My Transition Year Experience
Project By: Jackson Glasser
I moved to Ireland in the August of 2016. I was moving because of my moms work, and I was going to a new school called St. Andrews College. I have lived in Michigan my whole life, up until 2016 where I moved to Ireland to attend school for 2 years at St. Andrews. Moving to Ireland was a big change from Michigan. Things like the food and the area were very new to me. School in Ireland was very different from my school back in Grand Rapids, also.
The first thing that surprised me about going to St. Andrews College was that we had to wear a uniform. I've never had to wear a uniform to school, but now I would have to wear the same thing to school every day for 2 years straight. That was a bit of a surprise to me. I had to learn to tie a tie, because I have never worn a tie a lot ever in my life. Now I know how to tie a tie.
I had to take the bus to school, and unlike in Michigan, you actually have to put out your hand to wave down the bus if you want it to stop for you. In Michigan, they just stop if they see you at the bus stop. The buses here in Dublin have 2 floors also, to accommodate all of the people.
This project will cover everything that I have done over my Transition Year, from the beginning of the year trip to Uisce, the Run in the Dark, to the Winter Fare and the U-Live Concert, all the way to past the Ski Trip in Italy and back to the end of the year. This will also cover my Work Experience in March, including my Experience at IBM and at GameStop headquarters.
This project is going to tell my experience through the past blogs I have blogged this year. Ever since I moved to Dublin last August, I have blogged 2-3 times a week, about anything that happens in my life. This includes Transition Year and outside of my life also. Each part of Transition Year that I explain in this Project Blog Post, I will link to where I actually blogged about that experience when it happened. I hope you enjoy!
I started off Transition Year at St. Andrews the week of August 29. The first day, I remember going to school and not knowing where any of my classes were. I had to ask a lot of random people in halls. It took me a couple weeks to really figure out where everything was. It was hard, but I had Jack and Pierce in a lot of my classes and they became some of my new friends. They are really funny and nice.
It was a very quick start, and the first trip for me was the 31st of August to September 2. My group went to UISCE, which is an outdoors activity centre where students can go to learn more of the Irish Gaelic language. The whole Transition Year was split into 3 groups, and I was in the group to go to UISCE. Uisce is Gaelic for water, and it is named that because the centre is located right next to a big lake.
My whole group got on a bus the morning of August 31st, and we drove all the way up to UISCE which is located near the top of Ireland. Once we got there, I was in a room with Alec and Stephen. We did some Team Building activities and we also went swimming. The 2nd day our group went to see a professional juggler who had a ton of different things that he had us try.
He gave us these plates and sticks and we had to try to get them to spin only using the stick. It was very challenging, but I got it a couple of times.
He had some juggling balls also, and I tried to learn to juggle, and by the end of the day, I could almost juggle really well. After the trip I actually bought some juggling balls of my own and got better at juggling in my spare time. On the trip, my group also got to go to a pier and jump off of it into the cold water. It was a far jump and was really fun!
The trip lasted 3 days, and I got to make some new friends, especially with Alec and Stephen since they were in my room. I learned that Alec was from America, and they were really funny. The trip to UISCE was really fun and a great way to start of my Transition Year.
After the first trip, I started to do Badminton every Monday after school from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Iian and Gonzalo were there with me and it was always really fun. Every Friday, I had outward bound, and my group was really fun, and in the group was Chance. Chance is a good friend of mine I met this year, he lived in Michigan for the last 5 years, which was really cool because I lived in Michigan also. We went golfing one Friday, and it was very fun putting.
Further on into the year, I decided that I was going to take part in the Run in the Dark for Mark Pollock, who is paralyzed. The funds went to his organization to help fight being paralyzed. I trained in November for the Run in the Dark by running around the park outside of my house every night. I ran every night in November and tried to improve my 5K run time. I got better and better as November went on. Finally, November 16 came up, which was the night for the Run in the Dark. I got my number and wrist band from school.
The Run in the Dark started right next to The Custom House right next to the Liffey. The Run was right on the Liffey, and went over a bridge at one point which was really cool! I met up with some other kids from St. Andrews, and I met with Pierce at the run. Once the Run started, I went at my own pace, and I passed a lot of people to keep up my pace. My goal was to get under 25 Minutes for the 5k run.
I ran through the streets, trying to keep a fast and steady speed. We went over a bridge at one point which was really cool. I ended up getting a time of 23 minutes and 42 seconds. I was very happy with that score, and I was actually the 6th person out of the 74 people who ran from St. Andrews for best times! (See Book: #1)
Now to talk about my school subjects. Every Monday, the last 3 periods I have are Visual Art. In Visual Art we do a lot of different kinds of art. I remember the first thing I made in October was a rocket out of clay. After it got baked in the Kiln, I painted it also.
In Visual Arts, I also remember doing a project where we had to think of 2 items, and in 4 translations, make one item turn into another item. I chose a domino and a pizza, so I made a domino turn into a pizza. This is how it turned out.
Later on in the year, we were preparing for the Winter Fare in December. The Winter Fare had a goal to raise money for Uganda, and in Visual Arts, we were making Lino prints to sell at the Winter Fare. We had to choose a scene or animal that had to do with Uganda, so I drew a picture of 2 Giraffes with their necks crossing. I first had to draw the picture of the Giraffes, then I had to transfer that picture onto a sheet of see through paper, then I could carve my Lino with that sheet of paper. (See #2)
On the 2nd day of December, I skipped a Friday of school so that I could go and do one day of work experience at my moms work. I went to her work the whole day, and 7 of her friends from work spent the day interviewing me. They also told me what they like to see in people that they interview, and what I should focus on when I ever go to a work interview. It was a very good day of experience, since people my age never really know what to expect in their first job interview.
I wanted to get into the Uganda trip that 18 people in Transition Year could go on. If you wanted to get into the trip you had to take part in the Winter Fare, and the U-Live concert. I wanted to take part in the Winter Fare, because it sounded really fun. I was on the American Sweets committee, and our stall was going to be selling Candy from America. I ordered a ton of Candy for our stall off of a website, and when the Winter Fare came around, we had a ton of American Sweets to sell. (See Book #3)
Since the beginning of Transition Year, I have gone to some Model United Nations meetings. In January, I decided to go to a MUN conference at Blackrock College. The conference was called RockMUN which was a 2 day conference in which we had committee sessions where we discussed resolutions and voted for or against them. It was a very good experience for me. I got to learn more about how the United Nations worked, and the vocabulary that they use. (See Book #4)
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| This was the TimeTable for RockMUN in Jaunary |
The U-Live concert was also something that I wanted to be involved in. Both because I was interested in getting into the Uganda trip, and also because I thought it would be a fun experience. I signed up to be on the committee who put together the list of people who would perform at the U-Live concert. I also was going to perform a Piano piece in the U-Live Concert. I performed a cool jazz piece that I really liked. I also helped set up the senior hall with decorations for the U-Live concert which included the signs, and snowflakes that I made in Visual Arts.
Also at the U-Live concert, they were selling pieces of art that my class had made in Visual Arts. They were framed, and looked really nice. My Mom bought one of my framed pieces of art from the table where they were being sold. (See Book #5)
The next big thing that happened in Transition Year for me after the U-Live concert, was the ski trip that I got to go on. There were 88 kids that wanted to go on the ski trip, but there were only 70 spaces, and luckily I got in. The ski trip was from the 18th to the 25th of February, and it was at a place called Sestriere. I had my own helmet, and ski gear so I was ready to go.
On the 18th of February, we flew to Italy. We got to choose who was in our rooms, and I was in a room with Stephen, Alec, Pierce and Jack. They are all new friends I have made since the beginning of this school year. The view from our hotel room was amazing, you could see the hill that we skied on every day that week!
We got placed into groups based on our past experience skiing. The groups were named after sea animals, and my group was the dolphins at the beginning, but then we changed it to sharks because it sounded cooler. Each day we would have 4 hours of skiing with our instructor. Our instructors name was Roger, and he was really cool. He was really amazing at skiing. The slopes we went on were very steep, and it was very high up in the air.
On this ski trip, I got to hang out a lot with Alec, Jack, Pierce and Stephen. They are really cool friends, and I also got to hang out with a lot of people who were really good at skiing that I never knew skied. We got a group picture of the Sharks on the top of a slope.
At the end of the ski trip, we all got reports from our instructor that graded how good he thought that we were at skiing. I got excellent on the silver page! This ski trip was an amazing part of my Transition Year, and it really helped me to improve my skiing skills, and I got to hang out with a ton of new people.
(See Book: #6)
Italy Sestriere Ski Trip Blog
My 2 weeks of work experience started almost straight after I got back from Italy. I got back on a Saturday, and my work experience started the week of February 27th. My first week of work experience was at IBM, and I was really excited. Every morning, I got up and took a bus to IBM. At IBM, I got to talk to a ton of different people about different things. The people I talked to were from various places around the world which was really cool. I got to learn about IBM's software, and learn more about coding. It was a really awesome week of experience for me.
The first day I was working with a small object which is called a 'Raspberry Pi'. It is used with coding, and you can program a lot of different things on it, and I learned how to program each individual light to be its own color. I attempted to make the American Flag on the 'Raspberry Pi'.
One cool thing that I learned while at IBM was a concept called IBM Design Thinking. It is a concept made by IBM which uses a loop, and shows how to use a team and reflection to create or design a product. The most important thing about this way of thinking I thought was the Yellow Circle, which is Sponsor Users. This is bringing in random customers who have used the product, and ask them for their help to create or make the product better.
IBM was a great week of work experience for me!
My second week of work experience was at GameStop. It was not at a GameStop store, but actually at the GameStop headquarters in Swords. The headquarters is where they order all of the games and loot. I got to work with the side who ordered what they called loot. Loot is everything that GameStop has in their stores that is not a game, so like shirts and toys and things like that. I got to create orders for loot, and see how they have to make catalogs and help them create a new website with new loot coming in.
I also organized this huge shelf of loot that they had on their wall. They told me to organize it by license, because that is how they are sold, so I organized each toy, or piece of loot by what license it was under. Examples of licenses would be Nintendo, Star Wars, Disney, things like that.
The work experience that I gained at the headquarters of GameStop really helped me to have an insight of how it would be to work in a place like that. Another really awesome thing is that at the end of my week of work experience with GameStop, they gave me a lot of free loot! It included an awesome Star Wars bag and mug, and a batarang replica!
For one more day of work experience, I got to visit Google and Facebook in Dublin on the same day! I went to Google in the morning, and even ate lunch there, and in the afternoon, I went to visit Facebook. My Google visit started at 10:00 AM. I got showed around all 3 buildings of Google that are connected by a sky-bridge. I learned a lot about the working environment of Google, and how there are so many different things you can do if you want to work for Google, its not all about computers. I got a picture in front of the Google sign also!
I went to visit Facebook at 2:00 PM. They showed me around their offices. I got to see a lot of really cool pieces of technology that they use, and a really cool new idea that is being worked on which is a drone that fly's around, and can give people WiFi in less developed areas. It was very interesting. They had a really cool Lego wall that people could build things on, and the building had a nice atmosphere inside of it.
Along with finding the work experience that I did, I had to create a CV in the process. I had to be able to send a copy of my CV to GameStop and IBM so that they could look at it. On my CV, I put some things about being good with using some software and computers. I also put some of my past work experiences, like working on a lobster boat, waking up at 5 AM and working until 2 PM. I also put the blogs that I do which are this blog, and my blog that I write on when I go to Maine each summer to work on the lobster boat.
My 4 main classes in my Transition Year are Spanish, English, American Studies, and Math. I started out the year in Math with a really bad test grade, but by the 2nd test in the middle of the year, I got a 100% on that test. The third test, I got a 90% so it has been going pretty well since then. In English, we read "A View from the Bridge" by Arthur Miller. It is a really good play, and I like it a lot. Arthur Miller is really good at using subtle things in his stage direction and dialog that can give some foreshadowing if you catch where he put them.
In Spanish, we are preparing for our Oral assessment at the end of the year. We are getting a lot of help from our teacher who is a really good teacher. American Studies might be my favorite class. We do a lot of random talking about things going on in the world, and we have a lot of fun. We also have watched some movies like "Mississippi Burning" and other things like that. It is a very fun class.
One last great thing about Transition Year is that it has given me the opportunity to travel more often. Since the beginning of the year, we have gone to several different places in Europe, including going to London 3 times already. In London this year, I have gone to see Drake at the O2 arena, gone to the Science and Natural History museum in London, and gone to see the Warner Brothers Studio Tour of Harry Potter. All were very amazing experiences.
(See Book: #7)
During this year, I got to travel so much around Ireland, and explore a ton of different parts. I have been to the Cliffs of Moher, the Ring of Kerry, Athlone, the Giants Causeway, and the dark hedges. We did a lot of traveling on the northern coast of Ireland. We have been to a ton of castles, like Malahide Castle which was awesome. We also had a day trip to kilkenny.
Overall, Transition Year has given me so many new experiences I would not have had if I had not been in St. Andrews. I got to do this new thing to me called work experience. I got to travel a lot more around Europe, and more often also. I also got to meet a lot of new friends, and do really cool things that were part of my school, like Model United Nations, and the Ski Trip to Italy, which was amazing! I think that Transition Year is a really great idea, because you can travel, have a lot of opportunities to volunteer, and go to different companies to see how it would be to work there. I hope you got an insight into my many experiences in Transition Year, and thank you for reading!
May 2, 2017
-The Blarney Blogger-
(theblarneyblogger.blogspot.com)
-Jackson Glasser
Jackson, you have done a great job writing and incorporating photos into your final project
ReplyDeletefor Transition Year! Love, Grandma G.