Owen Regan
UMBC Faculty-Led: Dawg Days Abroad in Ireland
Major: Pre-Engineering & Media & Communication Studies
Jump To: Predeparture Post, In-Country Post 1, Post 2, Return Post
Pre-Departure Post
Hello reader,
My name is Owen Regan, and this summer I, along with 19 of my classmates and two professors, am going on a study abroad trip to Dublin, Ireland. During the two-week trip, we will be staying at Trinity College, taking classes and exploring Ireland through tours, personal adventures, and planned excursions. During my time at UMBC, my plan is to become an engineer and hopefully end up in a construction engineer or architectural workplace. Dublin is an incredibly architecturally built-up city that blends historic brick buildings with the steel and concrete infrastructure of our future. I am so excited to come face-to-face with this melting pot of
Human engineering that tells a story of the buildup of Dublin’s construction. I also hope to further my documentary skills during the trip. I enjoy filming my adventures and others’ experiences. I hope to create a comprehensive video of the trip with heavy input from my classmates. This will also be a great opportunity, as we are all either freshmen or transfer students, to create connections we can rely on coming into our first year at a new place.
The weeks leading up to our trip, we all attended a class twice a week where we met our professors and started a course on the Hero’s Journey. This depicts the common story of the hero through human history and the archetypes that come with it. We also became familiarized with Ireland’s culture and its own journey for independence. After a couple of weeks of getting to know the other students and getting more and more excited for the trip every class, we left for the airport midday Friday. We traveled on a bus and a plane until we arrived at Trinity College on an Irish Saturday morning. Afterwards, we got settled, then walked to a renowned local bakery where we all came together over coffee and pastries. From there, we went to the National Gallery of Ireland, where we walked through galleries depicting all different styles of paintings. After that, we were given an Irish soup lunch and brought back to Trinity for some free time. We ended our day in the pub, eating, talking, and being merry.
The next day, we toured Trinity’s beautiful historic campus, continued our class on the hero, and became more versed in getting around Dublin. Leaving Trinity, we went on a tour of Dublin where we were shown historic pubs, a communist bookstore, an arts district, and given a talk on the politics of Ireland. After the tour ended, it was about time for the kickoff of the championship match of Ireland’s own Gaelic football. The teams were Kerry vs. Mayo, a team plagued with superstition of being cursed and therefore hadn’t won since 1951. We all gathered in pubs to watch the game and eat with locals, and after getting the rules and scoring explained, we marveled at a new complex sport. Mayo won! For dinner, we all enjoyed a three-course meal with live music and traditional Irish dancers.
In-Country Post #1
Hello again from Dublin,
It’s been four days here, wow. I do miss my family, dog and house but the apartments we’re staying in are great. Mine has a deskside view of a bustling corner, nestled between train tracks and an entrance to Trinity College. I’m sitting there working a lot so it’s nice to have something to look at while I distract myself but more on that later. I’m grateful for this living experience for a couple of reasons. Not having the professors stay with us creates a feeling of independence heightened by the group’s eagerness and the teachers’ urges to explore a new big city. We text our friends when we have time to go out, and as long as we are in twos we can go wherever we want. The inclusive public transportation passes help too. Another reason is that I get the feeling that shared spaces, bathrooms, and living around classmates is going to epitomize a lot of our college experiences so it’s great practice as we all await our coming college life. That along with balancing a workload with independent fun with friends are skills I’m anxious to figure out for my future and I think my current journey will be a great test track to start testing the waters. The lectures and assignments aren’t easy but the best part is connecting the teachings with all the things we get to see here. We’ve learned about Ireland’s fight for nationalism through lectures and visiting a museum which used to be a revolutionary stronghold. We’ve learned about the book of Kells through a movie based on its creation and then actually going to see it in person right here at trinity.
Now there is a balance to this workload, and on the other side is fun and adventure. If you get the work done early it just means that night you can sit in a pub with your classmates, enjoy the vibes, and listen and sing to live music. During the day though we can walk the streets of Dublin stopping in stores to buy interesting things that will remind us of the trip or souvenirs for our family and friends. Some of my greatest joys this trip has been impromptu conversations with locals. I was told Irish people are known for their curiosity, friendliness and hospitality. I’ve found this to be very accurate. One of my favorite moments of the trip so far has been looking for a bathroom in The Liberties of Dublin and catching an old security guard just as he was locking up the church’s doors. We asked where the closest bathroom was and he replied “right here” and ushered us through the door. He immediately wanted to know all about us, where we were from, what we were doing in Dublin, and what we were doing today. I told him all about the Umbc program and he listened with a grand smile and raised, white eyebrows. Then I told him my last name Regan, and that my ancestors were from County Cork where they immigrated to Boston. He said, “Really, I’m from County Cork! And I have a granddaughter who lives in Boston!” We conversed some more, he informed me my last name was a Cork surname, and he sent us on our way. That happens everywhere, whether it be a quick bestoweth of Irish wisdom or a conversation about where I’ve come from it feels Ireland has greeted me with open arms.
In-Country Post #2
Hello again from Ireland, Our flight home is today and although I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here and would definitely come back, I have given my all to Ireland and am happy to get a much needed sleep in my own bed. That seems to be the vibe of all my classmates, we’ve packed in a lot of activities this trip. Waiting for the plane to leave in Baltimore we were an energetic, excited but timid crew. And now as I wait for our United flight to DC I am surrounded by a tired, but tight knit group of people who I can say, without a doubt, are my friends.
The last half of the trip proved brutal to the feet but beautiful to the eyes. We visited a traditional farm, hiked cliffs, participated in multiple tours, and toured many museums. My favorite of which was the Epic museum, a museum based on the Irish people and their emigration and achievements throughout the world. At the end of the experience laid a screen and projector where you could add your Irish ancestor to a tree. As I’m waiting in line to add my grampy to the tree, I peek over the shoulder of the woman in front of me. Her submission reads, Thomas Regan; my grampy’s name. Now I’m not saying we’re long lost cousins, but the odds of that! I just left the line and talked to her, I feel so connected here.
Connection has been a big part of the trip for everyone. Connections through references, group projects, or even getting locked out of the dorms together, we have all found personal similarities in the people around us. The hard and first part of that though is putting yourself out there. I’ve come to find that small school trips are the best places to become comfortable with this uneasy step of socialization. People tend to be nicer, more accepting and less judgy when they know they’re stuck with you for two weeks. Putting yourself out there can take many different forms, for me it looked like wearing a new white dress shirt to go bog jumping or sticking a camcorder in everyone’s face. But each time, although I felt a little stupid, people seem more comfortable opening up to you and the friends you gain justify the means. When you look stupid people usually care less about looking stupid themselves to you and it makes for a great dissolution of social barriers. Although corny, I feel the phrase “do it for the meme” is really relevant to trips like these.
For a video I’m making for the trip, I got to interview my classmates. The two things I heard most were about food and the workload. I will give you my opinion on both. The food was thoroughly of quality but not too diverse. The Irish gold standard is greasy pub food that doesn’t actually leave you feeling too bad and tastes great. On the other side of the trip, I felt managing the workload was less so overwhelming but more so distracting. It’s sometimes harder to appreciate a sprawling view of Oceanside cliffs when you know you have an essay due at the end of the day and the tour is an hour over schedule. Anyways, we all did it and lived and we’re better for it.
Return Post
Final hello from Baltimore, It’s been the first week home and though I said in my last post I was happy to go home, I miss the green country we all left behind. Today we finished our final class of the summer. We all had to present a story from Ireland for our final project, quest #2. While all my classmates opted to show a story they had seen in a museum or a local had told them, I chose something more personal. I wanted to tell the story of my classmates’ experience in Ireland. I wasn’t really sure how to go about this at first. I brought my favorite video camera with an empty SD card at least, but I didn’t really have a plan going into it. I had filmed my high school abroad trip and made a story out of it, but I was with people I had known for years and I also had sprawling views of Spanish cities and countrysides I could rely on. So when I got to Umbc and pulled my camera out, it felt like a whole new process to me. The first couple days were hard filming people in my group or asking them questions for the camera. I felt I was burdening them or they weren’t comfortable, so I stopped for a bit. And sometimes museums and tours are more fun when you’re not worrying about how it looks behind a lens. I stopped bringing my camera with me to things and I tried to edit most of what I had into a finished video already.
By not focusing on filming I got to be way more present and started getting closer with people. This is around the time where I felt we really became a group. Everyone became comfortable with each other, looked out for one another and really started to make memories that would fuel these new college friendships. And by this time, I really wanted to start documenting this, I brought the camera with me more or just took impromptu videos with my phone. I captured jokes between friends, my classmates walking through the beautiful city, and the group experiencing all new facets of Irish culture. But this wasn’t telling the story that I wanted. It was fun, but lacked the individual substance of a story or heroes journey. So, I had the idea to try to do interviews. I had never really done something like this but I was fueled with a genuine interest about what my group had to say and I was excited to ask people things I had wanted to know about them that I would otherwise not find out. I tried to interview all my classmates and though I missed a few people I feel I got some great moments out of it. Some of the best things that I heard was how easy it was to make friends and how important they were for the trip. I heard about food and how fun pubs were, how everyone managed their workload, and how everyone would recommend the Ireland Dawg Days trip to any incoming Umbc students.
