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Adan Triana-Doyal
Final Idea Book
Final Idea Book

What are the most important things that you learned in AGS this year?

Sir Richard Burton once said, “The gladdest moment in human life is a departure into

unknown lands.” The most important things that I have learned in AGS this year haven’t been

the immense knowledge and understanding that teachers taught me throughout the lessons, but

has been the fulfilling amount of experiences and new adventures that have single handedly

enhanced the way I view things tenfold.

Throughout sophomore year in my AGS experience, I had the incredible opportunity to

visit Costa Rica with the AGS group. This adventure, unlike many others that I had experienced,

stood out completely. While I was in Costa Rica with other students, I had the chance to visit and

interact with locals who only spoke spanish and was able to really connect with some of the

locals because of how many similarities we shared. When we visited the FINCA’s, which is an

organization of local Costa Ricans who grow and cultivate their own products, or ​sustainable

farming,​ there were kids there our age who were living in much worse conditions than people in

the United States did. However, what surprised me and defined my whole experience in Costa

Rica is that even though their standard of life was poor, their quality of life was happy and

easygoing. The fact that these kids who we played soccer with in Costa Rica were able to find

happiness and look on the brighter side of their situation is what blew me away. While we were

playing soccer on a tiny feel with steel posts as the goals and the kids playing with us either had

one soccer cleat, a pair of shoes, or completely barefoot. These kids seemed completely unfazed
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by the fact that a bunch of these Americans had come to their country and were able to

seamlessly play with us, despite most of the kids from America not speaking spanish. This

lesson, this life-changing moment, was the main thing that stuck with me from Costa Rica, the

fact that there are kids out there that are way worse off than me, but they are still able to be

happy and enjoy their life. That was my biggest takeaway from Costa Rica and honestly all of

AGS. That lesson that there is always a bright side to a bad situation and that it is what you make

of it really stuck with me.

Another one of the experiences that I will cherish is when AGS took a trip to Arkansas to

visit Heifer International freshman year. At Heifer, AGS divided into multiple groups to stay in a

simulation where the groups lived in an example of a house in an impoverished country. Each

group stayed said “house” for 2 nights and lived in a way that a local in said impoverished

country would live, small rations and having to trade in order to gain comfort. This experience

helped me realize that the world isn’t all that good for most people. It helped expand my

viewpoint on the world and see that there are people that are living in bad conditions all over the

place. The administrators teased us by showing us how they were able to access technology and

eat good food while the students didn’t have their phones and were forced to scavenge for their

own food. This part of the simulation was completely accurate as most people that live in these

poor conditions hear about and see other kids living in first world countries who could have

everything they want. Overall, this experience helped expand how I view the world. The prompt

clearly asks what I learned this year, but the lesson that I got from Heifer didn’t kick in until I

went to Costa Rica and really felt what it was like to be in a different country where the
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conditions are completely different. After I got home from Costa Rica, all of this information and

understanding hit me like a train in the sense that I hadn’t of thought of Heifer like I did now.

Overall, I’ve learned more this year about the world than I have my whole life. From

traveling to Costa Rica and encountering my own sort of “enlightenment”, I was able to deduce

that the world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, and traveling globally and seeing how different

cultures are is the only way to expand my horizons. This year and I assume the following years

in AGS have sparked something in me that makes me want to travel around the world and see all

the different types of people and walks of life, because as Sir Richard Burton once said, “The

gladdest moment in human life is a departure into unknown lands”.