Alexandra College Transition Year Blog

Last Thursday the fourth years and the Comenius students went into town for a multi-purpose cultural quiz… To help us learn more about our city and to show the European students some of the main landmarks! The quiz brought us on a tour of the city centre, stopping by places such as Trinity College, the Mansion House, the G.P.O. in O’Connell Street and Temple Bar. It involved a LOT of walking but everyone had loads of fun and learned something new,and I definitely have better orientation of town now! It was a brilliant opportunity for the fourth years who weren’t hosting Comenius students to get to know some of them a little.

The bits coloured in with blue biro show our route.

New Year 2012, time to make New Resoltions!

Need ideas? These I think are pretty good to kickstart the new you for the new year!

1. Get healthy – pick apple over chocolate / raw carrot over sweets/ popcorn over crisps

2. Keep Happier and Smiley – keep a smile on your face, and don’t get down. Think positive!

3. Be a better person – more obliging to offer to help at home, at Volunteer centers, take part in charity walks, empty out your wardrobe and give to people who need it!

4. Show more love to your family – well this is a bit sappish, but do put in the effort to get along with your parents and siblings, try not to argue but compromise. If you treat them like respectable adults they will treat you like that too!

5. Learn Something New – either new instrument, language, sport, class, fitness level, reading, but don’t just think about it! Set a night to doing it and organizing it! Keep a list of what you do so you feel you’re achieving something!

6. Be a Role Model – try making yourself someone you’d want to look up to. Apply for jobs in your area, nights out you’ll always have, but a job will give you money, friends, new skills and make you feel more responsible! You’ll make money too!

Try do all this, but if you find yourself changing, and not able to be yourself, ditch it my friends, people like you for who you are! 

Just improve the hiccups, and make this year 2012 one you can remember ! 

Right Ladies! Time to get our generosity flowing and bring in those old toys, books and teddies that we find stuffed behind closets and cupboards at home! We want to make this hamper year the best yet! We need teddies, jigsaws, board games, books, teacup sets, anything which you think would make you happy when you were a small child!
Christmas is so close, and if you’re all super excited with christmas in less than 13 sleeps you’d want to bring in something for the hamper which could possibly change someones Christmas this year and make it one they want to remember!
So take 1 hour in the evening to root your room, the rooms of your brothers or sisters, closets & cupboards and drawers, and drop in whatever you happen to find in to the library!!
You’ll feel a lot better and it will get you into that generous Christmas mood!

This term the TY students have been learning to use Photoshop in IT. One of our assignments was to take a high resolution portrait photograph and give it a “vampire makeover”!

4th years, a lot of us need to get our act together and advertise our mini-company to the rest of the school. Need Ideas?

We have a few options open to us which I thought I’d remind you!

1. create a small script / ad which you can read out over the school intercom.( once written bring to WOW teacher to ask for Ms. Ennis’ permission)

2. write an ad with pictures and bring to Mr. Redmond for the Alex Website

3. Create a visual ad which can play for less than 1 minute at assembly.

2 weeks to Market day!! Good luck to all, and lets make some money!! 

It’s shameful how long it’s been since there’s been an update here, so I thought I’d post about what I’ve been doing this week. (See title!) I’ve completed three of my five days of work experience in Microsoft, and so far, I’m very impressed. It seems like such a great place to work! The atmosphere is very casual, as is the dress-code (most people there wear jeans to work!), there are flexible working hours, the food in the canteen is fabulous, and there are plenty of complimentary tea/coffee/hot chocolate machines in the offices!

There are seven of us in the group. We spend each day in the week working with a different department of Microsoft. Yesterday we worked with the Xbox team yesterday – we learned about the process of publishing Xbox games, particularly the translation aspect. I learned that Xbox games are translated into more than 20 different languages! We also learned about the Xbox Kinect – an accessory for the Xbox that lets you use your body and your voice as the controller – and of course we had a couple of hours to try out some of the games!

The TY drama class had the privilege of continuing on from the charity collection to a private tour around the Abbey Theatre. We were shown on stage, backstage and the auditorium. Most of us were informed with plenty of information about the Stage design, lighting, sound and music. The theatre really caught our interest and appeared to hold a really creative atmosphere almost outside of the busy streets of Dublin. 

We then had an hour to scatter for lunch to which we split either to McDonalds or to the River Side with a roll and crisps. Ms. Rycraft and Ms. Brehony showed great knowledge and were a really friendly and informative pair on this trip! When we went to see Juno and the Paycock most of us were thrillingly shocked by the outcome of the theatre. It was fantastic!! . It pictured the life in the tenements in Ireland in the 20th century. The whole show took place in one room with a family. The story line is fantastic, which shows life was too hard for true love, pregnancy outside marriage was unacceptable, and random shootings appeared continuously with young men losing limbs, while fathers and men were lazy, unwilling to work and more than happy to drink alcohol to solve their problems. 

I fully recommend any one to see this play! A great use of money which the whole class enjoyed and appreciated.! It has also inspired us and helped us to think about our own drama and play we will be putting on, on the TY performance night. We all just hope that our show and drama will be just as believable, awe strucking and fantastic as the Abbey Theatre has proved to be! What a great outting!

A great congrats to all Fourth year girls for doing a great job in town 12th October 2011 fundraising for the jAsper – Juvenile Arthritis Association! Starting at 10am – 1pm for lunch and then 2pm-4pm the girls really showed dedication to the job ! The toughest thing was the amount of ignorant people who ignored or rudely commented our efforts to raise money, and we all really found that the recession has seriously cut back on peoples willingness to listen or look, we on average collected €10 with each box so we must have raised over €500 for the whole event. I think we can all agree that’s what fourth year is all about, getting out and about and using our time to help others, so with the success of the day I say we will definitely try to organize another one between ourselves!!