Dartmouth College, where I’m studying English literature, sends groups of students to Trinity College, Dublin to take English classes, and I was lucky enough to be accepted into this study abroad program.
Fast forward, and I’ve now lived in Dublin for over two months! My time here has passed at a crazy rate, because each week is a whirlwind of doing class assignments, learning how to live on my own in a foreign city and seeing all the coolest sites in Ireland and Europe. At first, I was super excited to live in Dublin, which is a big change from Dartmouth, located up in the woods of New Hampshire. But I also asked myself, “What difference does it make if I read books and write essays in the United States, or in Ireland?”
After completing the first half of my term at Trinity, I can confidently say that living in a new place makes a huge difference in how you perceive both literature and the world. For example, in one of my classes, I’m reading plays and books written by Irish writers in the 1700s. As I walk the streets of Dublin, I can imagine how people three hundred years ago experienced the same neighborhoods, and even the same buildings! Things were so different then, but many parts of Irish culture and identity remain the same, such as the complicated relationship between Ireland and England, which ruled over Ireland for hundreds of years. In another class, I’m reading Ulysses by James Joyce, one of the most famous Irish writers of all time. Ulysses is supposedly one of the hardest novels ever to read. Despite how tricky it is to understand, I love reading Ulysses while living in Dublin, because it takes place in the same streets where I walk to school each day.
