Patrick Cummins Tripodi
Some might say going against the wind, I chose to study Polish as part of my degree. Hence the academic year 2010/2011 finds me in Kraków, Polska, which is luckily quite a stone’s throw away from the doom and gloom that has enveloped the Emerald Isle. Kraków (or Cracow if we use its anglicised sibling) is, put simply, an incredible city. Filled with art, theatre, opera, music, great grub and countless pubs, clubs and cafés, its unofficial status as the cultural capital of Poland is entirely appropriate. All of this in an architecturally spectacular landscape brimming with history, recalling the hey-days of Poland and a time in which the city was Poland’s royal capital.
I am enrolled at the Jagiellonian University, regarded as Poland’s best and certainly its oldest university. Founded in 1364 by King Kazimierz the Great, it is older than Trinity and its age, along with past students such as Copernicus, Pope John Paul II and Norman Davies, is something the institution and Cracovians are proud of. Although I could discuss Kraków and Poland at length, I should turn to the topic of this article: the main differences between Trinity College Dublin and the Uniwersytet Jagielloński.
Uniwersytet Jagielloński, one of Europe's oldest universities
Trinity College Dublin, with its highly centralised campus, fits neatly into the city centre of Dublin. Even the noise of Dublin city centre, from buses and cars via construction work magically evaporates upon entering Front Square. This is not the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Because, so much more than the Dublin Institute of Technology like to claim Dublin is, Kraków is in reality the campus of my adopted university. On a regular basis I accidentally stumble upon some department or centre, the most recent of which being the Department of Swedish Philology. In fact, it’s almost impossible to escape my university, as it seems to possess half the buildings in the city (my street is home to the Department of Internal Medicine). What’s more, the university is a lot larger with the student population around the fifty thousand mark compared to Trinity’s fifteen thousand. This point is relevant in practical terms, the sparseness occasionally leading to some confusion and complicating tight schedules. However I also highlight the geographical spread of the university because it pertains to the social aspect of college. There exists no central student hang out here, or at least not one that covers a relatively large number of departments. At Trinity most social sciences are located in the Arts Block, and most hard sciences in the Hamilton meaning that the majority of students are continuously in one of these two places. What’s more they are quite close and neighbour all the other departments and centres, nearly all of these within the walls of Trinity. I feel much more like I am at the centre of everything, that I am in the know about the university’s going-ons at Trinity than I do here, due simply to my host university’s decentralised and spread nature.
Continuing with the social aspect of college and drawing in extra-curriculars I recently observed that there exists at Trinity a Pirate Society. This society like the countless other societies and sports clubs at Trinity, receive funding from the university to organise talks, nights out, trips and so on. It is a brilliant system that provides a way to meet people while engaging in your favourite activities, be it kickboxing, fencing or piracy on the Liffey (because I’m not quite sure what it is the Pirate Society get up to). This is unfortunately absent here in Kraków and from talking to fellow ERASMUS students it appears largely absent in universities across continental Europe. This does not mean that there are no activities, trips, talks or nights out, but that the extra-curricular and social aspects of the college take different forms. At the Jagiellonian University, the Student Union is a truly massive organisation that not only mediates between the students and the university but it itself organises trips and events via its numerous branches for each faculty and department. The literal translation from Polish would be the Student’s Government. This ‘government’ employs hundreds of class representatives and they, much like at Trinity, mediate with the university and organise the occasional course night out.
In addition to this there is another rather large organisation that receives funding via the Student’s Union and organises talks and other events. The ERASMUS Student Network is also a heavily funded organisation providing weekly events and regular trips for ERASMUS students. However, societies and sports clubs appear to be entirely without the university and there does not seem to be a student gym available to all. The lack of such societies and clubs appears to me very negative in the sense that cross-departmental encounters among students are rare. There is no weekly S.U email detailing this week’s nights out, this week’s special offers and just general student-related information. The university’s lack of a centralised student hang-out means that you won’t easily find out about the Swedish Philology night out on Thursday usually communicated to students via posters. The fact that there is no Swedish Language or Modern Languages society to facilitate events for students interested in the Swedish language (or modern languages generally) also contributes to this problem. It appears as if most students stick with their respective classmates and departments. This is much the same with the ERASMUS students who group together making it very much a case of each to their own throughout the university.
As regards the academic side of the university, there are some notable differences. A technical difference for instance is that professorships are above doctorates. Lectures and seminars meanwhile last one and a half hours, and can start at 07:55 in the morning and end at 22.00 at night.
Now because I study Polish I am obliged to take courses in Polish. This has given me a small insight into university life for Polish students. Unfortunately this insight is quite narrow and will lead to generalizations but having taken a number of courses last semester in Polish one difference I noticed was Polish students participation and attitude to participation in class. In the courses I took you would most likely have failed if you had not contributed some information or added to discussions in seminars and this prompts the students to be quite active. Even in lectures students tend to be quite involved, generally dissimilar to some of the drawing blood from a stone that I’ve seen at Trinity. It appears as if, at least the politics and international relations departments gear the marking system towards participation. An oral examination instead of a written for some history and politics courses is also a popular way to examine.
The college’s equivalent of Blackboard and TCD Portal is called USOS, a very good database of most courses, staff and students (past and present) along with other things such as your college email. Although sometimes the location of a class can be missing or change without notice it is a very useful and importantly, centralised database. I have used it to find all of my courses or professors and their contact information.
At Trinity, after having taken your exams you wait about a month until your final grade, along with those of your fellow classmates grades, are published collectively via the Internet. Things work differently here, the system preferred being a lot more hands on. It’s called the indeks. Effectively your personal transcript, upon finishing a course, you are obliged to have each of your professors fill in this little green booklet with your grade, the breakdown of the grade and importantly, their signature. If you fail to do this then you might as well not have taken the course. This system is unfortunately inefficient as you receive your grades in dribs and drabs and occasionally due to timetable clashes or unexpected eventualities games of hide and seek with a professor ensue. The indeks system coupled with short office hours and numerous students can mean that (as has happened to me) one week you meet your professor for your essay and its grade. He or she then signs the indeks. The following week you meet for the result of the oral examination, but not necessarily the final grade. I have been told by numerous Polish students of their jealousy of my ERASMUS status simply because I apparently avoid many of the bureaucratic excesses that Polish students have to endure. Of course I cannot generalise too much because how this plays out is entirely up to the discretion of each professor.
Krakow, famous for its beautiful architecture
I got quite a surprise (that I had been previously warned about but entirely forgotten) when I arrived at the location of my first exam, a course through Polish and thus logically attended exclusively by Polish students. I had not shaven, nor had I paid any particular attention to my attire that morning, having sacrificed looking decent for extended study time. Upon my arrival I found myself in a sea of formality. The vast majority of the students from my class were dressed as if a formal business meeting with potential investors was about to begin. Nothing like the tracksuit-bottoms-and-hoodie-combo filled RDS.
Moving on to the library, or the Biblioteka Jagiellońska. Although host to a large selection of books, in my opinion its method of lending does not function very well. Almost all of the books are in stacks, which cancels out any window-shopping. To take a book out you must order it online and wait anything from twenty minutes to an hour or more. On the one hand this is much quicker than Trinity’s stacks but the drawback of course that you cannot wander in and search for books. If you take a book out and it turns out it wasn’t what you were looking for you have to return it, search and order via the catalogue again, and then wait (as opposed to simply placing it back on the shelf). The library catalogue is not the best either, and you spend a lot of time searching for the exact word or term that might yield what you were hoping to find. I find Trinity Library’s open shelf approach works better. Then to get into the library you must put away your belongings in a locker unless you have a laptop. So if you attempt to enter and exit with any of your own books, each must be examined by security to ensure you are not stealing.
Although it may appear as if I’ve painted a rather negative picture I didn’t mean to do so. For all its faults I am thoroughly enjoying my time both academically and socially at the Jagiellonian University. It is quite a different university from Trinity and naturally its faults are quite different from Trinity’s faults. Trinity’s centralised campus helps create a relatively close-knit student body, its clubs and societies a very active and enjoyable extra-curricular culture. At the Jagiellonian University the scales are tipped more towards the academic side of things, which is not a bad thing. The city itself more than balances the scales by being very alive and truly bursting with restaurants, theatres, students, festivals, cafés, bars, clubs and everything in between. An example of one of those in-betweens would be the tram party, which is unsurprisingly a citywide party on a moving tram. Definitely worth trying. In fact, just Kraków itself: definitely worth trying.
