Vote Yes

Posted on March 19, 2015 by mcortland15

Ireland and the US are both approaching a turning point for LGBT rights at nearly the same point in time.  Both countries will soon decide the issue of marriage equality, but through quite different means.

In the US, the issue is going go be decided by the courts, and has become a divisive topic split largely along party and geographic lines.  On April 28 the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for four same-sex marriage cases to determine the power of states to ban same-sex marriages and to refuse to recognize such marriages performed in another state.  The court is likely to hand down a ruling in June.

Right now, 37 states have legalized gay marriage (with Alabama in legal limbo) and the other 13 have some type of ban in place.  Of those 37 states where gay marriage is legal, 26 were decided by court decision since June 2013 when SCOTUS declared the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional in the landmark US v Windsor civil right case.  In the US, public support for marriage equality is currently around 60%.

In terms of other legal protections for LGBT people in the US, it wasn’t until 2003 that the US Supreme Court invalidated the remaining sodomy laws in 14 states.  Today, it is still completely legal to fire someone for being gay in 29 states.

The situation in Ireland is different.  Most people seem united in their opinion on the issue of marriage equality.  In 2010 the Dáil and the Seanad easily passed the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act, affording same-sex partners nearly equal rights as opposite-sex civil partners and people in same-sex marriages.  And, on May 22 the entire country will vote in a referendum to legalize marriage equality.  The vote is to assign the term “marriage” to same-sex unions and more specifically and to make the freedoms afforded to same and opposite-sex unions equal.  A recent pole suggests that almost 80% of people here support full marriage equality.

In Ireland homosexuality was decriminalized in 1993 (ten years before SCOTUS ruled to strike down sodomy laws), and today it is completely illegal to discriminate against someone because of his or her sexual orientation.

To be frank, before moving to Dublin I would not have expected Ireland to be so far ahead of the US in its country-wide protections and public support for LGBT people.  I suppose that this incorrect assumption stems from the fact that the first amendment of the United States Constitution draws lines for the role of religion in government and the Irish Constitution does not.  For many Americans, the “separate but equal” idea, while not actually in our Constitution, is a source of pride and principle.  We like to believe that we are a secular state.

Ireland is a country where 85% of the population self-identifies as Roman Catholic, yet 80% of people support marriage equality, the people and government officials are on the same page for extending equal protections to all citizens, and it is illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation.

If it were really true that religion does not have a place in politics, then the US would not be in the grips of the marriage equality debate, SCOTUS would not have to (finally) step in as they have done in the past, and it would be completely illegal to fire a person in 29 states for being gay.

I am left wondering: “what gives, America?”

This Catherine Tate comedy sketch pokes fun at some of these assumptions.

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A Three-Minute Talk…How Hard Could it Be?

Posted on March 17, 2015 by dnock15

Heart racing. Palms sweating. Nervous Pacing. I can’t sit in this chair any longer. Get up from my seat. Go to the bathroom. Splash water on my face. Look in the mirror. I’m staring in the face of a nervous wreck. I have practiced this talk for the last month. It is stuck in my brain and I could say it in my sleep. Why am I so nervous? I never get this nervous. Then it hits me. 4,000 live viewers. Once the video is on the internet, it is on there forever. There are no re-dos, this is it. The fact that this is permanent just ups the pressure. The only question I keep asking myself is “Why did I sign up for this competition?”

In December one of my advisors sent me a link encouraging me to submit a video entry to FameLab. FameLab is a science communication competition. To enter this competition I had to record myself presenting a three minute talk on any scientific topic  of my choosing. Once I recorded the video all I had to do was upload it to YouTube. It sounded simple enough so I decided to enter. My topic would be the power grid. I had studied this in school, and I am in a sustainable development course now…so it made sense.

Choosing a topic was easy, next I just needed to write a 3-minute speech that explained the power grid in a way that a general audience could understand. Three minutes is not long, but I found writing this speech was just as hard as crafting a 15 minute presentation. Three minutes did not seem like enough time to explain something which I had been studying for the last four years. So much information in so little time.

Instead of trying to write down everything I knew about the power grid and then jamming all of that into three minutes, I decided to try and explain the basics to my friend. From there he was able to tell me what was confusing, what I explained well, and what I needed to expand on. Talking the talk instead of writing the talk down and then trying to memorize the speech was one of the most effective things  could have done in this competition. I spent three days working on my entry, and uploaded it to YouTube, then I went on Christmas Break, and forgot about it. Until I got the e-mail.

When I learned I had been named a finalist for Northern Ireland I started freaking out. I was endlessly obsessing over my talk. I spent nights examining my old video and looking at ways I could improve. Once I had the speech all I had to do was practice. I practiced in my room, in front of my friends, on my way to the gym, walking to class, and to anyone that would listen. It was endless practice for four weeks.  All leading up to the moment when I was on the stage feeling 4,000 eyes on me, trying to remind myself to make eye contact and smile.


Once the talk was over I felt slight relief, until I had to wait for the judges to make a decision. While they were deliberating I found myself pouring over everything I had said in that short three minute talk. Did I sound nervous here? Should I have made the talk funnier? Then the decision came…I lost. The person that won had a really good talk, but then new questions came to mind. Should I have chosen a different topic? Did I look to nervous up there? What will people think when they view this talk on YouTube? These are the never ending thoughts that are buzzing around my brain.  There is the endless worry of something I have done, not being my best and then it getting posted to the internet…forever.

In spite of all that worry, when the video was posted to YouTube the next day I viewed it. I watched myself up there talking and thought…I’m glad my roommate let me borrow her shirt to wear that night. The talk wasn’t bad and I was proud of the speech I gave.

From this experience I learned that putting yourself out there, and feeling exposed is scary but can be very beneficial. This year two things happened that I never would have imagined at the start of my time in Northern Ireland.

  1. I willingly recorded myself and then posted the video to YouTube
  2. I presented on a stage where I was told over 4,000 people in multiple countries would be watching me

If my advisor hadn’t sent me an e-mail saying I should apply to the competition, then I probably would not have done it. Simply put, I did not think that I was good enough.  But once she believed in me, then I was able to say to myself I might as well try. I am grateful that she believed in me, because now that I have survived that first talk, the possibility of doing a second one doesn’t seem so scary.

Posted in Area of Study, Class of 2015, Class Year, Northern Ireland, Technology | Leave a comment

When I Stopped Being a Tourist

Posted on March 17, 2015 by stanaka15

While traveling, 99% of the time I am perfectly happy being a tourist.

I am a firm believer in TripAdvisor restaurant reviews and Lonely Planet attraction recommendations. I plan my accommodations ahead of time, usually opting for a top-ranked hostel on Hostelworld. I like waking up early and packing the day with sightseeing. I take selfies unabashedly (though I do draw the line at buying a selfie stick.)

I am not a fan of the travel blog advice to toss aside the guidebook and “get lost” in a city. Such an experience depends on the time and place, and more often than not, requires careful planning. Wandering a Moroccan medina during the day—perfect. Doing in the same in a random neighborhood in Berlin—you’ll probably end up overpaying for a mediocre dinner and strolling along glorified shopping strips.

I say this not because I am uninterested in authenticity or how locals actually experience their city. On the contrary, I accept my situation for what it is. I am a tourist, and I don’t live here. People-watching in the square or lingering in a corner cafe will not make me local.

I figured that living abroad would be different. The longest time I have spent in another country was two months in Guatemala during college. Even then, I moved from city to city and stayed primarily in homestays. I never had to make a life on my own overseas.

Yet when I moved to Dublin last September, I still felt like a tourist. I didn’t have an aha moment, but slowly, I began to see Dublin less as a place I was visiting and more like home. I came full circle by the weekend of November 22, my 11th weekend in Ireland. That weekend, I did not get in a train or bus; I did not host visitors; and I did not check any Dublin attraction off my list. I honestly can’t remember what I did, and to me, that’s part of being home.

In this post, I would like to share some of the things I’ve done to help me break out of the tourist mindset.

Try untraditional cuisine

Dublin has no shortage of spots touting authentic Irish food, like shepherd’s pie, beef and Guinness stew, and meat-laden Irish breakfast with black pudding. But restaurants that aren’t aimed at tourists better reflect the diversity of Dublin. My recommendation: Hop House north of the River Liffey, and the best Korean restaurant I have ever been to.

Go for a run

Running helps me explore new areas of Dublin. I spent my first few months running the common circuits in Phoenix Park and St. Stephen’s Green. Only in the past month have I started to expand my routes. Last weekend, I stumbled into Ringsend Park, and eventually onto the first beach I’ve seen in this city. You won’t find it on the tourist sites, but it boasts one of the prettiest views I’ve seen of Dublin.

Beach in Dublin

Beach in Dublin

See the site less traveled

Skip past the top-10 or must-see lists and opt for a tourist attraction that is less popular. Last weekend, I took a day tour to Newgrange, a passage tomb built 600 years before the Egyptian pyramids and 1,000 years before Stonehenge. During the Winter Solstice at sunrise, the sun aligns perfectly with the passageway opening and floods the inner chamber with light. It’s not as heavily advertised as say, the Guinness brewery, but it’s well worth the trip.

Opening to Newgrange

Opening to Newgrange

None of this makes me local, but I don’t consider myself a tourist either. I suppose I fall under the catch-all expat category, but I find that too transient. I have made roots here, and I feel settled. So instead, when asked where I come from, I keep it simple: I live in Dublin, and it’s grand.

Dublin at sunset

Dublin at sunset

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Acting the Ambassador

Posted on March 17, 2015 by dstrunk15

As a Mitchell Scholar, one of my responsibilities here in Dublin is to act in an ambassadorial capacity on behalf of America. Thus, a couple of weeks ago, I found myself participating in a debate hosted by the College Historical Society on the motion: “This House regrets the United States of America.” The oldest college organization in the world, the College Historical Society counts Edmund Burke as one of its founders. It hosts debates each week on a variety of topics. On this debate in question, I, of course, took it upon myself to defend the United States. Among other points, my speech focused on the American entrepreneurial spirit, and how our innovation drives improvements in everyday living across the world. I also went after a bit of low-hanging fruit (but pretty important fruit at that), emphasizing the role the United States played in World War II, securing global peace against German and Japanese aggression. Not surprisingly (at least I’d hope not surprisingly), the motion failed. Our side carried the day. The students of the College Historical do not regret the United States of America. Thank goodness.

Absurd debate motions notwithstanding, I have found my interactions with the Irish people concerning the United States to be almost wholly positive. It is quite clear in my interactions with Irish citizens that great deals of them hold a sort of kinship with our country, either because of family living there or a shared sense of history. In fact, on a number of occasions, I have found Irish people willing to go out of their way to help me get acquainted to Dublin, knowing that I’m a visitor from the USA. In fact, one night a couple of weeks ago, I was lost on the way to a pub where I was meeting several other Mitchells. Not only did a kind Dubliner take it upon himself to give me directions, he actually walked me all the way to the pub, giving me a tour of the surrounding Dublin architecture as he did. While certainly above and beyond the normal call of duty, I’ve found that this sort of joviality is not altogether uncommon here in Dublin.
Time has really flown by, and I have but two and a half months left here at Trinity College before I head back stateside. It’s beginning to sink in, slowly but surely, that there aren’t many days left. With this comes an increased urgency to experience as much as possible here in Ireland—and high on that list, definitely, is the kindness of the Irish people.
Posted in Class of 2015, Class Year, Trinity College Dublin | Leave a comment

On Reading Irish Writers

Posted on March 17, 2015 by mhussey15

My mother likes to remind me that when I was a small child she knew that taking me on a trip to the library was going to be a long outing. You can imagine then how thrilled I am to be a student again with access to a library as amazing as the one at Trinity College Dublin. I have enjoyed taking friends who have come to visit me to see the famous Book of Kells and the old library, which is one of the top attractions in Dublin and the closest thing to a temple of knowledge that I have ever seen. The Book of Kells reminds me of how long Ireland has been helping to safeguard and contribute to the world’s knowledge. In the age of essays typed on computers with fluorescent screens, I really admire the monks who spent their lives holed up in the monasteries of Ireland’s “Golden Age”, intricately copying out sacred texts and writings of the ancient world and writing poetry by candlelight.  Every time I progress up to the Long Room, the main hall of the old Trinity College Library, I’m in awe of the shelves of books that go from the floor to the incredibly high arched ceiling. I breathe in the smell of old books and I’m instantly in my nerdy happy place.
For the new year I wanted to branch out and enjoy some personal enrichment that isn’t solely focused on what I do professionally. Ireland has so much culture to offer, and I thought a logical place for me to start would be with Irish writers. For such a small country, the contribution that Ireland has made to literature is absolutely remarkable.
The first writer I started with is the popular favourite and an alum of TCD, Oscar Wilde. So far I’ve read the play “The Importance of Being Earnest” and The Picture of Dorian Gray. I’ve also gotten into satirist Jonathon Swift and his infamous pamphlet “A Modest Proposal” as well as Gulliver’s Travels. I also stumbled across an online collection of WB Yeats Poetry and am trying to expand my horizons and really appreciate the beauty of that. In high school I read both The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners, but I have not yet worked up the strength to tackle his longest and most famous work, Ulysses, which may be my summer project.
This weekend when another bibliophile friend of mine came to visit, we took a trip to the Dublin Writers Museum. This little house on the north side of the city has a great collection of original editions of famous works of Irish literature and memorabilia from some of Dublin’s literary celebrities. It taught me a lot not only about the writers, but how they influenced and were influenced by Irish history and politics, and still leave their mark today. It also made me add significantly to my Irish reading list, which is probably unrealistically long and aspirational, but I have no doubts it will do me well long after I leave here. Now that my second semester is coming to a close at the end of April and the weather is starting to get nicer (though admittedly that’s by Irish standards), I am looking forward to being able to lie out on St. Stephens Green with a nice book.

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Fears Can Hold Us Back

Posted on March 17, 2015 by tdavis15

I am writing this particular blog post on the eve of St. Patrick’s day in Dublin, Ireland 2015. If you would have told me in 2008 when I graduated from High School in South Dakota, that the next seven years would bring jobs at John Deere, Caterpillar and NASA followed by a one year sabbatical of living in Ireland. I would have looked at you with a puzzled look of confusion, as my 18 year old mind could not fathom what lay ahead. I have been lucky enough to have great opportunities blossom to fruition throughout my life, and I continue to take advantage of these opportunities. I believe the background to these opportunities is having a great support system of friends and family that continually remind you that you are capable and justified in your pursuit of whatever crazy dreams you have turned your sights upon. This support structure coupled with the understanding that sometimes you may fail… and being okay with this failure is a huge step towards the betterment of yourself and whatever project you are working on at the time. It is common to be afraid of failure and justly warranted. But the fear that correlates to most failures is in no way representative of the amazing advancements that could be made if the fear of failure were obsolete.
The ability to overcome your fear is a freeing and empowering experience. It will not be without hardships and failures that will try to knock you back down. But if the world was not built by those that pushed the envelope and progressed in the face of fear, the human race would see little advancement if development were continually based on areas of interest that are perceived as safe.
In relation to myself I have been lucky enough to have a supporting family, friends and fiance, that allow me to push the envelope and face down my fears of doubt and question. This support structure allows me to attempt things that seem crazy, but if I fail I know I will still be fine. This realization of the pros and cons of failure is extremely important, and I believe most people are frozen by fear of failure to the point they work their way into a complacent and routine life.
As I prepared for my Famelab speech a few weeks ago, I continually told myself “Whats the worst that could happen?” I have been booed of stage before and I have been heckled when I was in grade school. I assumed in an adult setting such as Famelab I would have no problems with heckling and booing, so the worst critic will most likely be myself.  I prepared my speech and ended up winning audience favorite.  I use this as an example because studies show that presenting in front of people “public speaking” is the number one fear of most people, number two is death. Most people are more afraid of presenting their ideas to you, than they are of dying on the way to the office. So if you can power through public speaking, you have quite carefully beat something scarier than death!

Posted in Class of 2015, Trinity College Dublin, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Settling into the Routines of a New Life

Posted on January 21, 2015 by sbufkin15

When packing to head off to Belfast for a year, I was wracked by many of the same anxieties that beset me when I went off to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill years before. What if I couldn’t find my people? What if my professors weren’t interested in the questions I cared about? What if no one wanted to head out into the mountains for days at a time?  Perhaps, most importantly, what if there were no cozy coffee shops to hole up in and work away the afternoon? Sitting in the Newark Airport, waiting for my plane to depart, I couldn’t envision what my daily life would look like in Belfast. And that scared me. I knew that I would find adventures, new experiences and new friends, but would I be able to make Belfast feel like a home?

The questions continued to occupy me through my first few weeks in Northern Ireland. At orientation, I worried over my conversations with new students from Belfast and around the world, hoping to parse out the people who would become my partners in crime for the next year (and, if what previous Mitchells had told me before was true, for life). The first week of classes cascaded over me in a whirl of module guides. As I tried to study up on what each of the professors worked on – as well as to match their areas of expertise to the faces that I passed in the hallways – I wondered how this UK philosophy department would welcome me. After all, in undergrad, I had strayed from the conventional philosophical tradition into social and cultural theory with wild abandon, and now I had arrived in Belfast to work on theorizing race. Would my professors even be interested in the questions that drove my studies? Be patient, I counseled myself. Give it some time.

More than three months have gone by since my plane taxied to the gate at Belfast International. It has been lovely to watch myself settle in to a new city, to find new routines and new life rhythms, to meet and make new friends and mentors. Tuesdays are for climbing at the wall and holding down the US trivia knowledge afterwards at the Mountaineering Club’s weekly pub visit. Fridays bring together the philosophy department’s weekly reading group (and requisite pub visit afterwards. You might notice a trend.) In the mornings, I trek to the city center to post up for in my favorite coffee shop with a scone or in the beautiful Linen Hall Library where I dive into readings from Rawls and Pettit, Honneth and Taylor. Afternoons might see me on a run along the lough or in my professor’s office, arguing about the nature of autonomy. And, for the first time in a long time, my weekends are my own. With friends, I have headed out into the Mourne Mountains to hike or out to the sea cliffs to climb.

The sun sets over the Atlantic as we pack up our climbing gear after a full day on the cliffs in Donegal.

With one semester under my belt, I am thrilled to jump back into those new habits and new communities, to take my friendships further and my intellectual engagements deeper. Ahead of me lies an ice-climbing trip, a dissertation project on structural racism and political agency, scores of poetry readings, and many, many more afternoons spent with friends getting to know this city and its history. Slowly but surely, Belfast is becoming a home.

Posted in Class of 2015, Northern Ireland, Queen's University Belfast | Leave a comment

A Weekend at Google

Posted on January 20, 2015 by mcortland15

This November I had the opportunity to compete in a Startup Weekend, a 54-hour tech startup competition where designers, developers, product managers, and aspiring entrepreneurs come together to share ideas, form teams, and launch startups.  Google for Entrepreneurs and Up Global sponsor Startup Weekends in cities all over the world, and I competed in Dublin’s Startup Weekend, which was facilitated by Adam Huan and Gene Murphy and took place at Google’s European HQ on Barrow Street.  Spoiler alert- my team didn’t win the competition- but that hardly matters because I had one hell of a time and accomplished the goals I had set for myself at the onset of the weekend.

In my last blog post I had written about some of the resources available in Dublin to tech enthusiasts and aspiring entrepreneurs, and the Startup Weekend is an embodiment of Dublin’s thriving tech scene.  It began with open mic pitches on Friday night where any of the 80 participants could pitch his or her best idea.  The group then voted on the strongest ideas to move forward, which formed the 10 teams that all attendees could opt to join for the duration of the competition.  The rest of the weekend was spent focusing on customer development, validating ideas, practicing LEAN Startup Methodologies, and building a minimum viable product.

The competition culminated in Pitch Night on stage at The Foundry, Google’s European Digital Innovation Centre, where each team pitched their startup to a panel of judges- industry experts like Niamh Bushnell, Dublin’s new Commissioner for Start-ups, and Anatoly Lebedev, Google’s Manager for Strategic Partnership Development.  Three teams were selected as winners and then we all went to the pub to celebrate a hard-earned pint before catching up on some much-needed sleep.  In my opinion, it was the perfect mix of entrepreneurship and Ireland.

At the onset of the Startup Weekend, we were advised to set some goals for ourselves about what we wanted to take from the competition.  Was our goal simply to win?  Considering that most companies that start at the Startup Weekend end at the Startup Weekend, it would probably be wiser to think more broadly.  What skills did we want to develop?  What relationships did we want to cultivate?  How did we want to grow?

I had three goals:

  1. Practice pitching- something, anything, everything
  2. Meet other people in Dublin passionate about startups
  3. Meet a developer interested in building something exciting

I was able to accomplish all of these goals in different ways throughout the course of the weekend.  I both pitched at the open mic night and also on behalf of my team on Pitch Night.  It was a stressful and thrilling experience through which both my team and Startup Weekend mentors like David Bowles and Richie Donelan helped coach me.  My team members at Utripia were wonderful to work with and it was terrific building relationships both with them and also with the other competition participants.  Now when I go to startup events around Dublin, I always see someone I know and plan to build on those relationships moving forward in the New Year.   It has also helped me feel more at home in Dublin because I know more people outside of the Mitchell and my programme at DIT.  Lastly, I met an awesome developer who I am looking forward to working with to build something extraordinary.

While I would have loved if my team had won the competition, I am proud of what we did accomplish together in 54 hours.  I believe that failure- especially fast failure- is good because I can move forward from this experience with the benefit of the lessons learned from the Startup Weekend.  I especially enjoyed learning more about the LEAN Startup process and about pitching.  I really appreciate the mentorship that my team received from industry experts like Gary Leyden, Director at NDRC LaunchPad, and Ed Fidgeon-Kavanagh, expert pitch deck design advisor and CEO at Clear Presentation Design, because it helped our team produce a stronger product and presentation.  Through the Startup Weekend I also had the opportunity to connect with Paul Hayes, a friend of the Mitchell Scholars Program, who hosted the panel discussion on Pitch Night and our delicious Mitchell Thanksgiving celebration.  A big thank you to Gene Murphy for helping me get a spot at the Startup Weekend.

So once again, Dublin has proved to be a great place for an aspiring entrepreneur to learn the ropes and get involved in exploring the industry.   I am looking forward to what comes next.

(photo credits: Catherine McManus @CatMcManus)

Posted in Class of 2015, Dublin Institute of Technology, Technology | Leave a comment

Pub Life

Posted on January 14, 2015 by ljin15

I’ve been looking forward to Christmas in Dublin since I first touched down in Ireland. Dublin’s cobblestone streets and old Georgian buildings look like they were designed specifically to make all my Harry Potter Christmas fantasies come true, so I have been eagerly anticipating the city’s explosion into fairy light madness for months. Since Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated in Ireland, the end of fall is marked by Halloween, starting open season on all the material and/or spiritual trappings of Christmas cheer a month earlier than in America. I had high expectations, and I haven’t been disappointed. Even though the end of the semester was busy and stressful, every time I wandered through city center I reverted to wide-eyed childlike wonder because the lights and Christmas market stalls reminded me of just how extraordinarily lucky I am to live in a city as beautiful as Dublin.

One of my favorite things about Ireland is pub culture. A twist on cafe culture, pub culture lets people of any age meet for leisurely conversation over a few pints at any time on any day. The best pubs are “old man pubs,” where elderly gentlemen in tweed caps gather for drinks and banter, something I like to imagine they’ve been doing for decades with the same friends in the same pubs. The Mitchells in Dublin have made it a mission to find our own pub home, and I think we’ve made good progress on narrowing our list down to a few strong contenders. To be clear, it’s the people that make pub culture great, not the pints.* Pub life means you don’t need to schedule in socializing because it’s natural to linger after class or dinner with your friends, even if you all just end up ranting about how much work you should be doing.

I think pub life and the community it fosters is a large part of why I feel so content with my Dublin life. When I first started school, I thought it was weird that all my Irish friends would go home for the weekends because the college experience in America is so centered on campus life. Now, I think it’s wonderful that Irish students maintain such close ties to their families and hometowns. There is a recognition that home is more important than fun college parties, and realizing this difference has made me reconsider how I invest in my relationships with family and hometown friends when I live so far from home. I think the relationships, new and old, that have grown during my time in Dublin are the source of my contentment. Contentment is a strange feeling for me to recognize in myself because I am so used to planning, thinking, reaching, but now I simply feel like the hard work of achievement doesn’t have to be incompatible with happiness.

I wasn’t able to return home for Christmas last year, so I was especially thankful for the chance to go home this year. I haven’t been homesick at all during my time in Ireland, mostly because I have been so content with Christmas pub life, but my time in Ireland made me look forward to going home and being home in a way that I haven’t felt before. Now, I’m so excited to return to Dublin, but my wanderlust is now less about searching for things and more about embracing things. Athbhliain faoi Mhaise Duit! Slainte! (Happy New Year! Cheers!)

*As a public health nerd, I find it important to say that a culture of binge drinking is dangerous and harmful, and this love letter to Irish pubs does not mean that I endorse the normalization of excess alcohol consumption.

Posted in Class of 2015, University College Dublin | Leave a comment

The 2nd Civil Rights Movement

Posted on January 14, 2015 by dnock15

One of the most interesting things I have learned on this Mitchell year is that the African American civil rights movement helped fuel civil rights movements in Northern Ireland. That is one fact that was either left out of my history book, or I was to oblivious about the world when I was 16 to know how big of an impact events in one part of the world can have on another. While learning about the way Martin Luther King Jr affected the events leading up to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, it was crazy to see civil rights issues appearing on my BBC news app.

There are moments when you think that things have come so far since the Civil Rights movement in the sixties, and then watching the news it seems like there is still a long way to go. With all of the recent media attention bringing civil rights issues to light, I am wondering if in 50 years when historians look back on this time period they will say that this was the birth of the second civil rights movement in the United States. In the history books will it say that the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Michael Brown sparked an uproar that caused politicians to acknowledge the racial tensions that had not been fully solved from the first movement? Instead of meeting on the steps of the Lincoln memorial to rally, this movement has been largely fueled by social media sites such as Facebook. The sit-ins of the first civil right movement have turned into the facebook shares, hashtags, and re-tweets of the current movement. The Justice for Michael Brown/Eric Garner community facebook page received 29,862 likes.  A post on November 22, titled “Ferguson Grand Jury Has Returned a Decision on Mike Brown Case…” received 471 Likes, 53 comments, and 326 shares. If each person who shared the facebook post had only 50 facebook friends then the article had the potential to appear on 16,300 News Feeds. When you factor in other sites such as Instagram, and Twitter the impact social media sites have had on this movement is tremendous.

The civil rights movement is strong in the United States, and being in Ireland I started to feel like I was missing out on being a part of history. But then I realized that every article I Liked, or Shared made me apart of this movement.  Thinking that someone may see that I shared an article, read it, and they could potentially share it too made me feel that although I was in another country I was still a small part of the solution to the problem.

When you are up close to the problem it can be difficult to see how large of an impact things have. When Trayvon Martin was killed I was in the United States and thought of it primarily as a problem against minorities in the USA. When Michael Brown and Eric Garner died I was in Ireland. Here it is clear that this is not the “Black-White” issue that some people have tried to label it as.

Sitting in my kitchen and talking with other international students about the tragedy of these deaths has shed light on a bigger global issue. This is an injustice issue.  I believe Martin Luther King Jr. said it best…”Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Posted in Class of 2015, Northern Ireland, Queen's University Belfast | Leave a comment

Fairy Tales

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Kat Trujillo

Knee-deep in mud and cow cud, I braved the ever-present Irish rain and relentless winter wind to explore my friend’s four hundred year old dairy farm in County Cork, Ireland. Even though my fingers felt frozen solid and I’d lost all sensation in my face, I followed behind Tommy Murphy, a graduate of University College Cork and current professor of Mathematics in my home state of California, as he led me through his family’s property while regaling me with stories of the land’s complicated, and contested history.

“Farmers are the custodians of this country’s past,” he remarked, pushing aside a mass of stubborn branches blocking our entry into an earthen mound I would later learn was a ringfort. “Ireland is brimming with history, from unmarked castles to cemeteries to former plantations, like our farm here. There’s simply so much in this country that we have yet to fully study. But Irish farmers protect this knowledge and pass it down from generation to generation.” As we walked into the knoll, I learned this particular ringfort—also known as a ‘fairy fort’ —hailed back to the Iron Age, a time when the island’s occupants transformed their natural landscape into dwellings for various purposes. Even though this ringfort stretched across a significant segment of the Murphy property, Tommy explained that his family went to great lengths to preserve it precisely because of the cultural traditions and legacy it represents.

“The pre-Celtic people who lived in Ireland ages ago believed these forts housed fairies who had magical powers. Today, superstition keeps many farmers from removing ringforts from their properties, even though maintaining these structures is quite expensive. We let archeologists dig here sometimes,” Tommy told me.

But as with many aspects of life in Ireland, ring/fairy forts represent contested spaces and histories. While the enduring myth of fairies and the playful respect for their wrath that is demonstrated by farmers who do not dare disrupt these sacred structures fit neatly into Ireland’s whimsical reputation, some agricultural consultants suggest such superstitions hurt the bottom lines of farmers and are simply bad business. In turn, a number of scholars take offense with the term ‘ringfort’ itself. Elizabeth Fitzpatrick, Professor of Archeology at the National University of Galway, finds the use of this term particularly problematic and regards these so-called ‘ringforts’ as “sustained monolithic traditions of Irish archaeology [that are an] impediment to understanding the significant changes that native enclosed settlement underwent through time.”

Even public policy and literature are affected by this controversy. For instance, in 1999, Kerry seanchaí Eddie Lenihan fought to protect a whitehorn bush ringfort in County Clare, which supposedly served as a gathering site for the fairies of Munster and Connaught. Lenihan caused such a ruckus that the Irish government ended up having to re-route an entire road as a result!

While there’s something to be said for preserving a nation’s heritage, today Ireland stands at a crossroads, precariously straddling the legacy of the past with the promise of the future. I just hope that as with its approach toward ringforts, some of Ireland’s intrinsic magic isn’t lost in the shuffle.

Posted in Class of 2015, University of Ulster | Leave a comment

Ham in a Box—Spending the Holidays Abroad

Posted on January 14, 2015 by stanaka15

In 25 years, I have never spent a Christmas away from my parents’ home. This past year, I spent not only Christmas, but Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and New Year’s as well, all across the Atlantic.

I tend to define my holidays by what I eat. I cannot always remember who was present at a given gathering, or even where it took place, but I will never forget Christmas Eve sushi or the infamous taco dinner of Easter 2010.

So, my approach to celebrating the holidays this year in Dublin was to try to recreate, as closely to possible, what I deemed to be the perfect holiday menus.

First up, Thanksgiving. Each year for our family gatherings, my mom makes green bean casserole. I emailed her two weeks in advance for her recipe. “Here you go,” she emails back. “Easy as pie!!!! : )”

And easy as pie it is. The dish takes about 35 minutes to make and consists mostly of milk, soup and green beans. This recipe is no family secret. It is straight from the back of a Campbell’s soup wrapper, and perfected over the course of what I can only assume is years of testing and tweaking.

The Campbell’s recipe calls for “French’s Original or Cheddar French Fried Onions.” Unfortunately, fried onions of any kind are surprisingly difficult to track down in Dublin. Despite their quintessential place as an American food staple, they are not easily found in Dublin. I went to three grocery stores and came very close to purchasing Funyuns as a replacement. Luckily, I did find them in the end (at Fallon & Byrne, essentially the Whole Foods of Dublin). I rushed home to make the casserole, and pulled it out of the oven five minutes before catching a cab to our Mitchell Thanksgiving, which took place on the Saturday following the actual holiday. Needless to say, the casserole was a hit.

Next up, Hanukkah. I am fortunate that my boyfriend Alex was able to visit me in Dublin for the past month. Because that meant he had to spend Hanukkah away from home, I wanted to make sure our holiday was special. I started with the food.

Before I get into our final menu, let me set the scene. Ireland, as a whole, is fairly homogenous, at least in terms of religion. Roughly 90% of the residents in Ireland identify as Christians (84% as Catholics, and 6% as Protestants or other Christian religions), while only 2% identify as “other religions,” according to the 2011 Ireland and Northern Ireland Census. What that means is, even in an international city like Dublin, Christmas saturates the city. Window displays show Santa and his elves. The streets are decked with silver, red and green lights.  A wish of “Happy Christmas” is the common phrase, a stark difference to the refrains of “Happy Holidays” that I’m used to hearing in New York City. I could walk to more than a dozen Jewish bakeries from my old apartment in Brooklyn, but now my search on Yelp yields only a single result in all of Dublin.

We improvised. Our Hanukkah dinner consisted of BBQ brisket (from Pitt Brothers), jelly donuts (from Rolling Donuts), brussel sprouts, mac-and-cheese, and—the star of the meal—homemade latkes. After we ate, we said the prayers and lit a virtual menorah on Alex’s phone.

Latkes in the making.

After all that cooking, I wanted to spend Christmas in a restaurant. Most of my friends would be home with their families or back in the U.S. by that point, and I figured a restaurant Christmas dinner would just be easier. I spent the weeks before Christmas hunting down a restaurant. I quickly discovered that the advertised Christmas menus on so many restaurant doors were seasonal specials rather than actual Christmas day menus. I tried hotels, but most only catered to hotel guests. One hotel I called actually shut down for the entire holiday season. We decided to go to Plan B—cook our own Christmas ham.

Fortunately, Tesco, a grocery store chain here, sells ham box sets. I will spare you the details of our three-hour cooking ordeal, but I will say, it tastes better than it sounds.

Christmas dinner: green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, rolls, and apricot and honey-glazed ham.

On New Year’s Eve, Alex and I laid our ladles to rest and feasted on a river boat buffet in Prague as fireworks lit up the sky.

Fireworks over Charles Bridge.

Holidays can be some of the loneliest times to be abroad, and while I still attest to that, I also believe that celebrating abroad encourages you to look past the noise and focus on what is important. I bypassed some of the chaos that tends to occur in November and December, like last-minute shopping or holiday parties every weekend night. Through sharing gifts and words, both in person and in spirit, I was able to invest my time and energy on the people I love—Alex, my family in Chicago, his in New York, and our friends in Dublin and all over the world. Who knows, perhaps some of these experiences will be the start of some wonderful traditions—making my mom’s casserole, whipping up latkes, and, yes, maybe even making a ham out of a box.

Alex and I celebrating New Year's in Prague.

Posted in Class of 2015, Dublin Institute of Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment