Treason
in Trinity
—or
when good intentions go bad…
It
was meant to be a year of pure unadulterated study; a year of intellectual
challenge and mental cultivation; a year of beret-wearing and academic debate
about Foucault over espresso….For in the academic year 2002-03 I was abandoning
my west of Ireland ways and going to Trinity.
My
years in UCG as a carefree Arts student were spent chiefly in the fine bars and
hostelries of Galway: the Warwick, Cuba, the Cellar, the College Bar, Red Square
and Forster Court all hold happy memories for me. And how could I go to lectures anyway?
There was always a debate to prepare, an event to advertise, a radio show to
co-ordinate, an article to write…how was I supposed to focus on the post-modern
novel or Balkan history when I had all that to do?
With an average degree under my belt I took a year
out. The only reading I did was of
crossword clues and the TV listings, and after several months my brain was in
need of electro-shock therapy just to remember people’s names. It was time for me to challenge my mind
and so I chose to leave the safe and happy haven of UCG for foreign parts to do
my masters. In Trinity I wouldn’t
be distracted by debates, plays or parties. I wouldn’t have to organise
anything. I would focus strongly
and singularly on my studies…and of course I’d get to wear that beret and chat
up cute intellectual guys with goatees over coffee.
Confound it all! Why didn’t that happen? The road to a
scraped pass really is paved with good intentions. For the first few months I lived the
dream (minus the beret, Topshop doesn’t seem to stock
them). I swanned around the Beckett Centre laden with books on
theatre and film theory and furiously took notes in seminars on Althusser, Artaud, Brecht, and my particular favourite, Freud (so we’re all
innate perverts – it’s nothing to be ashamed of!). When one Thursday evening, feeling,
well, bored out of my skull, and like there was something exciting missing in my
life - the feeling that can only be resolved with a debate in the Kirwan and
pints in the Forster Court - I decided to try the debating equivalent of
methadone: the Phil.
The
Phil, for the uninitiated, is the second debating society in TCD, the first
being the rather staid and dull Hist. The Phil is a
chronically bad boys’ club (although I discovered during the year that the first
woman to speak at it was a debater from UCG, one Ms C. O’Regan, who spoke at an inter-varsity debate in 1953) but I
wasn’t put off by this. In fact, being in the Drama Department, it was rather
nice to meet some slightly less camp men then the ones I was surrounded with all
day. Both the Hist and the Phil’s private business is
annoyingly exclusive of ordinary students (give me PMT in the Lit’n’Deb any day) but they do happen (what with location
and obscenely huge budgets) to get good guests so public business is usually a
bit of craic.
After the first hit my addiction came flooding back and
I became a regular at the debating societies—forgive my disloyalty—but cold
turkey is bloody hard! And worse
than that—I got involved in Players…soon (i.e. by November) lectures were again
coming second to my other occupations in college; my dream of intellectual
brilliance in tatters.
I
look back at the year now and wonder how it was that my brain didn’t even put up
a fight. Instead of memories of
receiving A’s and being the wonder student of the Drama Department, I look back
on a year where I adjudicated at four debating IVs, produced two plays and
helped run a drama club for kids from Pearse St. (?!?)
and……I don’t regret a thing. I’m
not a natural academic—whoopdeedo—I have a life and I
had a great year—as Van the Man put it: “I’m satisfied with my world; cos it’s the way I made it”.
Moments that stick out in my mind include: adjudicating
a round in the TCD IV with Bob Cox (don’t ask) after we had both had a few pints
of Beckett’s Ale and having a young Belfield pup stop in to middle of his speech
on gun culture in the U.S. (or something) to ask us “What would Jesus do?”;
seeing a UL boy down a shot of Fairy Liquid post-Law Debates thinking it was
Crème de Menthe (that one never gets old); attending the Times Final and
hearing Pat Rabbitte tell the exact same ‘anecdotes’
that he had told at the Law Debates (for shame); hearing Lit’n’Deb quoted at the Phil – “Weren’t you the stripper at
my 21st?!” - and not by me; Beckett week with Israel Horowitz’s
anecdote about apologising to Beckett for stealing a line from a poem of his in
one of his works—and Beckett’s reply in his flat Dublin accent “ah that’s okay—I
stole it from Dante” and finally (just a few days ago) attending a swank party
in Glenageary and seeing a classmate hit on the head
of the department very drunkenly…in front of his wife. Ah, memories to treasure.
Very soon I leave dirty old Dublin to head back west of
the Shannon and from September will be, once again, a registered student at NUI,
Galway (thank the Lord!). I grew to
like Trinity this year but my heart belongs to UCG. Another year rolls around, “The die is
cast and we must play our parts”. I
may not be heading for a first, but after a year studying theatre I have learned
a thing or two—hear ye, hear ye as I tell ye that which
must never be forgotten:
“All the
world’s a stage
And all the men and women merely
players.
They have their exits and their
entrances,
And one man in his time plays many
parts”
Willy, you can sing
it.
Elaine Dobbyn, B.A.
Auditor of the Literary
& Debating Society, 2001-2002
Elaine Dobbyn and Enda Dolan at the NUI,
(No former
Auditors, or Treasurers for that matter, were injured in the making of this
photograph…)