[A Flurry of Posts Coming Your Way]

I have quite a few half-finished drafts from the past month and pictures to post up (or add to existing posts).  It's been hard to consistently write, not because of a lack of ideas, but rather because I think words imperfectly capture lived experience and it's tempting to spend an inordinate amount of time finding the perfect phrase or word.  I've made a resolution to just write without worrying about the inherent limitations of language :)

[Graveyards]

This is probably my most memorable day since I've arrived at St Andrews.

Perl, my academic sister, and I took the morning bus to Dundee, a major city about 20 minutes north of St Andrews.  We were shopping for hiking shoes, windbreaker, and waterpoof pants for the Breakaway hillwalking trip tomorrow.  It ended up being the ideal shopping situation: we went for what we needed, found a good deal, bought it, and it was done.  No feelings of being broke, purposeless window shopping, or being afflicted by mindless consumerism!

After shopping, Perl and I walked to a cemetery behind the Overgate Shopping Centre called Howff Graveyard.  We spent a good while sitting on a old stone bench having deep conversations about life and death.  Perhaps the setting was a bit too cheesily appropriate, but the environment really does reinforce the meaning of your words.  For example, my philosophy professor reviewed the principle of non-contradiction the other day, giving the example that one cannot rationally believe that "It is raining" and "It is not raining" at the same time.  I've heard the example phrase so many times before and was zoning out, but a women with an umbrella appeared for a split-second in the rain-streaked window behind him as he proclaimed, "It is not raining!" Quite dramatic.

While talking, Perl and I also tried to read the faded epitaphs on the gravestones.  Most of them were so worn by time that it was impossible to decipher.  The ones that we were able to read, we read with the same detached curiosity that a layperson would have while reading plaques at a museum.  The layperson at the museum doesn't have the background knowledge to appreciate art like an expert does; he can read all the details about certain art movements, influences from other obscure painters, and a certain acrylic medium with the desire to understand and appreciate.  And to a certain extent, he can indeed appreciate but not to the intimate level that the expert can.  There's no background framework to connect all the obscure facts and tidbits about the work of art.  Similarly, the background stories of these dead people were long gone to us...

An old lady gently interrupted us, asking when the Dundee tour that left from the graveyard was leaving.  Perl and I didn't know, and tried to help, but eventually we found that it wasn't running that day.  It was a shame, but she joined us on the bench.  We found out that she was turning 80 in a month.  She wasn't a tourist as we assumed, but lived her whole life in Dundee.  She fondly showed a lock of hair she had kept of her dead husband, and a pocketwatch from a recent trip to Paris.  She visited the World Trade Center precisely a year before it crashed, and liked to travel.  Perl and I shared our motivations for traveling, and our life stories about Las Vegas and Austria, too.

Before we said goodbye her, she recommended a good place to eat for lunch–a pub called the Counting House.  Over lunch, Perl said she was inspired because she's talked with just as many old people who are bitter and full of regret.  I said that it was a nice experience connecting briefly with someone: I usually am too shy to start conversations with strangers like that.  I think that people our age tend to associate mainly with people our age.  That isn't necessarily wrong, but you miss out on other perspectives that can only come with time.  On the bus ride back to St Andrews, brilliant sunset splashed the Tay Bridge and the water below with soft shades of pink and orange.  I ended the day by going to Dominic's 23rd birthday party at the Vic.

It was great going to bed, feeling connected to everyone, friends and strangers alike.

I didn't take a picture of Howff Graveyard, so here's a picture of St Andrew's Cathedral instead!

[Rainbow Ties and Rainbow Skies]

ID4002 (Communication and Teaching in the Arts and Humanities) is the module I'm taking where I get to be an assistant teacher at one of the local primary and secondary schools in Fife.  It's a chance for upperclassmen to experience the practical side of presenting their subject matter, as opposed to absorbing information passively in lectures.  I was placed at Madras College, a secondary school just across the street from the University of St Andrews on South Street.

The induction session for ID4002 was held today from 11am-5pm to cover expectations for the module and to prepare us for our first classroom visit next week.  I thought it would be an extremely boring day on teaching methodology and classroom management, but I was pleasantly surprised.

The only teaching methodology emphasized was to be a reflective teacher (we were to make observation logs after each visit and explain what we did well and what we could improve on).  It was sensible enough advice: I know too many classes where it was obvious that the professor has given the same lecture or syllabus for decades.  If you don't reflect on what you do as a teacher, the relationship dynamics between student and teacher stagnates, and the enthusiasm for learning wanes.

After that, the main focus of the session were past students recounting their teaching experiences and their associated fears and anxieties, and teachers explaining why they taught and the joys and sorrows of teaching.  It was a very personal and inspiring experience; everyone conveyed optimism about teaching attenuated by a dose of realism.

Olav Darge, the depute rector of Madras College stood up to give the ending speech.  He was a middle-aged, bespectacled, and erudite looking man, and the thing that immediately struck out was his rainbow tie (it wasn't garishly colored, but it was striking nonetheless), which contrasted with his more conservative dark-green blazer and tweed trousers.  The depute rector gave a very poignant and witty speech about his experience teaching history, and ended with the following anecdote about a conversation he had with a student in the corridor:

"Mr. Darge! Mr. Darge!" a young girl exclaimed.
 Mr. Darge raised his eyebrows and asked, "Yes?"
"I really like your tie!" [at this moment Mr. Darge gestured to the very tie he was wearing]
Mr. Darge graciously accepted the compliment. "Thank you."
Without losing a beat, the girl quickly added: "It looked like a rainbow vomited all over your shirt."

Olav Darge smiled as the audience and I chuckled, adding that despite the fact that teaching can fall into a routine, or you think you have the lesson completely planned out, the students can always surprise you.  Yes, the bad things can happen unexpectedly, but so can the good things.  I'm pretty stoked to start at Madras College next week.

Speaking of rainbow ties, it rained while I walked back to DRA and this was the view from Market St:

[Making Friends During Fresher's Week]

Living in a hall with four other flatmates.  Going to the pub almost every night.  Late night conversations in the flat.  Figuring out what to eat.  I've started to get a taste of an aspect of the college freshman experience that I never had at UNLV.  UNLV is a commuter campus, so only about 10-20% of the students actually live the dorms.  Most students are from Las Vegas, so they either live off campus or with their parents.  I stayed with my parents.  My parents were strict my freshman year about me going out and I wasn't quite as assertive back then, so I didn't have a busy social life.  I've never had it at the rate and intensity it's happening now.  I've met so many freshers, returning students, flatmates, flatmates of friends, exchange students that it's overwhelming.  We'd exchange our 11 digit long phone numbers on our new UK phones.  But this led me to ask myself: Who should I hang out with some more later?  What if the first few weeks of the semester are a critical period after which social groups solidify, at the same time calcifying the fates of unfortunate social outcasts?  What happens after classes start and now you have to balance that time with socializing?

My answer to this bout of social anxiety: From my time at UNLV I learned that the first people you meet aren't necessarily the closest friends you'd get.  I met the majority of my best friends during my junior and senior year.  It was the same for high school.  So I'm going to be patient and just see how relationships naturally grow from here.  The second point is to not feel overly committed to spending time with people where the relationship isn't mutually satisfying.  Sometimes I am too polite with strangers and acquaintances. I felt that I wasted a lot of time hanging around people that didn't care too much for during my first two years of college.

That afternoon, I went to St Andrews' LGBT Society meet and greet today.  They had a lot of tea, coffee, and biscuits on the table.  I was nervous, and I drink when I have nothing to say or am thinking of something to say, so I kept refilling the tea cup with coffee and drank four cups within a half hour.  It wasn't a good idea because the room was hot.  I then met a third-year from Southwest England who was probably just as socially awkward as I am.  We were both soft-spoken and the music blasting made it hard to hear everyone else in the circles we were talking to.  So we complained about this.  Eventually, our complaints changed to meta-discussions about the evils of small talk and the art of listening in a loud room.  So our mutual social awkwardness served as the grease for easy, engaging conversation.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that his course was in philosophy too, and that we were both in the same social philosophy class.  I have a feeling that he and I will become best friends this semester.  Anyway, the LGBT society hosts the occasional club trip to Glasgow, Edinburgh, or Aberdeen so it will be interesting seeing what the gay nightlife is like in Scotland, though I'd probably enjoy their queer reading group more.  It's not called Reading Rainbow like the one I started back at UNLV though.

That night, I tried out Aikido today at the gym.  Tomorrow I will check out the bonfire that the Breakway Society (a hillwalking club) is hosting.  I'm very excited since hiking is a favorite pasttime of mine.  There are WAY too many societies at St Andrews.  There's also a Harry Potter and Gin Society, Doctor Who Society, Neuroscience Society, and Philosophy Society.  For a complete list, see http://societies.yourunion.net/action/welcome/ . I think in the end I'm going to trim it down to 2-3 societies.  It's exciting to see how active the students here are though.

[Pedestrian Pains]

This week is Fresher's and Orientation Week.  The outside of my right foot started hurting Sunday evening, and it didn't help that David Russell Apartments (the hall I'm staying in; I'll reference it as DRA from here on) is a good 20 minute walk to the main campus of St Andrews.  By the time I had walked to the Gateway Building to register for my classes yesterday afternoon, I could barely walk.  So after registration, I spent an excruciating hour limping around town looking for the right bus stop and bus route to go to St Andrews Community Hospital (there is no health center on campus and it would have been a 40 minute walk).  I have lower pain tolerance than I thought, but I suppose rarely having broken or sprained anything made me optimistic about walking (literally) the thought.  On the plus side, I got to experience the wonders of universal healthcare (no waiting in lines or insurance needed as a student) and my physical discomfort allowed me to overcome my discomfort about exploring the city a bit beyond the walk between my dorms and the Student Union.

On the way back, I silently waited at the bus stop by the hospital, listening to two other exchange students speak in German as they peered at the bus schedule.  Fifteen minutes passed and the 99A bus still hadn't arrived, so I broke the silence and observed that the bus timetables in Germany probably wouldn't be this late.  They emphatically agreed.  On the bus ride back, I learned that they were computer science postgrads from the University of Hamburg, and were delighted when I mentioned knowing the University of Lüneburg: apparently they had some friends there too.  As soon as I got back to DRA, I collapsed in my bed, hugged my pillow, and teared up because of homesickness.  After days of curiosity and wonder, it's finally hit me that I'm home anymore.  Everything I really knew about German culture I learned from my boyfriend (he studied abroad in Germany for a year).  It's funny how having a pleasant conversation with foreign students, who probably find St Andrews as unfamiliar as I do, would trigger my homesickness.  The juxtaposition of the familiar with the foreign stirred up emotions that I was able to bury when admiring Scotland in isolation from the thoughts of home.

My first impressions of St Andrews: it is a small town that seeps of age with its stone architecture, the pub density is high, and the landscape is green and luxuriant.  One thing that surprised me the most is the high number of international and exchange students I've run into.  I vaguely remember reading the statistic to be about 30% of the small population of 9,000 students a few months ago, but forgot about it until experiencing it firsthand.  I've probably run into more Americans, Canadians, mainland Europeans, and South Americans more than native Scots.  When I finally emerged from the cave to go pub crawling with the other USAC students and their flatmates, I had a great conversation in broken Spanish with an exchange student from Colombia.  In the end, she told me to stop shaking my legs en español, saying it made me look nervous even if I didn't feel like it.  I smiled for two reasons.  One of them was that I didn't think I'd get to practice my language skills in Scotland, but here I was.

My flat at DRA

View from the window

[Traveling to St Andrews]

After arriving in New York from Las Vegas, I had a 3 hour layover in JFK airport.  Lately, I've found that I enjoy traveling alone in airports: it affords the opportunity of solitude without the anxiety of loneliness.  There's comfort in the fact that everyone is in a place of transience and leaving places and people for new places and people.  These unknown travelers and I share the inability to call the airport either our home or final destination.

As I'm about to board the six hour flight from New York to London, the air conditioning got very cold.  I gratefully drew the coat, which I had originally worn to save space in my suitcase at the expense of sweating in the hot desert weather,  closer to my body.  The fact that I'm actually wearing my coat for reasons of utility made me realize I was almost there: right now it is keeping me warm from the blasting AC, but eventually it would be similarly useful in the cooler Scottish weather.  Overhearing conversations by the other British passengers returning home and glimpsing their red and gold passports in hand, I almost felt that I was in the UK.  

Dinner on the plane was meat and potatoes served with a sparse salad, but it was good despite not being much better than a TV dinner.  I suppose there's something about eating from a jittery tray in a cramped space, and the thought that the food is going down your esophagus while your're zooming 500 mph through the troposphere that makes it a novel experience.  Perhaps that's why some people pay a lot of money to eat in certain restaurants where the food is served in complete darkness.  The patrons there literally have to be led by hand to their table, where they whisper orders to a waiter they cannot see to eat food that they cannot see.  The ambient environment contributes to the taste just as much as the skill of the chef preparing the food.

The lights dim around 10:00 pm so some of the passengers can sleep.   I couldn't fall asleep because of an arguing couple sitting behind me, so instead I watched the flight information on the monitor.  I had the peculiar experience that I could travel anywhere, perhaps because the image of the airplane was grossly oversized (it was the size of a 1/3 of mainland Europe) and that the dots representing Glasgow, Dublin, Madrid, and Reykjavik were all within inches of one another.

Once I arrived in the UK, I started taking in and staring at everything that locals ignored or took to be inconsequential:

1. I actually watched the safety command video on the flight from London to Edinburgh.  To the other passengers, it probably sounded just as boring as the one I heard on American Airlines - a falsely cheerful voice reciting something memorized to death.  But because of the British accent, I found it fascinating and noted small details in word choice.  For example, "The safety bag will not inflate" as opposed to "Though air may be flowing, the bag may not inflate."

2. Driving on the opposite side. Expected, but I was amused anyway seeing it firsthand.

3. I also notice things that are expected in retrospect, but you couldn't imagine before getting there because my imagination of Scotland was limited to the few snapshots I saw in the study abroad brochure.  "Here Comes the Sun" plays gently on the airport shuttle.  Perfectly cylindrical stacks of hay lay interspersed in rolling green fields, a red/white satellite dish rotates alone, a co-op butcher store, the door to the shuttle being on the left side instead of the usual right.

The traffic to St Andrews slows down to a crawl as it reaches the influx of students and parents going to the university.  It'll be a while longer, but I'll be at my final destination soon.

View from Forth Road Bridge of a parallel bridge (outside Edinburgh)

Another view from the Stagecoach bus closer to St Andrews

[Anticipation & Anxiety]

The past week I've been meeting up with various friends (both planned and serendipitously) to say goodbye.  There's something about the urgency of leaving and impending goodbyes that makes for good conversation.  Morbid thought: This is somewhat like an attenuated version of how people on their deathbeds are more likely to be frank and honest in their conversations just because they know this is their last chance.

Anyway, I leave tomorrow at dawn. I'm listening to my boyfriend jam on his guitar (he's lost in his own world) as I throw my clothes into my suitcase and plug an unusually large amount of electronics to charge into the powerstrip by my desk.  I gaze at various items, considering if I should keep it or not and torn by my resolve to pack light.

I feel kind of guilty because I thought I should be spending my last hours in Las Vegas spending quality time with my family, friends, and boyfriend instead of packing. I should be done already.  Upon further reflection, this guilt is unfounded - I've spent a lot of time doing protracted and satisfying goodbyes, but I have a tendency to feel guilty when stressed out.  I've been quite stressed the last week or so because I've been procrastinating on the Fulbright application to teach abroad in Vietnam next year for two months now, and haven't quite worked on the teaching project proposal for the class at St Andrews.  That's my biggest worry this fall semester - that I will procrastinate so much on my essays in the philosophy modules, or other projects in class that I can't fully enjoy pub crawling or hanging out with the people I will meet, or relax when I travel around the UK and Europe.  I also have the tendency to overly prepare for things when stressed.  I have NO idea what Scottish politics, current events, culture, or education is like and was extremely worried that I would come off as a stereotypically ignorant American when meeting people.  I told my boyfriend this and he gently pointed out that the point of studying abroad is to learn things, and that it defeats the purpose if you're ready for everything.  Part of the fun is the unexpected. He's right, so I started breathing again and relaxing a bit.  It still hasn't quite sunk in that I'm leaving in 8 hours.

[Why I Decided to Study Abroad]

The following was copied and pasted from my personal statement for the USAC program that I wrote earlier this year in February.  I thought it may be helpful as a reference for comparison later after I return.

One reason that I wanted to study abroad at the University of St. Andrews is because it has one of the strongest philosophy departments in the U.K.  The professors there are doing interesting work in the philosophy of mind (particularly in the nature of time perception and mental representations), and there's a whole research initiative on philosophical methodology at the Arché centre.  It would an enlightening experience browsing through the library at Edgecliffe, having engaging discussions with other students in tutorial sessions and Philosophy Club, and attending the departmental colloquia.

Besides issues in the philosophy of mind and metaphilosophy, I would like to learn about how I could teach philosophy in high school.  Unlike secondary schools in the U.K., philosophy is rarely taught in American high schools.  I think an earlier exposure to philosophy could foster critical thinking and openness to different points of view in students during their formative years in high school.  Our education system desperately needs to start encouraging these skills in an age where there is a wealth of good an bad information on the Internet rather than teaching students how to rote-memorize and merely take tests.  Conveniently, the Philosophy outreach programme at St Andrews offers a module where I will be teaching philosophy at secondary schools in the area.  Practical experience in pedagogy could give me insights about possible curricular reforms in high schools back home.

On another note, David Hume is one of my favorite early modern philosophers.  His treatises were very matter-of-fact and sensible, breaking significant ground in ethics and cognitive science.  I would love to visit his home country and resting place.

On a less academic note, another reason that I’d like to study abroad comes from the fact that the environment we live in has more influence on our sense of identity and personal development than we realize.  I grew up, went to college, and lived at home for my whole life in Las Vegas.  I wasn’t aware of the impact of this insular life on my habits and ways of thinking until I visited the East Coast and lived on my own for the very first time (Summer 2011).  The academic and urban culture of Boston, Cambridge, and MIT sharply differed in nature and intensity from that of UNLV.  Living on the East Coast forced me to examine my own life and worldviews because the ones I brought with me did not work well in a different situation.  I learned to revise my old study habits and communication skills to keep up with new technologies in brain imaging and the open-endedness of scientific research.

I returned to Las Vegas with a new perspective on my hometown.  It is a city of simulacra, always seeking to replicate the wonders of the real world, whether it Paris, the Bellagio, the Luxor, etc.  But now I have a new thirst to see these places firsthand—an instilled sense of wanderlust.  I gained a stronger sense of independence and self-awareness from that summer at MIT that I hope to hone even further by studying abroad in Scotland.  This sense of independence has not been clashing well with my my parents - my mom still treat me as a child, and despite her well-intentioned over protectiveness it has become suffocating.  So I think it will be good for me to get some space to think and relax this semester.  Perhaps physical distance between my mom and me will make us emotionally closer as I learn to live on my own, and she learns to live without me in the house.

People often say that they want to “find themselves” in a new culture.  I don’t think the point is finding yourself; rather, it is more than immersing yourself in other worldviews and questioning the assumptions that have been sociologically ingrained in you.  Personal growth does not occur in isolation; it has to occur through a mutual relationship with other people.  St Andrews has a dynamic, cosmopolitan group of local and international students where I hope to contribute to this spirit of getting culturally lost.

PS - On a less formal note, I think a big factor in studying abroad was that my close friends and boyfriend all studied abroad in Costa Rica, Oxford, and Germany and said it was a life-changing experience.  So it was a positive kind of peer pressure :)