Were definately in 4th year.....

There's no chance of lying back this year that's for sure. Right from the first week I realised that this year is definately not something we can just scrape through and do the bare minimum, and its going to be extremely stupid to leave all the projects to the last minute. We have 5 assignments due in on the same week and the deadline is fast approaching... Also we have a E-Business assignment based on a speaker we had in, which is definately not going to be an easy one!!
Working on the International Business & Trade project at the min its 100% ca so obviously it needs to be good, but I just cant seem to settle to write it up, loads of research but not much concrete.

And since we're in fourth year it seems like at the back of my mind is always what Im going to do after I graduate.
We went to the Gradireland Careers Fair last week and I think I would of been better staying at home and researching the companies online because it was off little or no use to me. Most of the companies sent people who were just there to hand out leaflets and only answered the most basic questions, these people were mainly still on the graduate programme which could of been a good thing because they were in our foot last year, but I really think it would of been of more benefit to send senior personnel. Also we were told they would take our CVs but they wouldnt.

Although it seems like it was all bad, it wasnt, there were a few very helpful people, and I was pleasantly surprized by Lidl and Aldi.

But still the resounding message we got was...

Travelling

One benefit Ive found came out of my Erasmus year abroad last year was the great interest I found in travelling. Well although I say I found it, I think it was more that I developed it because I had always had an interest in travelling just never the money to do anything about it.. During Erasmus last year I travelled Portugal extensively and really felt like I got to know each of the areas very well. So that inspired me to go Amsterdam and Liverpool over the Christmas break last year. Now this Christmas Im heading to Belgium - Brussels, Bruges and Antwerp. Cant wait. Then Summer 2010 its off to Greece. Im taking it one small step at a time but hopefully Ill get there eventually.
My goal is to visit every country in Europe...
Checked Off:
- Italy
- Spain
- Portugal
- France
- Italy
- UK
- The Netherlands
- Belgium (Jan '10)
- Greece (Jul '10)
- Bulgaria (Jul '10)

While it would be class to go travelling for a month or two its just not possible so for now this is my only option, doing it in stops and starts!!

SEO and SEM

At the minute in our E-Business course we are just finising up the section on SEO and SEM which I am finding extremely interesting, I cant get over how different this E-Business module is to the one we took in Erasmus last year. This year its possible to combine the Practical and Theorical aspects of E-Business as oppose to last year when our lecturer just detailed us loosely to establish a website and design it.

Anyway,
























SEO = Search Engine Optimisation


SEM = Search Engine Marketing

From the offset these could be thought to be the same things however SEO is all about improving the volume of traffic through your web page from a search engine's 'organic' links. 'Organic' links are the links which the search engine itself deems relevant to particular keywords. The organic links can be seen to have an advantage for the listed companies and web pages because the search engine (eg. Google) sees them as a quality page under the users inputted key phrase. So its almost like a quality endorsement..



Where as SEM on the other hand is concerned with the optimisation of the paid links, these generally appear on the right hand side of search engines like Google. These links are there because someone such as a business has paid to be included on the site if a user searches for certain key words. This method has the benefit in the fact that because they are paying for inclusion they are guaranteed to be viewed when someone types the keywords, however people only click on these links 20% of the time because they do not rate the content as highly for quality.

Erasmus Experience

Setubal can be beautiful if viewed from the Right Places


To say I enjoyed the Erasmus experience throughout would be a lie... I mean as if being thrown into a foreign country with little or no help wasnt difficult enough to get my head around, try being thrown into an area of Portugal which can only be described as poverty stricten. Myself and three other students went to Setubal in Portugal for our Erasmus, we lived in the students residence which was situated 10mins from the campus and 20mins from the city, the students residence was sandwiched between a shanty town, deserted waste land and an estate full of very very poor people in delapidated tower buildings. In saying this the actual residence we lived in was relatively secure although it was very boring and we were placed with final year portuguese students. I think some of the most depressing times of my life were spent in this year abroad, although we were obviously glad to have other irish students there.
1st semester was particularly bad as we got into a routine of staying in the residence as it seemed like to much effort to get out and organise trips. However we managed to travel a lot to Lisbon and the surrounding areas.

In second semester however lots changes and we put it down to a number of factors...
1. Our determination to avoid a repeat performance of 1st semester
2. The change of Erasmus students (fresh blood with more motivation)
3. The weather getting gradually better and better, vice versa from 1st semester

Things really began to change in the first weeks of 2nd semester. We booked flights home for Easter to break up the time, something which we didnt do in the 1st semester (were we endured a 4month stint non-stop). Also with the help of more motivated Erasmus we started to arrange trips to visit different parts of Portugal. Immediately we started to make the most of our time and see the country.
With Erasmus students we went to the Algarve for the National Erasmus Meeting of Portugal, to Peniche for surfing, to Cascais for fashion shows. Also I had friends over and we travelled to Porto and I became very familiar with Lisbon.

Going to Portugal for Erasmus, on the whole, I would definately not recommend it..
Going to Portugal on holidays, I would however praise it, if your interested in coastal beauty, historic buildings, culture, scenery, sight seeing and if you enjoy trawling cities and discovering unfamiliar places then this is an ideal place. This was definately one of the best holiday locations I have ever been but just dont live in SETUBAL!!

Also I thought once I came back to Ireland I could put the bad times we had on Erasmus in Setubal behind me, but NO... not only did we have problems getting the correct results from 1st semester (which has still not been clarified) but also the college will not send over an accurate transcript of results for the courses we completed while in Portugal, meaning that me and the three others students who went to Portugal cant register for Fourth Year of our course in Dundalk..
This is seriously heartbreaking for us as we thought our troubles were over when we left Portugal.....

Lisbon, Porto, Lagos, Algarve