Medieval Irish and Celtic studies

Saramina

HI I'm just inquiring about this course, could anyone in 2nd or 3rd year give me some info about it please?

I was just wondering;
are the modules interesting in 2nd year?
and how are the lecturers, are they helpful and do they prepare you well for the exams?
Also what are the class sizes like in 2nd and 3rd year?

Feel free to send me a pm btw

TheAMPorter

Hello there Saramina,
I've just started 2nd year as a mature student.
I found Medieval Irish & Celtic studies so interesting last year that I actually changed my degree from single honours Anthropology to double honours with Med Ir & CS and History.
The modules offered for 2nd year are
Ireland before the Vikings 431 - 795
Celtic Heroes
Old Irish (Sengoidelc)
Liminality & the Otherworld
Med Irish Poetry
Learned Lit. & Lore
And in semester 2:
Ireland 800-1169
Old Irish (continuation)
Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland
Tain Bo Cuailnge & the Ulster Cycle
The Derdriu Story & related Tales
Irish Mythological Tales
So you can see there's great variety and luckily for me I can do the two Irish history modules under the umbrella of the History Dept which means I can fit nearly all of the above modules into my schedule. The School of Celtic Studies in Maynooth is one of the smaller departments and maybe because of that the teaching staff are approachable, helpful, enthusiastic, encouraging and great teachers (all of them so far, anyway). But then why wouldn't they be? The subject matter is so interesting that it must be relatively easy for them to get the students to engage with it!
Anyway good luck with whatever you decide to study, I can assure you if you find something that grabs your interest you won't mind the hard work (and make no mistake, sometimes you'll feel like you're on a roller-coaster when you've loads of assignments to complete to the same deadline) but it's very rewarding. You're obviously interested in the subject so have a look at the student society facebook page Celtic Society NUIM.