Ecology program review

This experience has overall been very rewarding. The program was a bit a more unstructured than I had thought, but looking back that is what should have been expected as this was the first time this program was being run.

I love how there were cultural visits built into our weekly schedules alongside our coursework activities. Also, the coursework largely consisted of conducting outdoor fieldwork - which I was very excited about. It was a good way to cultivate this fieldwork skill as well as spend time outdoors in the beautiful Scotland countryside.

I'm not sure how the selection process worked for accepting students into this program, but whatever you're doing you're doing it well. All of the ecology students were very fun to work with and we got along well. They were also pretty low maintence and able to go with the flow - an important trait when dealing with a new program such as this.

A few unfortunate things:
The canteen/dining hall was under construction nearly the entire time we were here. The food selection was not what I expected, not a lot of fruits and vegies which can be difficult for people, like myself, with dietary resrictions such as gluten allergies and vegetarian options.
The airport pickup was a bit uncoordinated as well. I was told to arrive at certain time and that an Adelante/Oatridge representative would be there with a sign for me to meet until we had a large enough party to head back to the college. There was no one waiting, and I ended up just having to blindly seek out students in the airport who might be part of the same program. And we were waiting for a while. Which would've been fine if we knew that some help was on the way. The phone numbers we were given to contact Oatridge upon arrival weren't working either - which made it even more difficult to tell if anyone was on their way to get us.
Some of the coursework was not explained in full. There was a big project at the end of the course and everyone in our group thought we were doing something different than what was actually assigned. The organization/coordinatino between different instructors seemed to be lacking a bit - but not too much.