By Ciara Lyons
In the last week of November, running from the 22nd to the 26th, we had College Awareness Week. This is a national campaign which aims to promote the benefits of going to college, to help students of all ages to become college-ready and to showcase local role models who are in 3rd level education.
We started the week with an encouraging announcement of the benefit of this campaign, not just for 6th years, but all year groups, to get us thinking about college or our future career path.
Daily announcements were made on the intercom, each day discussing a different college or school of further education, introducing different pathways to students. Grace Prendergast from the Defence Forces talked to senior students about possible careers in the Army.
On Thursday 25th, six college students involved in TAP (Trinity Access Programme) gave each 6th year class a talk, involving what TAP is and how it can aid as a support for students to go to college. The three programmes, HEAR (Higher Education Access Route), DARE (Disability Access Route to Education), and SUSI (Student Universal Support Ireland), were also discussed as a way to make college available to any and all students. Later in the day, 6th years were shown videos from people in different career paths, such as, advertising, medicine, primary school teaching and many more. These videos featured information on the journey each person took to end up in their chosen careers, including the Leaving Certificate, college, internships, travelling abroad, etc. showing 6th years how there are many different ways to get to where you want to be in life. These talks were highly interesting and informative and really helped us students understand how the Leaving Cert impacts our future, but doesn’t determine, or limit our possibilities.
