ELAINE LAVERY

Award Year: 2012

Course: Business & Law

Activities: Choral Scholars; University Observer

Occupation: Co-founder, Improper Food Limited

Years gone by and I can still feel the cold numbing my fingers and toes. Perhaps a case of student style over sensibility, at first, but soon realising that pride does in fact feel pain. Bundled up in Ugg boots, ski jackets, gloves, and scarfs, all so that you could focus on reading your line, on hitting that top note – when your mind would easily wander to what you’d have for dinner. Only 6.30pm, it would be another two and a half hours (at least) reciting the lesser-known choruses of Handel’s Messiah… It was only Monday. We’d be back on Wednesday. Two hours, twice a week. The only four hours of the week that everyone knew where they had to be, whether they wanted to or not.

They were the dark, frozen November evenings, rehearsing for a Choral Celebration of Christmas in Memorial Hall. Arriving late from double law in Roebuck Castle because you’d never leave a James McDermott lecture early, the entertainment being too good for one and you wouldn’t dare leave mid-show, attracting the attention of comic for two! Even on a bicycle it took ten minutes to cross campus. Arriving late to rehearsal risked having to sing a line of a new verse on your own; you’d rather that than the humiliation of being singled out in front of 300 second year Law students.

My memories of UCD are as a Choral Scholar. The Scholars were my UCD family. In the years that have followed, relationships have blossomed, engagements and weddings have been celebrated, business relationships have fused, in my case a three yearlong business partnership has prospered. I can’t imagine where I’d be had I not found my voice and my place in UCD.