will be standing up in front of the room and actually presenting it but hey..that's what it's all about eh!
Our presentation is all about the memory and goes into different aspects of the memory and the brain, some ways to improve and maintain the memory and some fun games and trivia involving the memory. It's been good fun to do.
Can't believe that we are going in to the last few weeks of the semester now. I really think that the 4 years are going to FLY by. Need to get my butt in gear and study a bit harder...I've been a bit lazy of late.

Prezi is loacted at http://prezi.com/ if you want to make your own presentation...it's a handy auld tool!
This is our one...
http://prezi.com/f4wpy7-ztngw/copy-of-the-memory/

Sneaky study day

Today I took some time to recollect myself and try to catch up on lecture notes that seem to keep swamping in but not get looked over. I spent the entire day finding pictures of plants that need to be named in our practical botany exam and also learning tissues for our Anatomy practical exam. I thought I would have loads of time but the day seems to have passed so fast and I have just been sitting on the computer for so long that I think that my brain is melting.

I spent  a considerable amount of time trying to figure out Prezi yesterday for the presentation next week and have put up all the bits for my part. I think the hard part will be timing it right when each one of our groups information in uploaded. I may need to delegate some of the editing to the team as it is quite time consuming and we will all need to spend some time at it.

There's not too much left on the semester so I really need to get myself in gear, by the end of this week I want to have all my lab reports and botany project completed so all I need to do for the coming week is revise my notes.

These links were handy for Anatomy revision:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYKjMfJfatc&feature=related

Information about the Bridging Course available for Medicinal Herbalists..

As I mentioned we learned a lot from our interview with Ciaran the the 4th year Herbal Science student, (check out the link to see our interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0CPLGCztmQ) so I said I'd pass on the info for anyone in the year interested.

As I also mentioned in a previous blog (rant) about Medicinal Herbalism a two year Masters in Clinical Studies was envisioned to follow our course, leading to practitioner status, but due to EU regulations at present HETAC is not validating courses in complementary therapies and it depends what happens with their consultation process which should be finished next spring what will happen. However the Irish College of Phytotherapy has been set up to administer and run a a "Bridging Training Programme in Western Medical Herbalism" being run for Graduates and Students of the BSc (Hons) in Herbal Sciences at Cork Institute of Technology.

The important thing about this course is the quality of training and that it enables you to join a professional organisation and practice. The Irish Register of Herbalists has agreed to accept those who successfully finish the training. Also, the National Institute of Medical Herbalists and the College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy have said that they will also accept applications of graduates, once they have suitable references.

The training programme consists of three elements:
Lecture/ Seminar blocks. These can be attended by students in the 3rd and 4th year of their degree programme as well as graduates.
This allows students to get the credits for this part of the training. Such students would be able to be signed off for those credits and to carry out the second and third elements either during college breaks or upon graduation. The lecture blocks will be held out of term time to enable such students to attend without detracting from their degree.
(Lecture blocks will also be open to herbal practitioners as CPD; this means that students gain additional exposure to practising herbalists during their training).

Self directed study following a carefully designed study plan to guide students through this element of learning. This will be assessed by continuous assessment consisting of a study portfolio and some long essays. It is felt that, by this stage of training, multiple examinations are not needed as a form of the assessment. Assessments will be designed to allow the student to display the ability to synthesise together the different strands of their learning to formulate a diagnosis and treatment plan. Students will be expected to include relevant elements of their undergraduate training such as nutrition, pathophysiology, materia medica etc with the information delivered in the lecture blocks.

Students in 3rd and 4th year of BSc in Herbal Science should note that the self-directed study element may be postponed to be completed out of semester time or after graduation; such students just need to notify the Course administrator of their intention to do so and indicate the time frame that they intend to follow.

I'll also set up a meeting with Nikki Darrell who is one of the course co-ordinators in the new year if anyone has questions.

I hope this is of some interest to the class :)

Another week on, another weak one

these early starts and late night lab reports are enough to make one daze vacantly at a lifeless blog textbox for upwards of an hour with but the hint of progress.
Our presentation for CIT will be about memory, it's function, how to improve it and for my end of things, the future of memory. I will be writing on how i think that within our lifetime we will see an ever-increasing symbiosis with technology, where it will be possible to store in virtual memory important information for longer than the biological user may be able to commit said information to long term memory. It may be said of us, the user, that it is our abilty to cross reference and make informed guesses on multiple different aspects, taking into account a  huge amount of instantly accessable memories in our own brains. my side of the project will be to explore the possibility of similarly large, and larger amounts of easily cross-referencable material, and the searchability of this data to be made easier and faster year on year. It is easily protracted that at some stage, according to moores law, that this sort of mass data reference becomes the stuff of daily use. Already you will hardly go a day without access to the entirity of the internets resources, with recent near-ubiquitious technology, eg the iphone and using 3g and 4g networks, it is prudent to expect that more and more of our heavy text files and refernce books be easily perused whenever, wherever, with all the speed and efficiency of just havin an auld think about it.

Praise photosynthesis!!

After weeks of confusion and dismay as to how i would learn so many plant names by this christmas,we finally meet a topic i know and love,Photosynthesis!There was nothing i loved more in the leaving cert than good old photosynthesis and Krebs cycle and all that jazz.The only reason i like it so much is because it took up so much of my time in 5th year trying to get that damn cycle into my head that it will never ever be able to escape!So as you can probably tell it turned out to be a good botany class today,especially the lovely conversation in the greenhouse about the goings on on Wistera Lane with the desperate housewives..it seems i have missed a great deal and must immeadiatly start back watching it:-)

Interview

I'm so glad that I accosted this particular Fourth Year Herbal Scientist in the street and "made" him agree to do the interview for our newsletter...this issue released today by the way! Ciaran was a fountain of knowledge and advice about our degree, what we might do after the degree and the different options that are available for work experience and post graduates. (You may think...whoa get through your test on Tuesday before you start worrying about your post-grad love but I'm a Sagittarius so I need to plan the future just to get through today! ;))
Maybe we should all just leave the Herb Science course and become Movie makers though...Jess had her Directorial Debut,  Peter was Executive Producer, Tom was the Anchor-man and I was Camera-woman and Key-Grip (I just looked that up 'cause I always see it on the credits of films..it means the chief stagehand or technician...yep..that was me!)
The link to the interview will be posted here shortly after some editing...stay tuned....

Just remember zygotes are like babies...

Time for our mid-semester tests and of course i have done a little below the right amount of study for..every exam!Mainly Botany, theres something about the word sporeophyte that for some reaon will not stick in my brain for long enough for me to learn it,that is until my mother uttered the phrase 'remember:The diploid zygote is like a baby,now all you need to know is what makes a baby.' For some reason that one sentence fixed a fair bit of what was giving me difficulty and thankfully the test went fine:-) I'm over the moon that the majority of the exams are over for now and i can focus on the inportant stuff,watching scary movies and eating all the halloween sweet before the kids come to the door.Oh and just for future reference,never ever ever watch paranormal activity two especially if you enjoy sleeping:-)Oh and also for anyone having issues with alternation of generations this picture helped me!

does it always feel like this?

Exams down, more work than ever, and i would have thought that pacing oneself was the way to get through such a lump of work. It poured today, not like that summer shower of yore but more of a winter duvet of  dishevelled discomfort. at least it put an interesting spin on the college cycle! even our first lecturer was late, speiling off excuses so like our own. may the novelty of such a day stay just that.
Had my most dreaded of exams yesterday, physics 101. little did i know that a little extra focussed work 5 mins before the exam leads to a sense of satisfaction which is diffficult to match. whodaa thunk it hah?
We're drawing ever closer towards.......HALLOWEEN! wahey, its time to ditch the gladrags and don the hagbags, costumes to be minimal, spartan even..

 but my favourite--->


simple, effective, discrete and ingenious

Examinations...

So two exams down, one of which I feel I completely let my nerves get the better of me, and the other I think went pretty well (I hope!). I definately feel I couldn't have gotten through the Cell Anatomy without the help of this wonderful video above. ;)
At the moment I am in a state of procrastination while I should be desperately studying my Botany and Physics notes but I am doing anything but! As usual!
I definitely feel that I've learned from the experience of the Chemistry exam and I now know how to approach an exams better and more productively...in theory!
Right I'm going to make this a short one because I really do need to study...

Herbal and Horticultural Soc.

Today was the first meeting of the Herbal and Horticultural Soc. which has been set up by the second year Herbal Science students. It was a really fun meeting and I got to know our mentors. As part of the society we're going Ice Skating at Christmas, having dinner in a few weeks time and going to Ballymaloe House to see the herb garden and have lunch at some stage as well.
I found talking to the second years very uplifting...apparently EVERYONE struggles at Chemistry in the first semester. They are a very cool bunch of folk and I'll be very happy to get to know them better and pick their brains as the time goes by.
We, as a society, also plan to do some fun fund raising activities like making herbal concoctions, and having some very interesting guest speakers in.
I'm definitely going to convince more of the class to get involved. 

rapid study now,

Starting to apply my physical and chemical formuli to everyday events; calculating the total wattage used to boil a pot of soup on a cooker. then applying the thoery; the chemical reactions and enzymes used to digest the soup once swallowed, how these enzymes are controlled by other chemicals (which activate or inhibit), how that soup will give the chemicals needed to build enzymes (much needed builing blocks; carbon and other elements like hydrogen). the energy gained from the hearty soup in wattage as an SI unit of course and so on.
This course has been a great stepping stone to a bright future in the widening field of herbal science and also a great oppertunity to stop and smell the rosses, examine them and classify them and learn from and utilise the herbs and other plants around us.

time management?

the weeks are flying past at this stage, worp nine I'd say. exams are starting soon so I'v been hitting the books heavy and testing myself but once I realised the info had accualy stuck I stopped freaking out and went to my first party since joining the herbal science course. student life had "kicked in" without me even noticing so the wi party was more than welcome, feeling much more relaxed now about the content and have a chance to build confidence in my own ability to achieve my goals again, speaking of goals... my avid support of soccer has fadded into darkness wit my new found responsability of student life, roll on the mid-terms so I can become me again and yell at a T.V. screen as if it will make a difference to the form of my team.