french or greek?

Yazamalainia

hey, am a 6th year student about to fill out my cao next week, first choice is going to be a tsm in trinity with ancient history and archaeology and.....french or greek. can't decide! im taking french for leaving cert so it seems the obvious choice but im afraid im going to get a lecturer as hitler-esque as my current french teacher. anyone take either of these two or possibly both and can give me some pros and cons?? thank you!

Time Magazine

Ah now Ms Boyle, Ms O'Hare and Ms Matthews are not that bad.

I've heard bad things about the French Department. Do something you enjoy.

Yazamalainia

ah but i love french! but then again...greek will get me ever so closer to being the next female (better looking) indiana jones.....:p

Crash

Try studying cache coherency protocols.

King.Penguin

Ancient greek all the way, you'll never get another chance to study it.

Its quite simple really - do what you want to do, and what you like doing. Don't base your decision on lecturers who you don't know. If you like the subject, a bad lecturer will not cause you too much trouble. However if you pursue a subject which you don't really like, even with a good lecturer, you probably won't do as well.

I'd have put some humour in the post but studying asset backed securities and Basel II/IA leaves me quite dull

Yazamalainia

but i know i like french already, have never studied greek, so no clue if i like it or not, anyone here do it or have heard anything about it?

claire h

I don't think I've ever heard one good thing about French in TCD, honestly. Mostly have known people who've transferred out it, or wish they had. Apparently they expect a very high standard of French - people find that the Leaving doesn't prepare them for it at all - and it's not particularly fascinating stuff. Having said that, if you like the language, don't let a bad teacher at second level put you off doing it in college...

Yazamalainia

hmmm....on an oddly related topic, anyone know when the cut off date is for transferring the hell out of subjects you wished you hadnt picked? just incase!

CAO-wise you can change up 'til july I think with the change of mind yoke (which I think is available online). Internal to college the first cut-off date is the Friday nearest the 20th of October. Second one is the 13th or so (Friday again) of January. You'll need the points for whatever you want to transfer into (as well as there being a free space, and other stuff), but if you're going from, say TSM English & something to Single Honours English, then they may allow allow certain flexibilities to the dates.

Copy this paragraph into a file on your computer: sueducat@tcd.ie or education@tcdsu.org. If you find yourself not liking wherever you are, open up the file and pop an e-mail to that address (it's the Students' Union Education Officer - there to answer any educational-type queries you might have), and go meet your tutor. But don't worry about this yet, just do as Ibid says and do something that you want to do. You can always change your mind.

Ehh don't get me started on the French department. I wish I'd transferred out of it in first year.

Sawa

Greek is REALLY hard. I began taking it this year and I had to transfer because it was so difficult. Maybe i just didn't have the mind for it but you need a HC3 in a language and to be honest, I think that should be higher requirement, something like a B3 because if I was able for a HC3 in French in the leaving cert, i should be capable of Greek, which I clearly wasn't.
The course moves very fast and is very demanding. I wouldn't recommend it but sure you can always try it like I did then change your mind. By the second day, we had to know how to pronounce the entire alphabet and were reading passages of Greek. I found that within such a small group of students, I was under pressure to read aloud and well. The interesting part of the course was the part done through English (History, Mythology+Religion and Art and Architecture) which you can still do in either Classical Civilisation or Ancient History and Archaelogy.