Sitting in my room back at home, I find myself reflecting back on my time in Belfast. It doesn’t feel real that I was just there less than a week ago, and yet somehow it feels like it changed something in me.
I’ll be honest: I didn’t fully know what to expect going into this trip. Belfast isn’t the first place that comes to mind when I thought of study abroad.
From the moment we arrived, the city demanded your attention. Not in a loud, tourist-trap kind of way but in a quiet respectful manner. The murals stretched across entire building, telling stories of decades of conflict, loss, division, and most of all: hope. It felt like these weren’t relics but living pieces of art. And walking past them every day showed a side of history I had never really thought about before.
Standing at the peace walls, talking with people who lived through the Troubles and still speak about Belfast with this fierce love, I felt something change itself in how I see the world. Belfast is not defined by what survived but by what it chose to become after.
That’s the thing I learned most about the people there. Their resilience isn’t dramatic or expressive. It’s there quietly, in the way they talk about their neighborhoods, interact with one another, and keep building community on ground that was once torn apart.
This experience has genuinely altered my perception of my future. It made me ask bigger questions about who I want to be, not just professionally, but as a person moving through this complicated world. The lessons Belfast teaches aren’t the kind you find in a classroom but the kind that stick with you in life.
To any fellow Honors student thinking about a program like this: do it. Show up open minded and let the place teach you things you didn’t know you needed. You will come back with more than memories.
I want to thank the faculty who guided us through this experience, the people of Belfast who were generous enough to share their stories, and the Pitt Frederick Honors College for making it all possible.
Belfast gave me something I didn’t come looking for, and I think that’s the whole point. I think the best experiences usually do. I’ll be carrying this one with me for a long time. Someday, I’ll hopefully find my way back to Belfast.
