TU Delft Study Abroad

I love photography because it has the ability to preserve a brief moment in time and the experiences associated with that moment. I love journaling because it’s a means of personal reflection that often allows me to come to terms with things I often don’t realize. I used both as methods of ongoing reflection during my time abroad to help me catalog and process my experiences, reflecting over them brings me to the culmination of thoughts and ideas reflected below.

On Education
In retrospect, looking back and reading over the goals I set for my academic time abroad, I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. The entire structure of the course was different than what I’ve previously experienced at DAAP. The minor was intensive in the sense that we, a group of 27 students, spent the entirety of the semester from 9am to 5pm daily focused on developing one project, an interactive environment for a co-working office space in Amsterdam. My group’s concept required us to build two mobile pegboards that would allow workers to partially control and personalize their coworking environment. Eventually, we got to a point in production and development where everyone knew their role and we were able to seamlessly operate as a team with minimal guidance from the coaches. The project opened my eyes to the efficiency and power that a multidisciplinary team can have. At the end, I looked back at what we were able to accomplish together and was thoroughly impressed knowing that I couldn’t’ have done a majority of it on my own. While at times I didn’t agree with the methodologies at TU Delft, the technical approach towards design, the multidisciplinary studio community and the amount of support the coaches provided created an academic experience abroad that, albeit not what I expected, I definitely learned and grew from. Check out the promo video below that my team produced to introduce our concept!

On Culture and Society
In my five months abroad, I visited 10 countries and took over 3,296 photos and none of them could do any justice to the impact that traveling had on my perception of myself, of life in America, and of society in general.

I read so much prep material telling me what to expect while abroad, what I should pack, and what I should do once I got there but nothing could have prepared me for the indescribable moments ahead. These moments, like when  I first saw the Dom Cologne, or walked through the memorial for murdered Jews, or looked across the Cliffs of Moher, were all breathtaking. The history was palpable. More than just stories, they became tangible places that carried the burdens of hundreds and thousands of lifetimes. Being there, I saw, felt and read about history around every corner and it was surreal realizing just how young the United States is in comparison.

In Cologne, I could not get over the fact that 600 years were spent constructing the Dom; people dedicated their entire lives to help build something that they would never see finished. In Vienna, I was dumbfounded by the class gap and the sheer amount of wealth, knowledge, and history that was amassed by the Habsburg dynasty. In Ireland and the Czech Republic, I was in awe of the efforts made to reclaim and restore their native cultures and languages despite colonization.

My time abroad was a humbling experience. It forced me to come to terms with the bubble that I grew up in, to go outside of my comfort zone, to recognize my privilege, to understand what I value most in my life, giving me the perspective necessary to actively try and make a change, starting with myself.