The relief I felt when finally arriving in Dublin was worth the difficulties of my travel journey. I definitely did not have the easiest travel experience, to say the least.
Originally, I was supposed to fly to Newark, meet up with a few of my friends, and then we would all fly from Newark to Dublin together. The first issue, because of course I was flying through Newark, came when I got to the airport hours before my flight, only to find out that my flight had been pushed back to depart after my flight from Newark to Dublin was scheduled to take off.
The desk agent checking my bag told me my only option was to hop on a fly to Washington, D.C. and then go from D.C. to Dublin. I was reluctant, since I prefer not to fly internationally by myself, but it was my only option if I wanted to make it to Dublin, so I switched my flight and checked my bags.
Quite literally less than fifteen minutes later, after I had already gotten through security, I got the notification that my flight to D.C was pushed back, once again, until after the flight from D.C. to Dublin was taking off. I was panicking to say the least because the D.C. flight was supposedly my last opportunity to fly to Dublin that night.
I was helplessly walking through the terminal when, all of the sudden, I noticed a flight to D.C. was closing boarding. I sprinted over to the agent, who was actively closing the flight doors, and begged her to let me on the flight. I think she could tell how desperate and panicked I was, because she reluctantly opened the gate and let me board.
I later found out that the flight to D.C. was supposed to leave at 2 pm, but because it was so delayed, I was able to catch it at 7 pm.
Thankfully I made it to D.C. and then to Dublin but, of course, my checked bag did not. It ended up flying to D.C. on the later, delayed flight and missed the connection to Dublin. Luckily, it only took about 24 hours for my bag to be delivered to the UCD reception desk (shoutout to Rayna who let me borrow her clothes in the meantime!!). Although my travel journey was chaotic to say the least, the first few days in Dublin have been absolutely amazing.
I have acclimated to Dublin better than I was expecting, and I owe that to my awesome roommates. Even though it has only been a few days, since arriving in Dublin, we have been exploring city together each day, shopping, and trying new restaurants.
I enjoyed our first day of the class Judging Justice and I am excited to learn more about the similarities and differences between the Irish and American legal systems. Furthermore, I am enjoying my internship as well. It is with a non-profit, public policy research think-tank called TASC. I am working under the Senior Economist who is publishing the 2025 Ireland Inequality report. So far, I have been proofreading the report and picking out quotes to use to promote the report launch in a couple of weeks.
It has been very interesting learning about inequality in Ireland, especially given that many of my Economic and Public Policy classes at Bucknell focus on inequality. There are more similarities between inequality in Ireland and in the United States than I was expecting, but the two countries handle the topic differently. For example, in my Public Policy course this past spring, we discussed the debate in the U.S. about whether or not redistribution is a sufficient way to close the income gap- many people in the United States believe it is not. However, from reading the report, I learned that Ireland has used redistribution to close its income gap, and it has worked for them.
Despite my travel incident, I have had a phenomenal few days in Ireland and I am looking forward to many more days.
