Start Of A New College Experience

For any of you who do not know, my name is Michaela Quigley. I am an Erasmus student who chose to study in Ulster University in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. I wanted to study different modules to what was offered at Waterford Institute of Technology. I also wanted to be more hands on and practical with assignments and not be too focused on just learning the theory. But to learn it by doing.

When there I got to choose three modules. I chose food tourism, festivals and events management, food sensory science and food innovation and consumer management. The first module focuses on food events that are happening locally in Belfast and touches on events happening annually around the world. Discussing topics such as cookery schools, the popularity of tourism and cultural tourism and how the tourism industry has changed over time. Approximately five seminars will be held to do food pairings and wine tastings which is quite interesting and I had an interest back in college hen I did the oenology module.

The second module conducts an actual food sensory analysis on three products made by ourselves based on a chosen commodity. We pick here products make them that day. We get small samples of each product and place them on trays. In an actual food sensory testing lab we test the products o actual people to collect data to decide if the commodity can be tasted through the products. Quite an interesting assignment.

The last and final module is one I will be studying in college back home in fourth year. So I thought it would be a great idea to get a taste for the module before dong it in my final year. For our assignment, we are given a brief by an actual company about a product they want us to create. We work on creating the product, analyse it using sensory analysis procedure and then we create a pitch for the company, showing our progress and given them samples of the product. The best thing about this module is that we get a reference off the company and increase the contacts we have in northern Ireland. Which made this module hard to refuse.

I start a proper week next week. This week was basically induction, showing us around, explaining modules and setting up I.D cards. I am very excited to start these modules. I hope they are as good as they sound.