This post is a bit overdue, but after finishing my finals I wanted to reflect on the general differences I observed between life at University College Dublin and life at Georgetown. Starting with schoolwork, I found the work environment itself to be more relaxed at UCD, and I believe this difference in work environments actually allowed me to become a better thinker in my classes. My fellow business students and I realized that class participation was not factored into a person’s grade at UCD; whereas back home it would typically constitute 10 to 15 percent of a person’s grade. Aside from the occasional group project or paper, the workload over the course of the semester was very manageable. We panicked more once final exams rolled around, since they constituted between 50 and 70 percent of our grades.
Another major difference involved my housing. During my time at Georgetown, I will have always lived on-campus; in Dublin, the smart decision was to live off-campus since it was much closer to the city centre. Eventually, however, allotting fifteen minutes for the bus ride to campus became a bit of a pain, and I will definitely be looking forward to the close proximity of everything in Georgetown this summer and next year. Living off-campus also took a toll on my campus involvement, since I was consistently on-campus only two days a week (I somehow managed to pile all my classes on just Wednesdays and Thursdays). Traveling almost every weekend made it difficult to become involved in clubs and activities, something I’m sure many of my international friends can attest to, as well. This is a huge difference from Georgetown, where everyone seems to be doing just about everything.
This might seem like a ton of free time, but I have been putting it all to good use. Throughout my semester abroad, I was not expecting to learn so much just from other American students. I did not realize the value of interacting with students from different universities, such as University of Richmond, Boston University, and even Syracuse (we put aside our differences during basketball season). I also grew close with a number of students from University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Illinois, especially since most of them were originally from the Chicagoland area. Their familiar, endearing Midwestern accents reminded me of home. I also learned a great deal from my six roommates. Although living with six other girls intimidated me at first, I can truly say that I grew close with all six of them and that I learned something new from each one. I tried to take some kind of lesson from everyone I encountered.
Although most of my friends were international, I did make a few Irish friends along the way, mostly through group projects in the business school. Business students are all familiar with the popularity of group projects within coursework. While it is always a pain to coordinate five or six different schedules for meeting times, I appreciated these group projects much more at this point in time because it allowed me to become better acquainted with more Irish students. When we were supposed to be discussing the actual logistics of our project, we typically procrastinated at first by discussing fun topics – cities the Irish students had visited in the United States, how they liked Americans, how well they knew the Irish language, etc. I enjoyed listening to their sayings, such as “That’s grand!” or “What’s the craic?” which basically means “What’s happening?” I personally love hearing an Irish accent, but apparently most Irish people dislike their own accents and love hearing an American accent. I also learned that it is very popular among Irish undergraduate students to spend a summer working in a major US city, such as Chicago or New York. My Irish friends also enjoyed hearing my full name. To any school official, I would completely pass as an Irish student, until of course I started talking. Only then, according to my Irish friends, would I receive that preferential “international student” treatment.
At the same time, though, I also noticed that I began to miss Georgetown, even though I was completely ready to leave it back in December. I started to long for those pretty cherry blossoms in DC, along with the warmer weather. While I was well aware that Ireland wasn’t an island of the “tropical variety” (believe me, some people actually think Ireland is a tropical island), the weather in the Emerald Isle wore me down after a while. This particular winter was actually the coldest that Ireland and the UK had experienced in over fifty years. Above all, I grew nostalgic for Georgetown’s strong Catholic community, mainly because I did not find a comparable community at UCD. Attending mass off-campus, the homilies were less geared towards my age group, and the members of the congregation would all speak at different times, which made me feel disconnected at times. I will be happy to return to that strong Catholic community at Georgetown next year.
Despite all of this, I know that the minute I get settled in Georgetown for the summer, I will miss having pubs with live music on every street corner that serve drinks by night and mouthwatering Irish breakfast by day. That’s just the way it goes!
