NCI Blog

Learning with Friends: A Case Study

Posted by Emma Henderson on 26 February 2016

There are lots of benefits to studying with friends - as this Stellar Magazine interview with three NCI students shows:

Niamh O’Neill, 31, did a course with friends Niamh and Jess.

“I did a professional certificate in human resource management in National College of Ireland (NCI), with two of my friends,” says Niamh O’Neill.

“People were talking about the course as being a good one to do, but really I did it because the two girls were!

“We used to work together – I’ve known Niamh for about four years,and Jess for maybe six. We were all working full-time, and we knew that this course – which was part-time – would be really intense. But we’d be more likely to go to classes if the others were going.

“We’d force each other to go on Mondays, and on Saturdays we’d usually plan something fun to do afterwards, and try to meet up during the week to work on our assignments. Without them, I definitely wouldn’t have done as much work.

“We didn’t have any big arguments, but in group work, there were definitely things we’d disagree on. We’ve all pretty strong personalities, and there’d have been tension from time to time, but we got over it quickly.

“Doing the course together made us quite unsociable. If the other girls weren’t there, I’d make more of an effort to talk to other people, but in general we really did stick together.

I’d definitely recommend studying with friends. I’m even trying to convince one of the girls to do further study with me. It was nice; it meant it wasn’t all work. You can have a bit of fun too.

“I was probably the mutual friend, when we started the course; they were friendly, but I was friends with each of them. Now, we’re a threesome, which is really nice – and we still do quite a bit together.”

Read more NCI blog posts!

This interview appears in the March 2016 issue of Stellar. Check out NCI's suite of human resource management courses, or read our blog post on the benefits of doing a professional development programme. 

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Topics: HRM