For students, Rag Week, formally known as “Charity Week”, is the practice of truancy and day drinking. For me, it was a practice of self-control and discipline. This week long event is an Irish hybrid of tailgating and carnival. The school hosts numerous events in which you have to pay, or donate as you please (raising money for charity being the ultimate goal). Events include concerts and crazy competitions including: the yard of ale competition, helium karaoke, silent disco, human bowling, kissing competition, wet t-shirt competition, BYOB cinema night, various eating competitions…the list goes on and on, with one event per hour for the entire week. The campus was packed with students sitting around and casually drinking, listening to music, participating in an event or two. Instructors think that it’s all good craic and are genuinely surprised when anyone shows up to lecture.
Wednesday and Thursday of Rag Week, I spent in Cork at the competition. Sunday through Tuesday, I had three or four hours of rehearsal a night and double my normal class load during the day, because I had to make up labs and tutorials that I would miss during competition. I’m genuinely disappointed that I didn’t get to see any of the events or participate in Rag Week at all, since it literally would have been a once in a life-time experience for me, but obviously the competition was worth it.
I can only find some very low quality videos, but here is the jazz (incomplete, i might add):
Here's the contemporary:
And, here is the hip-hop, which was not allowed to be competed, but only shown at the competition's halftime:
Finally, here are some high quality photos compiled from different photographers who were at the event:
No comments:
Post a Comment