Semester in Ireland ~ Sublime

      One semester doesn't seem like such a long time, right? but 5 months is longer than I had ever been away from home in my entire life. I have been grappling for days with how I could write an article that in any way sums up my experiences. There just doesn't seem to be words for it, short of writing a novel. My time in Ireland was a summation of those rare moments where your breath is completely taken away. I did a study on some of the writings of Edmund Burke, and in his Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, he states that, when faced with something sublime, our minds are temporarily wiped clean, then filled with the immensity of what we see, and forced to grow and expand in order to accept its existence. This, to me, is the best way to describe my experience. My semester abroad forced me to re-evaluate my entire life, in the best way possible. I no longer accept things for what they are, I push for bigger and greater experiences, because I know that they are out there. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and maybe they are the words I just cannot seem to find, so here is one of those moments that caused my heart to skip a beat, and my world to be re-imagined.

Cathryn. 20, Galway