Embracing Newness: Trinity Dual BA Student on Pushing Academic Passions Beyond the Classroom

Driven by her academic passion for philosophy, Maya Koka ‘26GS found herself applying to the Dual BA Program between Trinity College Dublin and Columbia University. Having lived in Missouri City, Texas her whole life, Koka’s GS experience has been all about embracing new challenges and immersing herself in different perspectives.

Koka was drawn to the Dual BA’s nature of studying one subject from many perspectives. She felt that the academic program at both Trinity and Columbia would give her an “educational edge” when studying philosophy. “I wanted to study the subject within the context of the old world…the European spirit of thought,” Koka recalls, “but also within this new American world.” She believes in the importance of diverse perspectives on academic topics and was ultimately fascinated by the Dual BA’s ability to provide her with just that. Even though she had never been to Ireland, and only once to New York (to see the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton”), she knew the Dual BA fulfilled and would enrich her academic interests in a way other programs could not.

Koka’s interest in philosophy motivates her learning beyond the classroom as well. Koka is a recipient of the Trinity College Dublin Foundation Scholarship, a historical honor seeping with prestige and “mystery,” as Koka puts it. To earn this scholarship, Trinity undergraduates in their second academic year can sit intensive exams in their degree subjects. Students who excel in these essay-based exams become recipients of the scholarship, earning exemption from tuition, on-campus meals, and housing costs, as well as three years of free postgraduate education. The financial benefits of the scholarship are what pushed Koka to sit the exams, and independently studying philosophy topics she had not experienced in lectures made the experience worth it. “I really love philosophy so much,” she shares, “and I feel like it gave me the perfect motivation to learn more about my subject but also push myself.” On Trinity Monday 2024, the infamous day where Trinity’s Provost stands outside the exam hall to announce the names of about 60 students who would become that year’s Foundation Scholars, Koka stood among the crowd anxiously. “When they called my name… that was just so thrilling… I couldn’t believe it,” she remembers. Earning the Foundation Scholarship made Koka appreciative of the Dual BA program for providing her with the opportunity. It also made her more confident in her abilities to take on new challenges and learning experiences.

Koka has an insatiable love of learning that transcends the classroom. After her first year at Trinity, she participated in a Global Columbia Collaboratory entitled, The Amazon Region We Want. “As someone who had taken an environmental ethics class,” Koka says, tying in her ever-present philosophical drive, “I was really interested in the way that we value the environment but also how we interact with it.” She spent 10 days in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she and a handful of other fellows learned about the state of the Amazon rainforest and built a multimedia story map for a nonprofit based on the educational initiatives the community was building. When remembering her biggest takeaways from the experience, she notes the commonalities she saw among the people brought together, despite a language barrier. “I felt like even human expressions and even laughter that I shared with the tribe and I shared with the fellows, it was beautiful.” As for the sustainability-focused program as a whole, “It gave me hope,” she reflects. “It made me more optimistic about the future of this planet.”

Koka’s pursuits for academics outside the classroom did not stop there. This past summer, she participated in the Cultural Resources Fellowship Program with the National Parks Service. She worked for 12 weeks in Philadelphia at the Independence National Historic Park, researching the American Revolution in a global context during the age of revolutions in Spain, Haiti, and France. “I was also looking at the ways philosophy permeated those movements and how philosophy is different in certain regions,” Koka explains. She presented her research at the fall Undergraduate Research Symposium to the entire University community. 

Now in her junior year, after two years in a brand new city and one semester in a brand new academic environment, Koka reflects on what the program has taught her. From her time at Trinity, she learned to “embrace newness, embrace the unknown, and embrace things that might make you uncomfortable at first.” She urges people to “embrace differences,” as she did when hearing Irish students' perspectives on the world and on her home state of Texas. She is always interested in hearing other students’ views on religion and philosophy, and Trinity provided her with the chance to hear all that she could not have anywhere else. She feels that the Dual BA has given her a space to pursue things that she is passionate about, and also showed her she can be successful in them.

On her transition to Columbia, she jokes that the biggest challenge is the erratic state of the New York weather. “I’m getting blown away in the wind,” she exclaims, then clarifies, “Not literally.” Koka claims that at least Dublin’s weather was steady, but so far in New York it has been too all over the place for a Texan. “How to overcome this challenge? I guess staying inside!” On a more serious note, she confides that the most valuable thing her Columbia education has taught her is the importance of reading for academic success. “Any amount of reading will enhance your studies in the classroom,” she urges. “[Reading] will make you a more educated person in general.”

With three semesters left in her nontraditional undergraduate journey, Koka asks other Dual BA students to “Appreciate every moment you spend in Dublin or New York.” She says the time flies, especially due to the disjointed nature of the program. And although she wishes she could have done so even more, Koka’s advice is to  “Live in the moment, live in the present.” And, despite what is a most common trend amongst undergraduates, she pleads “don’t think about the future too much!” Instead you should “appreciate what’s around you.”