2 - Choosing English

I always enjoyed English in school and was pretty good at it as a result, so it made sense to choose Single Honours English. It had the best of both worlds – I was in a small class of 15 students for the modules we had together over 3 years, but also in first year I could study at least two other Arts subjects for the year. 

A Selection of First Year Modules

In addition to English in first year I also studied Psychology and Linguistics, which is the study of language and how we use it. The beauty of this system was that throughout my studies I found that I could use what I’d learned in the two subjects in my study of English: my Psychology classes gave me insights into human behaviour and the mind, particularly debates such as Nature versus Nurture, the clash of theories of whether human beings are who they are inherently since birth or because of how they were raised.

Something like this has popped up numerous times in the literature we studied. Linguistics taught me about the way language is constructed, the very sounds of words are something which many poets, playwrights and authors as famous as James Joyce were particularly concerned with in their work.

Speaking of Joyce, the fact that he had been a fellow UCD Arts student really makes me kind of proud in a way I can't really explain. Just being associated with his greatness is one thing and speaks to the university's caliber and rich history, but also something much more practical - UCD is one of the leading universities in the world for Joycean Studies, and so attracts great academics to lecture students, for example Declan Kiberd, who lectured a module in Children's Literature to us in first year.