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.