Ireland: The Thick Greenery

In the thick, the muck, the life! I cannot help but compare my time here on the Emerald Isle with my time on Earth. Over the hump.
I am breathing crisis of youthful and middle age, and suddenly my experience in the universe is put into context.

A typical study session

Classes are in full swing, and what does that mean? Midterms, projects, late nights, the familiar sting.
[Riley, stop rhyming]
If I had to compare it to America, I'd call it harder work with lower stress. At least, that's an insight I stumbled upon while walking from class. It sounded thrifty. And it's probably because there's midterms all the time back home. We only have a final, here. Finals, finals, finals (still weeks away. What luxury).

I haven't worked this hard or been this un-stressed since elementary school.
[My mother will appreciate that one]
I think the motivation here is more healthy than fear of attrition (that is, survival of the fittest). I'm learning so I can accomplish this project I've told you about and participate in class and group discussions. We're designing a building from the top-down. Have I taken all the time to work that I would if I was still in America? No. I try to worry, but all of my classmates keep telling me "Oh, that's not so bad" and "no worries" and "it'll be grand" and when I asked them about whether I should study or worry or adventure Ireland, they all tell me "Adventure Ireland. The academics all come together." (I'm paraphrasing)

It's a blessing, the work.
Honestly, there have been points where I am twisted between tired, unfocused, and deadline and I'll step out of my chair, kneel down, and pray. Sometimes I'm just too distracted to focus, and other times I am filled with an intense desire to work, to learn, to focus. I've talked to God a lot about engineering, why I was drawn there, why I continue, and where the strength keeps coming from. There must be a reason, I think, and then I pray, and then, with prayer comes the inspiration (often the inspiration comes days after the prayer, but it always gets done).

Where is the spirit in engineering? Where is the spirit in Ireland?
I'm over being the master of my purpose. I've felt it. It's so quiet. I'm hungry for it.

But listen, you might find this interesting:
I was always kind of joking when I talked about learning the language of engineering. I've literally been making as many flashcards for these classes as I did in my first semester of spanish class, back in the day. Language is no joke. Engineering is a study of relationships, and expressing those relationships in the most concise symbols available. My roommates and friends have all been teaching me their languages, too. Here's an engineering poem, translated to english.

"Push me, pull me" the portal frame relents,
And scribe my bends into pencil ends,
That the public may continue their breath,
That the dwellings stay warm, and the lights keep on.



Emotionally, though,
I'm feeling a unique loneliness, and so thankful for my roommates and my friends and our dinners. Breaking bread and doing dishes among brothers and sisters is always good. I've leaned on them here and there, though I haven't really landed on anyone, emotionally, despite my aches. Not really heavy, anyway.

I'm also developing the start of a sore throat.
[I really shouldn't be writing right now. Mom, I can hear you tell me to go to bed, and I know it's a good idea. You've had a lot of good ideas]



It's been a long time since I've talked to home. Since I've put much time into remembering Texas or Oregon or Montana or Washington. This is the first time I haven't felt pressured to maintain my relationship with them. I'm so far away, liberated to be present with those around me. Like, I'm not there, not damned to haunt them like some electronic spirit, which is what I've tied myself to in so many other instances, but I know I'm always welcome there. So many places. So many homes.

Christmas time, I'm halfway there, and I am just anxious enough and just excited enough for your arrival that the present is just about where I am. Walking to and from class. Listening to headphones. Walking, walking, walking in the rain.

Now, it's Halloween. I am here. I will dress like a scary scientist penguin.



Rain, rain, rain, Ireland replies.
Rain, rain, rain.

Expectations: "I am Godzilla"

I haven't written in a while.
I've posted kind of recently, but
the bulk of my last two posts were written a long time ago, and only edited on the days I posted them.
This post is the newest.
It is a desperate cry.
It is a rough draft.


I am small.
I know little.
I know so little.
We all have so much to do.

Within Blarney Castle

New insights into Ireland?
I've been tracking some of the novel differences in culture. I'll publish the list for you some day.
I still haven't made friends with an Irish girl so I can listen to her accent.
It's a vain endeavor, anyway.
I remain surrounded with my wide circle of friends.
There are so many of us.
We celebrated Laura's 21st birthday tonight. She's French Canadian.

Escaping my problems through celebration,
losing my academic traction for the sake of 'seizing' these days,
brings me to wonder where on
this
awkwardly shaped wardrobe
this
"the day" to be seized
Where
are the good handholds?

I've only just now hit expectations.
Classes dead from 9-1, Meeting from 1-4, class again from 4-6, then much studying to catch up on.
Presentation on Wednesday, and there's a lot to consider for it:

[Slab depth
Scheme design
Column spacing
Live loading
Dead load of the building itself,
Mitigating risk of flood damage during construction
Qualitative analysis of wind loading from two directions
Quantitative analysis of an element
And worst of all...

Sketching the damn thing.]



Confidence, Riley.

It should be noted I drank a whole pot of tea on my own.
Not to impress, but only to my own surprise
[And delight]

So
Tonight
in my writing, I commiserate with anyone who reads this.
We are not working here. Not here or now. We are surviving for surviving. We are looking for energy. We are relieving tension, just a bit. We are children on the playground.

My mom, bless her and all of her grace, patience, and wisdom, has recently picked up work again.
 [This is relevant, stay with me].
She tells me about kids on the playground. Everyone on a playground is de-stressing [you see where I'm going]. They're coping with growth. With learning. You may not have noticed when you were playing on the playground, but my mom noticed this: Everyone on the playground copes differently.

Smitty? He sits on a bench and holds his hands close to his eyes, probably (if I may speculate) enveloped in a mix of exploring his own texture, and finding comfort in simplifying the world to his hands. He stays at his one bench, and politely moves out of the way to a different bench if someone else's coping disturbs the air.

Dylan? He is Godzilla. He roars, breaking barriers between universes and acknowledging his surroundings only as the monster might. Other days, my mom asks him who he is: today he is a blue whale, of course. A blue whale is the most intelligent sea mammal, he tells her.
Why would he be anything else?

[And now, we tie it in...]
If my observations on maturing count for salt (see: value, weight, worth anything), I'll say that I don't think growing up or living doesn't ever get easier or harder, in a relative sense. It feels too obvious to say, but imagine, we are still here, on this playground. We keep coming back.
Coping.
De-stressing.
Here, we are monsters. We are whales. We run and jump and laugh when we can.
We just look at our fingers, fractions of meters apart.

There is so much to do. So much to learn. To experience. To love. To hold, capture, print, paint, dance, explore, explain, and share. There is so much.

But tonight.
Tonight,
I am a faraway writer.
An amateur poet in a notebook and a ballpoint.
I am a blogger.
I am Godzilla.

(A construction site I got to visit. They were building a harbor.)

First challenges: My Crux

Listen and Begin: Academics.

Here rises the more gritty nature of my stay:
Shifting from small school Oregon (~4000 kids) to big school Ireland (~20 000 kids).

So
here
rises
My Crux:

On a field trip with the civil students

Civil Engineering-> Integrated Design Project:

"You will pass if you turn up"
"There isn't some secret right answer"
"Gantt Charts and Meeting Minutes are the
most powerful tools we have as engineers."
"You are going to teach each other as students and colleagues a lot more
than we, as professors can."





This is wisdom gathered from the modules (classes) I've been taking so far.
We're taking a collection of modules designed to help us ultimately design a section of a three-story educational building. From the ground up. It is called the
Integrated Design Project.

Neil, Ferdia, Andy, Paddy, Rafael, and Pedro are in my group. This is where we work. In the architecture studio.
We are designing the offices of the building.
[I've definitely met more Irish kids in class than in touring and housing. There are also a lot of Brazilian students studying civil engineering here.]

Is this unique to Ireland? I think the integrated "trigger-based" learning is. I was told this particular activity is here because there is project management experience among the faculty. To a civil engineering programme faculty, this particular skillset is rare.

How does it feel?
A new challenge has been the absence of the institutional rigor. I mean, I'm entering week 4 of studying, and am used to midterms coming up, but there are no midterms being mentioned. There's no list of expectations from me. Just more and more lectures and content to study independently.
Without familiarly rigid structure, I am floating. This was a fear of mine.
How will I confront this?

This is what I wanted.

There's a grand wake of self, of responsibility and freedom and consequence. The values of this educational system feel different. The consequence of my experiences, much more than before, are my responsibility.

This is what I wanted.

I've decided that this phenomenon is not unique to Ireland, but in contrast because of my Irish surroundings mixed with the nature of being far from home. This has been a step in my personal journey.

This is what I wanted.

The last days have my head contorted around online databases, documents, schedules, passwords, accounts, and on. Classes (called modules here, I still can't decide what to call them out loud) are never in the same place, nor do they follow a day-to-day pattern [they are only familiar on a weekly scale]. The electronic system that updates me on what classes are where has only just decided this morning that I'm humble enough to make use of its services. I've been carrying a digital copy of my schedule around that is only correct sometimes.

This is what I wanted.

There are innumerable choices to be made. To travel, to study, to sleep, to wake, to sit and be quiet, to expand my spiritual life, participate in my community, buy groceries, accomplish chores, and enjoy the time and money I squander abroad. Again these things rise. Already, these opportunities feel like sand and leeches. Those I leave, go. Those I take, drain me.

This is what I wanted.

Disillusionment. Not to mention the doors never open predictably.
In the end, though, this experience certainly is what I was after, but it is not soft.

Fluff your pillows, friends. Sleep soundly when you need to.