High-flying students can teach us a lesson in economic forward-planning

THE snowploughs were still out, but in single file, not battalions.

Most of the runways at JFK had opened again, so that instead of 16 flights an hour, they were back up to 60.

The queues at the Aer Lingus check-in were long, but fewer war stories were being told. One man said that he’d been delayed a week, the worst aspect of the delay being the fact that he turned up at his regional airport every day, was checked in, run through security, only to then encounter first a flight delay notice and eventually — on some days as long as eight hours later — an announcement that the flight to JFK had been cancelled.

Someone else predicted that even when you embarked on a flight to Europe out of JFK at the moment, you might be sitting in the plane on the tarmac for as long as an hour. What was that about? he asked rhetorically but without resentment.

The group of girls checking in behind him were too busy labelling their luggage to pay him much attention.

They were in their late teens, maybe 20 of them, definitely American but probably not from New York, and clearly not going on vacation. They had way too many suitcases, backpacks, duffel bags and wheelies for a fortnight’s trip. Most had two sizeable suitcases apiece.

They paid up for the second case and thanked the check-in operators for not charging them extra for the few bags that were overweight. Then they called their moms and dads to report how they’d got on.

The girl in the Hunter designer Wellington boots got upset during her phone call, her face reddening as she fought tears, nodding fiercely to the person at the other end of the line as if she could be seen by them.

She’d talk tomorrow, she promised before ending the call and drying her tears with the humped back of her wrist. Her dad had been crying, she told the others sitting on the floor around her, slender be-jeaned legs stretched out in front of them.

“Don’t you hate it when your Dad cries?” she muttered. “Don’t you just hate it?”

The girl calling her grandmother in Minneapolis to tell her the flight was leaving on time nodded, relieved that her grandmother wasn’t getting emotional on her, but was asking practical questions like “Is the plane there?”

Yes, the girl told her. She could see it — it was actually GREEN, she told her granny delightedly.

“Hey, is Grandpa asleep?” she then asked. “I’d like to say goodbye to him.”

While her grandmother went off to roust Grandpa from wherever he was, the girl produced an automatic smile for the camera of one of her colleagues, throwing one arm around the shoulders of the pal nearest to her. The others examined the shot while she told her Grandpa that she would miss him and that she was going to have a glass of wine on the plane to make sure she slept.

One by one, they called their family. It began to seem as if they were doing it in sequence to prevent collective emotional melt-down.

One by one, they were unselfconsciously sad in the course of their telephone partings.

This was evidently some kind of rite of passage, rather than a group holiday, hence the need to take photographs as a visual record of the beginning of their trip.

But they had also brought along printed family photographs — some of the shots got taken out of their carry-on baggage for mutual sharing, then carefully re-stowed. By the time you read this, those prints will be on display somewhere in Cork. Probably in a students’ residence, because these girls are going to be spending the next five months on the UCC campus.

“We are encouraged to travel for one semester overseas, and most of our group selected to go to Ireland and to Cork,” one of them told me. “It is reputedly very strong in medical science, and that’s our major. Nursing, you know?”

You didn’t have to ask them to open their spanking new passports to know that this is the first time most of them will have spent a substantial chunk of time overseas, either on vacation or as part of their studies, and they anticipate being homesick, particularly since most of them go to a college which is relatively close to where they live, allowing them to either live at home or at worst commute at weekends. That turns their semester in Cork into a pretty major expedition.

But they’ve done their research. They know the UCC campus is beautiful — some of them had photographs of it. They expect the weather to be cold — one of them said she had packed an extra coat in her duffel bag.

They’ll try to see a bit of Ireland while they’re here, but for the most part, they’ll be keeping the head down, studying hard.

WHEN their flight was called, they listened carefully to the order in which they were to board, promised each other that swaps would happen to facilitate anyone who wanted a window seat but didn’t currently have one, patted the pockets of their GAP jeans to make sure they had everything, and wished the ticket checkers happy new year. They reminded each other — as the flight began to board — of a checklist of items and promised the one who gets panic attacks on flights that they’d get her a paper bag to breathe in and out of (I have often used a paper bag as a way of killing off hiccups, but had never before heard of it serving as a more general anxiety-management tool). A last photograph and they were off on their excellent adventure.

Their parents would be proud of them.

They were loud; they could insert ‘like’ more often in one sentence than seemed humanly possible, even to someone who knows Joseph O’Connor’s radio essay on the topic off by heart. At least half of them looked as if they had a bit of Ireland in their DNA. But what made them interesting was their smarts, their intelligence and their uncynical optimism. They never mentioned the Irish economy. They had no leapin’ leprechaun sentimentality about the country where they planned to spend a lost half a year. They never slagged each other off.

Whatever scheme has brought them to UCC is a good one. I’ve said before in this column that Ireland should be actively seeking to make education a huge contributor to the economy, as do countries like Australia.

The international hunger for worthwhile degrees from a highly-regarded educational institution is enormous, and Ireland is well placed to meet it.

Bringing students here from all over the world may not have the immediate payoff derived from incoming tourists, but carries long-term benefit for the country in terms of connectedness; relationships; the creation of a new generation of ambassadors for Ireland as a great place to study, work and play.

If all goes well, even the father who cried may decide that parting with his daughter for five months was worth it.