It has reached the concerned ears of our reporters here at the Turbine that UCD students currently enjoying their bohemian lifestyle on the continent are being met with the realisation that they actually have to complete an “academic component” in order to pass. Our sources report shock and anger among the students, many of whom were expecting a semester-long interterm with some emotional and personal development.
One law student who only agreed to be identified under the moniker A said her Happy Hour evenings kept being interrupted by “incredibly aggressive” emails from people asking about her “poor attendance.” These threatening emails were often signed off by people with authoritative titles such as “academic coordinator”.
A spoke of her horror in discovering that she would have to attend classes, sit exams, and submit assignments. She became emotional when speaking about how she feels that the vibes she was promised from Erasmus, those of “travel, museums, nights out, and discovering who you are”, have been completely destroyed by the expectation that she does the bare minimum amount of academic work. When questioned about how she missed this aspect of the programme, A was quick to point fingers at the university for making all the mandatory meetings she had to attend so boring that she zoned out.
Other students, including one who, in the interest of my own ethics, I can only identify as L, spoke of his confusion during the first few weeks about where all his new friends were going during the day. “They would all disappear for like 2 hours at a time, and when I asked them about it, they would look really confused and start talking about ‘class’. Whenever they mentioned that word, I just ignored them.” In L’s own words, he “doesn’t have time to deal with people talking woke nonsense about socio-economics”.
As these reports reached our shores, we approached UCD Erasmus coordinators for comment about this frightening discovery. Their responses cannot be printed in full due to some of the language used, but can be boiled down to key phrases such as “we tell them hundreds of times”, “for the love of God all they have to do is pass”, and “how do these people function in society”.
TIT (Turbine Investigative Team) reached out to L and A for comments on this response, but both were suffering from hangovers on Flixbuses at the time and were not in a position to comment or function in general.
Students looking to study abroad next year have also voiced their concerns about the so-called “academic requirement”, with many convinced that it is actually mostly nonsense and that they can definitely get away with missing most of their classes in favour of binge drinking in European capitals. Only time will tell if they can continue to get away with doing less than the bare minimum.
Eion Fitzwilliams – Hungover and Behind