The day when I got accepted into the Dublin Study Abroad Program, my father faced me with a quizzical expression and asked, “Why Ireland?” It was the simplest of questions any parent would ask if they were about to fork out a lot of money for their child’s six-week adventure abroad. But knowing my dad, he wasn’t asking a question—he was posing a challenge. There was something different about this trip than any other trips I’ve taken before. Unlike most of my peers, I wasn’t going because I had links to an Irish ancestry. I wasn’t going because I had to fulfill a few college credits in order to graduate. For one thing, I was the only Indian among sixteen other Temple University students traveling with me. So when I heard the voice overhead on the plane welcoming me to Dublin Airport, I found myself going back to my dad’s question for the hundredth time. Why was I here in Ireland?
It’s safe to say that it took some time and thought to really grasp the answer by the end of my Dublin experience. The first week was scary and overwhelming, and being somewhat of an introvert was not helpful. Not only was I forced to tackle my greatest weakness of remembering directions in a new city with a convoluted layout, I was also living with other Temple students who had completely different personalities and values than my own. I followed my group around and relied on them to make the best decisions. A dull feeling overcame my mind as I began to forget who I was as an individual. My discomfort got to the point where I found myself Skyping my parents and my friends back home every night. I looked for a sense of protection and, due to the irksome question itching in the back of my mind, a perfectly good reason to be here. But as always, I bore through this loneliness with a smile because I knew on the other side of the world, my dad was looking for a sense of strength within me. He kept on reminding me why I chose this trip and what I was looking for. His idea of really looking did not make much sense until I got lost on Inishmore in the Aran Islands.
It was, by chance, the greatest experience I had ever faced in Ireland. Some of my peers and I had traveled to the island and rented bikes to ride the entire breadth of the landscape. I was immediately captured by the way the stretches of green grass rushed furiously past me. Even the wet winds that lashed against my face excited my senses and made me feel daring and adventurous. I felt liberated from the chains that kept me bounded by the uncertainty of where my choices were leading me. So when I got separated from my group, I didn’t realize the significance of my solitary presence until I stopped to look. I hopped off my bicycle, took a deep breath, and observed my location. There was only one main road that ran the entire diameter of the island, but what held me back from moving on was a moment of contemplation. I asked myself how far I had come, and where I needed to go.
When I took the bike back on the road again, I noticed the path getting rougher and steeper. Soon I was flying through chunks of gravel and protruding rocks, holding on for dear life as I tried to maneuver myself out of danger. This was not the same road that I was on before, and I knew then that I had stepped off the secure path. The worst fact was that I had not touched a bicycle since elementary school, so the anxiety of crashing flooded my thoughts the entire time. But I held my grip and kept repeating to myself that I was in control. It wasn’t long until I made it to the finish line without a scratch. Then, for the first time, I realized that my whole journey on this island had been a metaphor of my transformation in Ireland. I started out fearful and overwhelmed, taking the easy route by following others and avoiding my personal reasons for being in Ireland. When I was left on my own to overcome the bumpy obstacles in my path, I was slowly becoming stronger in body and spirit. When I looked back at the landscape I crossed, I could only think about the tumultuous emotions I had conquered ever since coming to Dublin.
After that, the answer to why I was in Ireland started to become clear. I was not here to simply be lured by the romantic notions of green hills and grazing sheep, nor was I looking for a specific Irish quirk like the people’s love for literature and beer. I was here to fulfill a quest of growth and self-cultivation. I chose Ireland because I wanted to test myself in a place where I hardly had any connections—to go beyond my comfort zone and realize my potential in a foreign country. Of course, a more tangible reason was to look into the tension between the old rural culture and the contemporary culture in Ireland. That was where my media skills came into play—to document this mix of old and new traditions. But on a deeper level, I was challenging myself to experience a whole new frontier. It was a tough transition, but the ability to rise up against a certain identity crisis was the best thing to happen to me. It allowed me to breath in a whole new air of confidence along with the moist Irish breeze.
I believe that at the end of the day, my dad wanted to see this transformation happen, which was why he posed that puzzling question in the first place. He knew I had a knack of challenging myself with spontaneous decisions, and coming to Dublin has allowed me to not only realize its cultural differences, but also to realize my potential. My metaphoric and literal journey on Inishmore became an ongoing story of success. I have gone above and beyond my limits to cross uncharted roads, and I know now that this experience will eventually carry me to higher places in the future. That, to me, makes all the difference.
– Julisa Basak