Hello! I’m Jacob Owens, and I’m a senior at the University of Montana, who’s been studying journalism for the last four years. My GLI theme is politics and culture, which I got my share of last fall, while I interned in Dublin, Ireland. I interned at Babylon Radio, where I wrote articles and hosted a weekly radio show. I learned a bit more about Ireland and its people each time I interviewed someone. I wrote primarily about marginalized people like those without homes, Ukrainian refugees and people who have secondary breast cancer. These types of stories have obvious cultural and more subtle political implications. One story with a direct political connection involved a website Dublin set up to assist newly arriving Ukrainians. This is when I talked with the Lord Mayor of Dublin. My GLI theme also applied to what I gave to the people of Dublin. My radio show provided listeners with American music every Wednesday night, so while my work informed me about Ireland’s culture and politics, I also shared a bit of my own culture.

Ireland is not vastly different from the United States, but I did not need a completely different place to learn a lot about myself. How do you start over again and make friends in a different country? How do you respond to getting off on the wrong foot with your boss? And how do you conduct yourself when you’re an ocean away from home, in a place where no one has preset ideas about who you are? None of the questions above have a single solution but navigating those situations taught me about the person I am and would like to be both professionally and socially. 

I did not see myself as the traditional leader while abroad. My roles were that of student, intern, flatmate and friend, but I did have smaller scale moments of leadership. For one, I learned how to stick to my guns when repeatedly challenged by a superior. I also found that being a leader involves knowing when you are not the right person to take charge. Lastly, leading can be a quiet act, like being kind, friendly and accepting people for who they are. People with those leadership skills are who society needs for the 21st century. I thoroughly enjoyed my time abroad, but I am left with some lingering questions like how would Ireland have been different had English not been the primary language? Did I go to enough pubs? And should I have tried harder to befriend Dubliners? 

My time abroad is like a collage of memories. I can picture the lush landscape of Ireland with towns like Wicklow, the Cliffs of Moher to go along with Northern Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway. Then there’s the memories I made alone during weekend trips around the United Kingdom and greater Europe. I visited Scotland, Wales, London, Paris and Italy! Perhaps the most memorable trip was going to Rome over Halloween, which I decided to do less than a week before. Roma, which seems more like a museum than a metropolis, gave me a memory that sums up my time overseas. My first night there, I was a bit confused and looking for a bus stop to get to my hotel with no knowledge of Italian. Luckily an Italian woman nearby took pity on me, took my hand and guided me to the correct bus stop. People in the world are good if you’re willing to get out of your comfort zone, get embarrassed a bit and go see what is out there.

My time in Vilnius, Lithuania has been one of the best and worst times of my life. I met the most amazing people and saw amazing history and sights, but I also missed my family and friends, and felt isolated at times.

My GLI Global Theme is Inequality and Human Rights. While in Vilnius, I participated in a student-organized protest in solidarity with women in Iran, did research on LGBTQ+ in Lithuania (Lithuania is deeply conservative), and visited several museums on the occupations and murders of Lithuanians, especially Jewish Lithuanians. One of my goals for studying in Lithuania was to learn history from the point of view of the oppressed, and I think I was able to do that here. I also met with many like-minded people from other countries, and learned how they do activism there – specifically in Germany.

I was very aware I am American. I met maybe five Americans in all of Lithuania, though there were probably more. I was constantly reminded by others around me that I am American. It was funny but a little tiring to me that whenever I said I was from the US, people would often launch into a criticism of the US. It was fine, but it happened a lot. I also enjoyed Lithuanian food (a lot of potatoes and meat) and culture. Someone described Lithuanians as a “country of introverts,” which seemed accurate to me. People often said Lithuanians were cold, but I didn’t think so. Lithuanians don’t smile to strangers or make eye contact in public. But every Lithuanian I met was very kind with their gestures when I needed help. The cashiers would ask the people behind me if they had a loyalty card so that I could get a discount at stores, and the people just handed them over. That was incredibly surprising to me, and really nice. I think it will be hard for me to adjust to smiling to strangers again, it felt like a relief not to have to smile awkwardly at people you pass by on the sidewalk.

I learned a lot about myself on this trip. It was my first time living on my own so far away from anyone I knew. I stayed in the dorms my freshman year, but I have been living at home since the start of the pandemic. I also had to cook for myself in Vilnius and had no supplies, so it was a little difficult for a while. I had a few bumps in the road, but I overcame them and have more confidence in myself, which is one of the main things I needed to work on in leadership. I learned how to navigate intercultural exchanges on a daily basis with many different cultures, and people very different from myself. I am so grateful for this experience.

Buen Día de La Granja Rocksheim! On the small organic farm where I spent three months as an intern, I experienced firsthand how the relationship between people and the technology they have access to differs vastly in Argentina versus the United States, which directly impacts resource use. Thus, this internship tied directly into my global theme, technology and society, and my global challenge, resources and sustainability. As these topics intertwined, I observed many principles of the circular economy model, even though the flow of Argentinian technology and resources through society overall is still linear.

Most people in Argentina don’t have access to technology we take for granted in the US such as the latest iPhone, reliable electricity, or clothes dryers. Because new technology is not available, people repair and reuse what they have instead of buying something new simply because it exists. Therefore, it is common to see cars from the 1980s and 1990s ambling around dirt roads. Their engines shudder and their brakes squeal, and their owners learn to repair them themselves to avoid the expenses of a mechanic. As a result, consumer demand for new resources is much lower and resources are used at a more sustainable pace. It isn’t exactly a circular economy, but valuing recycling and longevity of products is a step in that direction.

Below is the old farm van, used every week to deliver pollos, huevos, and other goods to the farm’s clients.

Living in a society with a “repair and reuse” relationship with technology instead of one in which the fanciest, newest technology is constantly sought out made me realize how toxic materialism is in the United States. While the Argentinian relationship with technology is a result of general poverty and not to be romanticized, some aspects are a good model for the circular economy. While taking apart a fence on the farm, I was instructed to save the half-rotten posts and rusted sheet metal and wire to be re-used. The farm owners lamented that the plastic cloth and chain-link fencing were too destroyed after years of service to be reused. I spent hours carefully sorting out all the materials and moving them under the trees to be stored safely for later use. When wire was needed to repair a fence, or sheet metal was needed to build a new roof for the pig enclosure, we would look first to the resources we already had.

The pictures below shows how palets were repurposed in a fence for the sheep pasture, an air b-n-b made from shipping containers, and a small earthship community.

True sustainability also existed on the farm: waste from the chickens and hens was valuable manure for the vegetable garden, and weeds from the vegetable garden were fed to the hens. Meat from the chickens, eggs from the hens, and veggies from the garden provided energy for farmworkers to care for all three. Many such ecosystem-like energy transfers existed on the farm to realize sustainable resource use.

Below are some thriving arvejas (peas), whose beds I dutifully cleared and fertilized before planting, and some repollo (cabbage) which survived the winter.

I usually consider myself a resourceful and sustainability-minded individual. I’m accustomed to composting my apple cores and checking plastic types to correctly sort my recycling. But the extreme reuse of materials in Argentina made me realize how lack of new technology lowers resource demand; if new technology isn’t available, people will reuse what they have out of necessity. In a circular economy, the purpose isn’t to grow and expand wealth, and Argentinian attitudes toward resource use are a clear example of why this is key to the circular economy model. The irony in Argentina, however, is that the lack of rapid expansion comes from lower socioeconomic standing.

After my internship, I was also able to spend some time camping and climbing in Frey, a couloir surrounded by incredible granite spires. I befriended climbers from all over the world and climbed Torre Principal with a few of them.