Every experience worth having leaves you with more than you came for. As my time in Berlin came to a close, I found myself trying to name what I was actually taking home — and it wasn’t a fact or a figure. It was a way of living.

I stayed with my cousin while I was there, and more than any lecture or site visit, our conversations became the heart of this trip. He lives with a chronic illness, one that forces him to be relentlessly intentional about how he spends his energy. There’s no room for waste in his days — no autopilot, no coasting. Watching him, I realized intentionality isn’t a luxury or a productivity hack. For him it’s the shape of a life, and it makes his choices deliberate in a way most of us never have to consider. He showed me what it looks like to decide, on purpose, what matters.

While I was there, I got to hold his three-week-old baby. There’s something clarifying about cradling a life that new right next to conversations about how fragile and finite life really is. It sharpened everything my cousin was teaching me.

What I’m Taking Home

The biggest takeaway from Berlin is this: live with intentionality. Do the things you actually want to do, and don’t let obstacles quietly talk you out of the pursuits that light you up. Automate and simplify the parts of life that drain you, so your real energy goes toward what gives you purpose. Life will always find ways to interrupt — mistakes come, pain comes — and it isn’t worth spending your one life braced for impact. Hold things a little more loosely. Let go of what you can.

Money is the obstacle for almost everyone, myself included. But I’ve started seeing it less as a wall and more as a tool: figure out what you genuinely need to live well, and it’s often less than you feared. If you truly enjoy people, places, and experiences, you can live richly without living expensively. This trip actually set that in motion — building the website for my program’s project pulled me into app development, and I’m now working on several projects I hope will eventually buy me the freedom to chase my curiosity without living in fear of the next bill.

I’m also learning to put down something heavier: the constant sense that I owe the whole world something. I feel that weight all the time. But Berlin reframed it — this experience was a gift, and the right response to a gift isn’t guilt, it’s gratitude and generosity offered freely. Be grateful, be generous, but let it come from goodwill rather than obligation. That’s a lesson I’ll be working on for a long time.

And a lighter one that’s stuck with me: don’t let comparison be the thief of joy. Use it as a ruler, not a verdict. You can measure yourself against the ideal only if you can also accept that you’re human — flawed, unfinished, and sharing this planet with a lot of genuinely good people. Say yes when doors open. Stay curious. Remember that the only person who can really know what’s going on inside you is you — so try not to be needlessly hard on that person.

Advice for the Next Student

If you’re a Frederick Honors College student considering this program: go. Say yes before the fear has time to talk you out of it. I had never left the country before this — I applied partly after a couple of research rejections, not entirely sure what I was looking for — and it became one of the most door-opening decisions I’ve made. Come with real questions, not just a list of sights to check off. The program hands you experts and experiences; what you make of them is up to you.

What do I wish I’d known before I left? That the most valuable parts wouldn’t happen in a classroom. They’d happen at a kitchen table, holding a newborn, or standing somewhere quiet at the end of the day watching the light go.

One Last Sunset

On one of my final evenings, my cousin took me to watch the sunset at Tempelhof — the old airfield at the heart of the Berlin Airlift, a place where, decades ago, the sky over this city meant survival. We stood on the open runway as the light dropped and the whole horizon went orange. And my cousin turned to me and asked if I wanted to catch the sunset. I heard him say kiss the sunset and proceeded to break into laughter. Now one of my favorite things to do is kiss sunsets goodbye.

I think about that question a lot. It holds everything Berlin taught me: pay attention, be present, love the moment you’re in — and when the time comes, let it go with gratitude rather than grasping.

So: goodbye, Berlin. Thank you. I’m not the same person who arrived — and I’m fairly sure that was the whole point.