The past four weeks have been better than I ever could have expected; to be perfectly honest, I was not entirely on board with doing this program initially. I did think that it would be interesting, but I have always been an underachiever in school, and while I did want to change my habits as a college student, I was nervous about jumping into things so quickly. Luckily, diving into the college experience by studying abroad was the right decision, and I have to say that studying abroad has been one of the best experiences of my life thus far for a variety of reasons.

First and foremost, the people that I met were amazing and taught me more about what I want to be in the future than I have ever discovered on my own; this was by far the best part of the trip to me. It has been years since I felt like I knew what the future held for me, even as far as three or four months in advance, but after this trip, I feel confident in the fact that I have seen an archetype of what I want to be in the future. Every business tour offered something unique, every guest speaker came in a different flavor, every classmate and instructor provided me with special insights into their own lives, as well as my own. Moreover, I am extremely happy that I have begun to build a network of not only business contacts, but also of friends. I knew not one person coming to the University of Pittsburgh before the trip; I now know eleven students and several instructors.

Second, Dublin was pretty awesome, but I have to admit that there is a larger gap between my small town in Tennessee and Pittsburgh than there is between Pittsburgh and Dublin. The only time I ever felt culture shock was during my initial week living in Pittsburgh; Dublin almost felt like Nashville by the ocean. The food was different, people drove on the opposite side of the road, and I had to bag my own groceries, but I never felt like I was out of place in Dublin. Further confirming the feeling that Ireland was basically Tennessee were our visits outside of Dublin, where we saw an Irish countryside that often times seemed monotonous to me in how much it reminded me of home; the featured image of this blog post is actually a picture of me entranced at how much the mountains before me remind me of the Smokies. None of this is to say that I am ungrateful or disappointed in Dublin, just to say that it was shocking to me how similar two areas hundreds of miles away can be; perhaps there is a valuable lesson to be learned here about the nature of human relationships across cultures.

Finally, the class itself was brilliant. Dr. Lada was a great teacher, and I really hope to have her in class again in the future; she was a constant source of both knowledge and encouragement. The fact that we were graded largely based on coming up with our own business ideas is still amazing to me, even though I actually did a terrible job on two of the three pitches. I have been told over and over again by those older than me that college is a different ballgame, and thankfully, they were correct, because I think that if this month had just been a high school class with site visits and guest speakers every once in awhile, I might be dropping out at this very moment; I am ecstatic about the fact that this four week class was all about bettering ourselves and learning to succeed in the future, rather than about completing a task.

To encompass all that I have said in this post, as I am very aware that my thinking is pretty scattered, I would just like to say this: the program was brilliant. I learned a lot, I experienced a lot, and I grew a lot. I can not wait to return to Pittsburgh in a week for class, to see my new friends, and to move forward in achieving the goals for myself that this program has helped me discover.