2000

Laura Gleasure (BA Single Honours - Major Italian/Minor Psychology, 2000)

'After graduating from UCC, I began a post-graduate course in Dublin Business School on Aungier Street from October 2000 until the following June. The course I chose was a Graduate Diploma in Business Studies with IT (GDBS(IT)) (As a personal reward for completing the course, I spent the month of June in Italy, before starting to job-hunt in July!) I found the course tough at the time and in truth, it felt like a three year degree course crammed into one year! The business element was straight-forward, but the IT modules, including computer programming, were new territory for me! Also, there was continuous project work with heavy emphasis on team-work. Now I realise that the team-work practice has indeed paid off, as in marketing we work mainly as a team; naturally with individual responsibilities. However, it has proven to be a very worthwhile year, especially as nowadays, IT skills seem to be a basic job requirement.

'I've been working in Marketing at Iona Technologies for the past seven months now and love my job. Although my market is Northern Europe, from time to time, I attend events in Italy and deal with the Italian market. It is because of my Italian, that I got this job, above other applicants who spoke only French or German. Iona are conscious of having all the markets covered by two people at all times, should one be unavailable. I still visit Italy, mainly Turin as often as possible to catch up with friends and try to hold onto some level of fluency!'

'Thanks for a great education and for your devotion to instilling a love of Italian culture into all of your students.' (February 2002)

Emma Miller Fitzpatrick (BA Joint Honours - Italian and English, 2000)

'Since I graduated last autumn, I have updated my TEFL certificate of 1993 with a more relevant RELSA (teaching English to foreigners) qualification. Along with that and my degree from UCC , I have found myself a full-time position with the North Monastery Language Centre, Tobin Street, Cork , as a teacher of English to foreign students (mainly adults) and also as teacher of Italian language at beginner and intermediate levels to non-Italian natives. I am pleased to say that I enjoy my job very much and feel satisfied that I am actually using the degree that I slogged hard for! I enjoy teaching Italian (even if I find it hard to get my hands on innovative teaching materials) and will always be grateful to the Italian Department in UCC for the interesting courses and splendid quality of teaching made available to us during our course of study. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank you and all the teaching and administrative staff in the department for the hard work and efforts taken to make the degree course what it is today'. (May 2001)

Department of Italian

Iodáilis

First Floor Block A West, O' Rahilly Building, University College Cork, Ireland