Originally Published in Print, April 2022.
Life when you’re 20 is an absolute rollercoaster. It’s all about constant change, flux, newness. Discovering boundaries, dreams, plans of changing the world, and eventually – hopefully – figuring out your place in the mess that is existence. Most plans go wrong, the way you initially imagine your life and future does not pan out, and most importantly, you can’t predict any of what’s to come.
The past three years, riddled with pandemic uncertainty and gradual change in my own personal life, have taught me a lot. I’ve realised that everyone is lost and confused, and trying to answer some of life’s most difficult questions: what exactly are we doing here? What makes life worth living? Will we ever be at peace with who we are and the choices we’ve made?
One thing that the whole Covid mess has made me realise is how much I’ve changed since going to Trinity – and not in the ways I expected to. The funny thing with expectations is that they almost never pan out. Instead, we are very often surprised by the way life goes, look back retrospectively and laugh at who we were before. “If only younger me could see where I am now” is a sentence I’ve heard so many times. See what I’ve become, see what I’ve gone through, and how every disappointment, difficult time and problem has led me to where I am now. How everything, in hindsight, makes sense.
With all of this in mind, I feel like I should have been more prepared for the changes that were going to be brought to my life by the experience of Erasmus. I figured that if I could move to Dublin and live on my own there, how difficult could moving to Spain be? Once again, the expectations weighed on me. There’s such a cliché when it comes to Erasmus – endless partying, little studying, making so many friends… and most importantly, one last year without too many responsibilities before reality slaps you in the face in 4th year.
However, I’d argue that, if viewed through a slightly different angle, Erasmus can be an even richer experience than it’s laid out to be. Sure, enjoying the adventure, making memories and revelling in our youth is a cornerstone of the whole concept. But it can also lead to a high level of introspection and change your view on life, relationships, and most importantly, it helps set boundaries in your own life. Erasmus actually is quite a bubble. You arrive in a foreign country, where most people don’t know you or who you are back home – it’s a chance to reinvent yourself. A chance to take all the change you’ve achieved over the past two years in college and present it with the rest of your personality as one completed ‘product’. This leads to a reflection on how much you have indeed changed over that time, and put what you’ve learned about yourself into practice.
Truth is, Erasmus is more challenging than it’s made out to be. Not only do you have to deal with admin, classes and daily life in another language, but also the fact that everything you build while in that other country is very short lived. One thing I hadn’t expected was how temporary this whole year would feel. A lot of people are only here for a semester, and by the end of the year, everyone will head back to their respective countries – meaning that there’s a low chance you’ll see each other again. This means that a lot of the friendships and relationships you make can appear to be very superficial – almost shallow. When friendship has a time limit before becoming long distance, it’s understandable people don’t put themselves forward too much.
The flip side of that argument though, is that the friendships that do make it past the point of superficiality can be very profound. You meet so many interesting people, who bring different perspectives to your life. This can lead to DMCs in the smoking area of a club or on a coffee run, and those conversations, as cliché as it sounds, have the power to change the way you view the world.
Another thing I’ve noticed here is that, far from the cliché of everyone on Erasmus being single and living their best life, most people I’ve met have more complicated relationships than they let on. A lot of people are single, sure, but in love with (or at the very least with complicated feelings for) someone far away, back home. This leads to this free lifestyle many people embrace: random hook-ups, not as much as a source of fun but more as an attempted distraction. Those short lived relationships, like the friendships, can be very devoid of meaning – but not necessarily for the reasons I expected.
After a few weeks home for Christmas and a chance to reassess everything that’s been going on, I’ve realised that the start of semester two will not be the same as the beginning of classes in September. I do not have the same goals as when I arrived, and feel like a very different person already. This is a time to focus on myself, leave many aspects of the past behind, and embrace change. Accept who I’ve become and look forward to who I’m going to be by the time the end of the year rolls around. And to be quite honest, that’s a pretty exciting prospect.
