Connolly Building

The Pretty Side of Connolly

A little bit off campus is the Connolly Buildings which houses the Archaeology Department, although sometimes other classes take place in the building.  Overall this building could use some serious renovation.  Tiles are missing, blinds don't work, stairs are worn away, paint is chipping, etc., but it has desks and chairs which I generally prefer to the style of bench and one long desk.

The Not as Pretty Side

In this building I've been taking two classes both of which end after this week.  Prehistoric Societies in Ireland and Viking Age Archaeology of Scandinavia and the North Atlantic.  Both of which are pretty great.

I didn't think I'd like prehistory of Ireland, or anywhere in Europe, that interesting to be honest as my preference tends to be the Americas.  However, after doing Early Start I realized how much it fascinated me.  This class is pretty great, although I do wish that the professor, Billy O'Brien, would use Blackboard and put up his powerpoints.  I think I would like this class better if it was scheduled better.  I have it for two hours on  Wednesday, but not consecutively.  There are a surprising number of mature students in the class, I actually believe that they are the majority.  I've written one paper for this class so far about the lack of evidence of people being in Ireland during the Palaeolithic (but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).  This is the class I had a field trip for, but I'm still annoyed that we had to pay for it considering it was 10% of our grade.

The Viking class is actually one of the classes that I picked prior to coming and stuck with.  John Sheehan, our professor, is pretty great.  He's really friendly and knowledgeable, but he does like to go off on tangents (especially about other archaeologists).  However, his tangents are always interesting.  When we spent a good chunk of a class period talking about how the term Viking Age is problematic because the term Viking is a modern construct, I felt like I was back at Swat.  I have a test for this class tomorrow so I'm actually going to go back to studying for it now.