Keep Talking | The Great Debate 20 years on | Some disorganised thoughts & unreliable reminiscences
I graduated from University College Galway in 1991 with a rather underwhelming degree in Archaeology and English. A number of factors conspired to influence me to return to Galway in 2011 to be part of the twentieth anniversary reunion of the conferring of that degree. There was to be a reception in the Quad, a tour of the campus, and a celebratory dinner. It seemed like a great idea ... right up until I got there. There appeared to be plenty of people there from the 1991 Law and Medicine classes, but only a handful of the Arts graduates ... and I didn't recognise or remember any of them. In the years of my absence, the campus had expanded all along the bank of the River Corrib and was largely unrecognisable to me. The university was so large you needed a bus tour to see it all. The university was so large you could actually drive a bus around it! Unfortunately, it also appeared that many of the building projects had stopped mid-flow in the aftermath of the financial crisis. The...