The Remarkable Reality of Notre Dame

Fionn Murray is a third year Journalism student at University of Galway, here he recounts his Study Abroad semester at Notre Dame, USA.

Anticipation is a wonderful feeling. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel that keeps us going through life’s hardships and monotony. Unfortunately, reality tends not to live up to these expectations. That’s just the way of things. It’s even rarer for our high expectations to be exceeded.

Thankfully though, it is not impossible.

Describing my anticipation levels for a semester at the University of Notre Dame as “high” would be a gross understatement. I had been hoping to study abroad in the United States since before I was even a college student. I fell in love with the sport of basketball in my final year of secondary school, and my free time was soon consumed by watching and playing it.

As I became more interested in the American sports world, I began to discover the rich and unique culture of college sports that exists on the other side of the Atlantic. I was completely and utterly enthralled.

So, once I started studying journalism at the University of Galway in 2022, finding a way to study abroad in America was my number one priority. I was fortunate that such opportunities were made available to me in my third year, and even more so to be awarded a place. The February 2024 email that confirmed my nomination to the University of Notre Dame was met by quite the celebration. My exclamations may or may not have woken up my roommate (Sorry Dec).

And yet, a few years later, after I somehow ended up in South Bend, Indiana, the four months I spent studying abroad surpassed even my wildest expectations.

Notre Dame is one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the US. It’s consistently ranked near the top of the field in both sports and academics, which is far from typical among American universities. Its campus is filled with landmarks like the Golden Dome, Notre Dame stadium (which seats 80,000) and “Touchdown Jesus,” all of which people travel across the world to see. As I was told upon arrival, the university's academic culture fosters collaboration, not competition.

As I arrived in August 2024, I was of course brimming with excitement, but I must admit to a certain degree of apprehension too. All the above information was inspiring, but it was also intimidating, and some of it even made me a little sceptical. Could a university really be all of that at once? Was the campus culture really so harmonious? I had heard tales of the gruelling academic pressures of Ivy League schools and the arrogance and conformity of Greek life (fraternities and sororities). I didn’t particularly want to be involved in either.

That scepticism faded quickly. The Notre Dame Global Exchange team greeted me with open arms, and they were hosting about sixty of us for the autumn (fall) semester. My new dorm, Knott Hall, made it very clear that new students had a new home there. Notre Dame students are required to live on campus for their first three years and are split up into dorms of a few hundred students each. This creates a brilliantly vibrant campus environment, which starts with “Welcome Weekend,” a series of dorm events to orient new students. We toured the campus, learned chants, and participated in a bird’s-eye-view photoshoot on the field of Notre Dame Stadium. This involved a few thousand freshmen, transfers, and international students lining up in the shape of the letters ND. I think it turned out quite well.

I indeed found my people with the other exchange students. We came from Ireland, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Turkey, China and every other corner of the globe, but we formed a tight-knit bunch. We bonded over how equally un-American we all were. There are specific complaints only other foreigners can understand, like the lack of footpaths (sidewalks), the insane billboards, and the repeated mispronunciations of our names. We also shared a unique perspective on the University of Notre Dame, because we were all only going to be experiencing it for a short time. Four months is not quite long enough to put down roots somewhere, but it was plenty of time to build up strong friendships, some of which I am sure will be lifelong. An unexpected and tremendous benefit to this global exchange group is that I now have so many friends scattered across the world, and so many places I have promised to visit. My future travels will take me from Perth to Istanbul and Monterrey to Dunboyne.

The academic environment at Notre Dame is tremendous. I have never been pushed so hard or learned so much. I had a great deal of freedom in choosing what I wanted to study, so I decided on two journalism classes, one Spanish class, and one history class. The two journalism classes I took, Storytelling and Sport and Broadcasting the News, supplemented my knowledge and experience base so well, and gave me the chance to produce some work I’m very proud of. My journalism degree is a joint-honours with Spanish, so I felt I needed to take a Spanish class. At the same time, in the US, I would lose some hard-earned progress with the language, which I couldn’t afford as I would be studying abroad again at the University of Malaga (where I’m writing this) the following semester. I’m so glad I made that decision, as the class significantly improved my confidence with the language. My motivations for taking history were less practical (it had been my favourite subject growing up), but the class was no less enjoyable. It was great fun to reconnect with the Tudor dynasty.

The sports at Notre Dame are as numerous as they are high-level. I managed to make it to American football, basketball, ice hockey, lacrosse, softball, volleyball and soccer games, and still didn’t get to see anywhere close to everything the university’s athletics department has to offer. It was a proverbial wonderland for an aspiring sports journalist. Tailgating is something I had never experienced before, and I’m hoping to make it popular on this side of the Atlantic very soon (if you’ve never heard of it before, please look it up). My personal highlights were a marquis women’s basketball game between Notre Dame and the University of Connecticut (UConn), and the Notre Dame football team hosting in-state rivals Indiana in what was, due to a format change, the first ever College Football Playoff home game. The crowds for both matchups were extraordinary, and Notre Dame was victorious twice.

There are endless extracurricular opportunities at the University of Notre Dame. It genuinely seems like a functioning and active club that represents every hobby. I got involved with two of the student media organisations of Notre Dame: The Observer and NDTV, as well as the Notre Dame Outing Club. Getting to write for The Observer was a real privilege, and everyone involved couldn’t have been more encouraging. I hope to take even a small piece of their integrity and creativity with me going forward. I spent so much time at NDTV that it became my second home at Notre Dame. The opportunity to be involved in a high-level and student-run television production, both in front of and behind the camera, was absolutely awesome. NDTV built on everything I had worked on in my classes, and I dearly miss it. I made some more friends for life there. The Outing Club was entirely different from the media, but that was why it was so valuable. It provided great opportunities for me to get out of the campus bubble and see a bit of the Midwestern United States. Campfires, apple picking, and a hike through Turkey Run Gorge were much-needed escapes into nature.

Something I should definitely mention is the supposed Irishness of the University of Notre Dame. It’s often what comes to mind for Irish people when they hear the name, usually accompanied by a degree of uncertainty, given Ireland’s long history of being misrepresented abroad. Notre Dame’s athletic teams are known as the Fighting Irish, and the transatlantic links between the university and the Emerald Isle go back as far as Notre Dame’s founding in 1842. There are plenty of great articles available discussing the nuances of the topic (I would recommend Brendan O’ Shaughnessy’s “What’s in a Name?”), But overall, I believe the name has been rightly earned due to years of connection that continue today. There are absolutely some things I don’t enjoy about Notre Dame’s representation of Irishness, namely the leprechaun logo, but there is far more positive impact than negative. Just look at Notre Dame’s flourishing Irish language department, its connections to Kylemore Abbey in Galway and O’Connell House in Dublin, its study abroad programmes (for which I am personally grateful), and the football team’s spectacular visit to Dublin to play Navy in August 2022.

My semester at Notre Dame was also my first time in America, and the university’s location in northern Indiana puts much of the US comfortably within travel range. I thoroughly enjoyed day trips to Lake Michigan and Chicago with a big group of internationals. It’s hard to fully understand how big the Great Lakes are until you’ve seen them up close. You could nearly fit the island of Ireland into a few of them. I got to spend fall break in New York City and already feel the need to return. There is so much to do there that a week wasn’t enough. It’s a sports journalist’s (and pizza lover’s) paradise. I also made a years-long dream come true by putting together a group to go to Milwaukee to see my favourite basketball team, the Milwaukee Bucks. The city was lovely, and the Bucks put on a show in a big win over their rival Pacers. This was in late November, so as we passed by Chicago on the way back, we visited the Chicago German Christmas market and went ice skating in Millennium Park. I would recommend it all.

As in all things, there were some drawbacks to my time at Notre Dame. I have spent the last few thousand words praising the university's resources, but that is only possible through the enormous student fees that American colleges demand. Luckily, as an exchange student, I was not required to pay for tuition, only accommodation and food, but even still, my bank account balance was in single digits by the time I returned home. America is expensive, especially if you, like I did, want to travel and maximize your limited time in the States. Even getting there isn’t cheap. The frustratingly lengthy visa application process sets you back a few hundred Euros, and returning flights to and from Dublin can cost many times that.

America’s political situation is also worth mentioning. Notre Dame has a wide variety of opinions on campus, but the atmosphere remains civil for the most part. The same does not apply off-campus. I was forced into uncomfortable conversations in bars, taxis, and guitar stores. I was, of course, there for a hotly contested presidential election, but nothing that has happened since has indicated America’s political climate is approaching a period of calm.

Fahrenheit is also genuinely the worst to deal with. Maybe worse than anything else.

Finally, here is some advice for students in Ireland looking into the possibility of studying abroad in the US, whether at Notre Dame or elsewhere: Do it. If you can find a way to make it work, you will be glad you did. There is nothing like American college life, even movies about American college life. If you have the slightest interest in sports, you will be blown away by the college sports culture in the US. Go to every sport you can. The NCAA college athletics system is filled to the brim with amazing athletes and teams. If you have the choice, study in America during the fall semester. The football season runs from September to January, and being part of that ride is unforgettable (Although I must admit that I got to see Notre Dame have a particularly spectacular season, which isn’t typical of the average year). The fall semester also exhibits the wide range of the American seasonal climate. I arrived at temperatures of about 30°C in August, and left in snowy -10°C December. These two extremes were buffered by the most breathtaking autumn in between. I’ve never seen leaves so colourful.

There was no degree of anticipation I could have had for studying abroad at Notre Dame that would not have been exceeded by reality. I returned home as a better journalist with a whole heart and friends all across the world. Leaving was bittersweet, but the memories I made will last a lifetime. Go Irish!

Words and images thanks to Fionn Murray.

If you are a University of Galway student interested in studying abroad, visit the Global Galway website for more information