‘Before I knew it I was landing in Santiago’

AIDAN O’SULLIVAN RYAN never really considered that he wouldn’t get his first CAO choice for a business and language degree, so some quick thinking was needed three years ago when that didn’t happen.

The 21-year-old, from New Ross, Co Wexford had a Dublin university in his sights and says he didn’t know what to do when he was offered his second choice, in NUI Galway.

“Initially, I was fully sure I was going to repeat,” says Aidan. However, he says he was always someone who liked to move forward and a visit to Galway helped to sway him. He accepted a place on the BComm (International with Spanish).

“I went to Galway, moved into digs and knew nobody,” he says, but that quickly changed. By second year, Aidan was sharing a house with fellow students and now has friends from different parts of the country.

He always reckoned that in third year, he would go to Spain for an Erasmus stint, and had applied for Granada and Salamanca.

However, the course director encouraged him to look further afield to options outside Europe, Mexico or Chile. “She said she thought I would be a suitable candidate for travelling further afield. I listened to her and rang my mam and she said if I felt I was able to do it she would give me the backing,” he says. “Before I knew it, I was landing in Santiago.”

That was July 2016 and he soon began studying at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the Universidad de Chile.

“Not alone did I improve my Spanish drastically, but I now see the difference in how Spanish is spoken in different regions.”

Aidan describes the year as “an amazing experience”, ending it with a three-month trip through Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina. He says he had an “unforgettable” time with friends that he made during the first semester.

He says that when he went to Galway, he made friends from all over Ireland, and after his South American odyssey, “I have friends from all over the world”.

Aidan returned home last month, in plenty of time for a trip with his banjo to the Fleadh Cheoil in Ennis, Co Clare, having been halfway around the world and back since the Fleadh in Sligo three years ago, when he got his CAO offer and Galway seemed a long way from Wexford.

Next month, he returns to NUI Galway for his final year and, after graduating, thinks he would like to train as an accountant “in a Spanishspeaking country”.