By Alicja Banasiak, University of California Santa Cruz, US
Can a long-distance relationship work? Well, I’d say yes. Before coming to the US, I was dating my boyfriend for a couple of months. We entered the relationship knowing that I was going to study abroad the following year.
Continue reading “Going Abroad? But what about your significant other!”
I have now been home for over 3 months and I thought I would write about my thoughts on leaving Case Western and my road trip around California.
The last few weeks of term were extremely stressful with trying to pack up my belongings, say my goodbyes, plan a road trip and submit all my final work. Luckily, I did not have any finals to take and I decided to leave the campus early and meet up with friends from Manchester to travel around the East Coast. But this did mean that saying goodbye to all the great people I had met felt very rushed.
As I am writing this post it is orientation week at Case Western. It feels so surreal to see everyone enjoying themselves on campus and me no longer being there. I think it has finally hit me that year abroad is over – all be it 3 months later.
One of the highlights of my year abroad was all the travelling I did and for the final trip I packed in as much as possible. Starting in Santa Barbara I travelled to LA, San Francisco, Monterey Bay, Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas.
It is nearly impossible to capture all these incredible places and moments but I did manage to record some of the best ones on my phone. Although I have practically no skills in video editing, here is a video of my travels:
By Rhiannon Jones (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA)
Our time at Illinois had finished. Finals were done with, emotional goodbyes were had and we had a month left on our visas before we got deported from the country. We were heading to the West Coast.
The initial planning wasn’t the laid-back ‘Cali’ lifestyle that the trip itself promised. With seven of us to book flights, hostels, car hire, coaches and entrance tickets for, a month to remember started out more as an exercise in herding cats. Thankfully someone more organised than me was fluent in Google Docs and the phrase “check the spreadsheet’ became a mantra, chanted back at you if you wasted precious planning time with stupid questions. Yelp, Hostel World and AirBnB became our new best friends. The driving spotify playlists were curated months in advance and in our 1am revision session, procrastination came in the form of looking at restaurants four states away.
Our first stop was San Francisco. I’ve never been to California before so stepping off the plane into pleasantly dry heat and palm tree-lined streets was incredible. It had felt like this trip was such a long time coming. Even before I’d left for study abroad I knew I wasn’t just there to study but to explore the States. This was the last big adventure and admittedly the end of my savings. My highlight of our couple of days in San Fran was cycling along the waterfront to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was immensely satisfying to see our seven-man bike convoy roll up to the base of one of the most famous landmarks in the US knowing that we’d worked against gravel and a significant head wind to get there. We also stopped at the Palace of Fine Arts on the way. Not actually a palace but an imagining of a crumbling Roman ruin, and favourite for wedding photographers, meaning that I got some great Instagram material. My main tip for San Francisco (or SF to the cool kids) is to bring a good pair of shoes. As students who were looking at another three weeks of travelling, we walked a lot (maybe too much) in the city famous for its hills. A contrast to the boringly flat Midwest, some roads even had a 40° incline. It meant walking around the corner from our hostel could give glimpses of the most amazing views over the city below but you basically had do leg day to do so.
SF from the top of a hill, Alcatraz watch tower and a stroll around the Palace of Fine Arts.
We picked up the cars on our last day in in SF and made our way over to the first proper stop on our road trip, Yosemite National Park. ‘Only’ 3 hours away from the city but nestled in mountains higher than anything in the UK, it’s understandably popular with Californians. This gave me a problem though; I might have forgotten during my desperate panic to ship stuff home that I would actually need warm clothes to go hiking in. An issue especially considering we saw snow on our second day. Cobbling together something from the overweight bag I dragged around the country with me, we prepared to hike the ‘strenuous’ climb to Nevada falls. The hike started at 3000ft and climbed another 2000 meaning the view from the top was literally breath taking and looking back at the photos we also got incredibly lucky with the weather. It’s fair to say we’re not exactly gym rats but we still managed the climb in 4 hours. A brief moment was had for the poor pair of sunglasses that got taken back down the hike via a torrent of water hurtling off the side of the cliff face. I would absolutely recommend Yosemite to everyone, regardless of you hiking ability (there’s more gentle ones too!) but go during the week. The weekends get very busy and the paths a little slower to navigate.
Sunset by the roadside, the spectacular Yosemite falls and the climb to the top.
Coming back down to sea level and warmer weather, we travelled most of the journey south along the Pacific Coast Highway. Unusually for US highways this road actually has bends in it as it follows the coastline and gives continuously beautiful views of the ocean the whole way. We made smaller overnight stops at Monterey and Santa Barbara, to break the two-day journey down, and serve as an opportunity to have some amazing seafood. This lead to our next major stop, Los Angeles, which I would describe it as amazing and weird at the same time. Around the corner from our house was a hipster ice cream shop that allowed us to try flavours like rose water, lavender and olive. In the end I opted for the classic salted caramel. Everything there is incredibly spread out so your only travel option is to take a car and unfortunately they all drive like assholes. Thankfully we had decided to not return our rental cars and so got to see sunset over the city from the Griffith observatory, people working out on Venice Beach and a quick tour around UCLA. I also had a major nerd moment when I realised that we’d driven through the Back to the Future tunnel (smaller in real life than it looks).
The Pacific Coast Highway, between the Walt Disney concert hall and having a look around UCLA.
The final stop of our road trip was a straight drive from LA into the desert. On our way there we watched the temperature rise and rise as we got closer to the unmistakeable Las Vegas, to handily coincide with Angus’ 21st birthday. We said goodbye to the cars (a more emotional event for some more than others) and took to the strip by foot. The city is ridiculous. Every building is draped with lights and is a monument to ridiculous extravagance. In recovering from the night before we went to an all-you-can-eat sushi place. I actually felt disgusted by how much food we ate, to the point the waitress actually commented on it. It was some of the best food I’ve ever eaten but in hindsight, maybe eating that much fish in the middle of a dessert wasn’t the smartest move. We had an amazing weekend and I like to think we celebrated our friend’s particular milestone in memorable fashion, but don’t think I’m ready to go back again anytime soon.
P.S. To save this blog being longer than it already is (and this was only the first half), some things didn’t make the cut. These photos are the best of the rest
Chicago theatre during a packed graduation, the Berkeley bear and the Grand Canyon.
By Ros Harwood (Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada)
To finish up my blog posts about my year abroad, I have some photos to share giving a snapshot of the five weeks I spent travelling to mark the end of my year abroad. It was a fantastic trip and I ticked off a lot of places I have always wanted to visit! I attempted to mark each place with a Manchester beanie picture. Travel is such a key part of study abroad, make the most of the opportunities!
Canada
Toronto > Rocky Mountains (Banff and Jasper) > Vancouver
USA:
Seattle > Portland > Yosemite & Sierra National Parks > Death Valley > Las Vegas > Phoenix & Grand Canyon, Arizona > San Diego > Los Angeles > Pacific Coast Highway > San Francisco
Yosemite & Sierra National Parks
Driving the Pacific Coast Highway: Santa Barbara > Big Sur > Carmel > Monterey, California
And that’s a wrap on my year abroad! Coming home has been a small novelty, but quickly got boring. Make the most of it!
By Sam Thoburn (University of California, San Diego, USA)
I write every day, but not very often on this blog. So for that, my many, many readers, I apologise.
The Spring Quarter out here began three weeks ago, and among my new classes is one in travel writing. Since San Diego is a recruitment and command centre for both the American Navy and Air Force, I thought it would be interesting to look into that military history a little. To that end, I have been (and will be) visiting the city’s military cemeteries and writing about them. Here is the first piece I wrote, to be read in the knowledge that Jerry Brown, the Governor of California, just announced that he is deadly serious about reducing water usage across the state:
Above-Ground at Miramar
For such a level place, with so few trees, there is a great deal of birdsong. Is the song that of the Coastal California Gnatcatcher? The informational board installed in front of a fenced-off area of scrub would lead me to believe so: it tells the tale of vernal pools in San Diego County, a kind of seasonal wetland of which 97% are gone, leaving only those at this Miramar Air Force base as habitats for such endangered species as the San Diego Fairy Shrimp and the 4-inch-long Coastal California Gnatcatcher.
That unique fauna sets Miramar apart from other military cemeteries. But just like any of its kind, Miramar has the obligatory marble-white gravestones laid out in rows so perfect that they form straight lines from almost any angle.
Each gravestone bears these rows of information about the dead, engraved very deeply and arranged with as much precision as the stones themselves: name, rank, military branch, wars in which they fought (most commonly, still, Korea and Vietnam), dates of birth and death and sometimes a short tribute from the surviving family. On top of all those, in the uppermost portion of the stone, there is usually a religious symbol from a template; most often, it is some variant of a Christian cross, while the odd one bears the Star of David, and others carry ambiguous symbols like that of a silhouetted man blowing into a bugle or the sideways eight meaning infinity. The range of possible images must be limited to nine or ten, with one chosen from that small collection, which I suppose a family member must pick out. On the opposite side of some of the stones there are memorials for the non-serving military spouse. There is less ceremony to these—no religious symbols – and in fact they are easy to miss if you are not looking for them.
There are the usual graveside adornments – flags and flowers most commonly. Every flower is brightly coloured and alive, which seemed like a strange lack of tarnish for a cemetery until I read on a noticeboard, posted along one edge of the main graveyard plot, that “All floral items will be removed as soon as they become faded and/or unsightly”. Flowers bloom there all year round then, and the grass stays green as well. Every other facility in California must turn off its sprinklers if it is to conserve ever-precious water, but it would be a brave man who ordered the grass of national cemeteries to be left to the whims of the year-round sun. I will know that all hope of salvation from the drought is lost when there is parched grass at Miramar.
The artifice of green grass is clear enough when you move from the eastern to the western side of the entrance gate. This national cemetery only opened in 2010, and though thousands are already interred there, the ground is not nearly full. One or two plots of ground have been prepared on this western side to await those who will pass on in the coming years, but the space is not yet completely developed. Past a certain point, the road that leads around the plots is unpaved, becoming a track through the dirty yellow dust of wild scrubland. I walked over it slowly, heeding as best I could the warning sign by the low administration building (“BEWARE OF RATTLESNAKES”), and wondered how long it would be before this, too, would be sacred memorial ground and true mourners would stand there instead of me.
By Sam Thoburn (University of California, San Diego, USA)
San Diego is a long way from most places, and this year in America is precious time to be used diversely, so in the last three months I have flown more often than ever before in my life. And when I fly, I usually fly at night. That hasn’t been a conscious choice, but it has held true for the past few months. A break has come in that pattern now, though, and it has left my nocturnal partiality as nothing at all.
For Christmas and New Year, I was in New England with my parents and my brother. It was a lovely fortnight in a corner of this country I have never seen before, and I tried not to take it all for granted. I was disinclined to leave for home, if I may so call California after three months here. The journey back over the country and into the sun was in unusual daytime, and it was in two stages: Boston-Chicago, Chicago-San Diego.
On the first leg, early in the morning, I saw nothing through thick layers of cloud and sleep. The Midwest and its flat plains of crops were invisible from 34,000 feet, our cruising altitude. I read between naps, the personal screens showing only paid programming after taxying (and not being inclined to pay for Spongebob). Coming in for a soft landing at O’Hare after three hours in the air, we found the product of the cloud cover: heavy rain on the tarmac and slick-hooded runway workers.
The second flight was delayed and I waited at the gate, watching a talking-heads show about Taylor Swift’s career, eating a sandwich that covered my lap in crumbs.
That latter aeroplane was packed. There was some confusion as we boarded; double-booked seats and misprinted tickets for Boise not San Diego and dogs unwilling to leave their seats. I was in the back row (where I like to be, unharried, and not imposing on anybody when I recline my seat) and I had the window seat.
For hours there was nothing to see but the wonderful niveous down that clouds form when seen from above. No longer inclined to sleep, though, I kept looking, waiting for a little more. The first announcement the pilot made in midair warned of imminent turbulence as we passed over Denver. That shook a lot of people awake. I like turbulence; it reminds me, on a long flight, that I am defying physical laws, suspended in the sky unnaturally and wonderfully; it shouldn’t be too easy. But on that five hour flight, I found that that reminder need not be physical. It can come, too, in the view from a small porthole window that you crick your neck to look through.
The clouds thinned out as the plane stopped shaking, and I saw Colorado below. I have never been to Colorado, so my only expectation was to look down on snowy mountains. And it must be that from such a distance, such an impersonal height, stereotypes are made, because all I saw were mountain clusters peaked in glowing white: the Rockies.
Mountains became rarer as we moved along, and instead there was more level ground. A plateau hundreds of miles long, a vast once-brown mesa, dusted in snow. State lines not being visible from the air, and my US geography being rudimentary, I took the sight of snow to mean that we were still over Colorado.
The plateau dropped away into a sheer river gorge, shepherding water down from more mountains in the far background. I could see not only its great depth, told in long shadows at its most impressive point, but its origin upriver, too, as a shallow cut in the rock. On the high ground between the forked branches of canyons, there were squares of I cannot imagine what crop laid out in perfect squares and inlaid with concentric circles of winter furrow. These fields too were white in places.”We’re almost there,” the pilot said then, “and if you are lucky enough to be on the right-hand side of the plane, you’ll have a wonderful view of the Grand Canyon this afternoon. They had snow here just last week.” Arizona, then.
We followed the course of rail and road lines—forced across the country in a strangely straight line, with nothing to navigate around—until they stopped or turned at sharp angles to keep from falling into that ravine. I have never stood on that precipice myself and taken in the view for myself, and perhaps my foreignness showed; all my mind could conjure, as we crossed over the edge and I first faced that gaping monument, was that the rock I saw was as red as Manchester brick.
By Sam Thoburn (University of California, San Diego, USA)
I wrote my first entry for this blog weeks ago, when I had only been here for a day or two. When I wrote it, I was spending nights on the floor of my half a room and feeling, perhaps unsurprisingly, terrible. Aside from the barren nightly arrangements, every time I noticed that a turn of phrase or a product in the supermarket was even slightly different from what I know it to be at home, my assumption was that this was a change for the worse. I maintained rather longer than I should have the arrogance of the traveller, who laments with every mouthful the fact that Special K just isn’t the same in America. I am very glad that the blog I wrote at that time was not published, because it would only give you a bad impression of the place where I now live, when in truth the problems were my own. Perhaps if I had read the pertinent Study Abroad literature more closely, the first trials of my year abroad would not have affected me so much – I was not the first to feel that way, nor will I be the last. And so here, after almost a month in the country, is what I have to say.
There is one inescapable thing about being in America that I took to as soon as I arrived, and that is the feeling, every time I open my mouth, that I am foreign. At home near London or in Manchester, my accent is reassuringly dull and commonplace, seemingly without a region. Here, though, my voice is unique enough and close enough to Queen’s English that people are inclined to like hearing you speak. In the first week I was here, the campus was half-asleep: it was International Orientation Week and all of the local students had yet to arrive. Among those that were here already, I gravitated, as we all do, to those with whom I shared the most, and so my first friends were English and Irish students in exactly the same position as myself. The accents we have, when heard in San Diego, are unifying and bonding, and every time you hear one it is reassuring.
Once the campus filled with students from all over California and other states, the scale of the place and the communities it supports struck me. It is nothing like Manchester, I can tell you that much. (In fact, yesterday was the first day since I arrived that I wore jeans. Every other day has been the height of summer. After a few weeks of that, believe me when I say that rain sounds like a distant and wonderful thing.) I can walk from the bottom of the campus to the top in twenty minutes, but most don’t; skateboards, scooters and bicycles of all kinds will run any pedestrian down if they are not looking in every direction at the same time.
These American students had their own Welcome Week which, as far as I could tell, bore no resemblance to my Fresher’s experience in Fallowfield. For one thing, it was more or less an entirely sober week. Most importantly, though, and alien to me as a student in Manchester, the emphasis is placed more upon school spirit—every other person you walk past on campus is wearing a UCSD T-shirt or jumper or baseball cap. There is a two-storey bookshop, but more than half of its shelves are given over to official UCSD stationery, clothing and souvenirs. In that sense, the week is a complete success.
After a little while, I began to appreciate the prevalence of frozen yoghurt and fruit smoothie shops here where I live, just north of San Diego and east of La Jolla. In the third week I also managed to leave the discomfort of my little sleeping bag behind when I won a free mattress on the flip of a coin. In these weeks, FaceTime has become a huge part of my life, as have considerations of the eight hour time difference – the notion that, a third of the time, I am living on a different day to all my family never seems normal.
I am not even coming close to recounting the month entirely, or even its highlights, and I think that I will stop trying for now. That is how it is bound to be: a month on your own in a new country gives you a lot to write about.
By Elizabeth Hardy (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA).
It seems bizarre to be reading all the blogs of the students heading out for a year of fun abroad. I have now been home a month and life is (somewhat) getting back to normal. The only thing that reminds me the past year hasn’t been some crazy dream is knowing that I have changed. I am different; we all are different from our experiences. We are shaken up to a point that we cannot be put back together in the same way. We are challenged on how we have lived our lives so far. This is good for us. It forces us to grow.
Hanging out at the Grand Canyon
There is such a heavy focus on the experience of living in a foreign country that the period of coming home is often overlooked, I feel. This is important. I was so nervous about coming home and being miserable after such a memorable year. It seemed that my return to England would inevitably seem unexciting and anti-climatic. This has, in fact, been far from the truth. I have spent a month at home reflecting on my year abroad and this is my conclusion – studying abroad has re-energised me and refocused my plans for the next few years. More importantly, it has inspired me and given me a confidence boost that I wasn’t even aware I was in need of. The point is simple; if I can live in a foreign country on my own and have such a great time, what else can I do? Just that little push to get out of my comfort zone and there it is! A whole world out there waiting.
Lake Tahoe
This is not to say post-California blues have not occurred. When you are as enthusiastic about an experience, it is only natural to bore people of tales with “When I was in California….” and there are still days when I miss my friends and a place that (for some stretch of time) was called home. I certainly miss the sunshine and the 24 hour company. But the world is not as large as it once was, and Skype, Facebook and iPhones have all helped to bridge the gap and make that distance seem just a little bit smaller.
Las Vegas
My final piece of advice is this; do not fear moving from ‘home’. What is ‘home’, so it turns out, is utterly transient. It is not a place, but more a messy combination of the right place, time, and most importantly, the right people. ‘Home’ will change as you do. My roots will always be in the place I grew up, but my home will be wherever I choose. This is a freedom, and one to be enjoyed. Love, Lizzie.
By Elizabeth Hardy (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA).
“And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.” – Maya Angelou
I thought a lot about writing this blog entry. My experience at UCSB has been fantastic; but I certainly feel to not include the following would be an injustice to giving a truthful account of my time here.
On May 23rd, at approximately 9:30, Elliot Rodger began driving around my neighborhood and started randomly shooting at students. This is all I will say about him; I will not speculate on his mental health or personal details for fear of glorifying his name.
Instead, we should know of the people who died; Chris Martinez, Veronika Weiss, Katherine Cooper, George Chen, Weihan Wang, and Cheng Hong. I hope that these will be the names we remember.
It has been a difficult few days. Due to the nature of the tight-knit college community, the victims are only ever a few degrees of separation away. I personally knew two people who were shot, and I know many other people who knew the victims. It has been an interesting time to be a foreigner in the midst of various debates about US culture – particularly that of gun culture, the treatment of mental health patients and a culture of misogyny and sexism versus feminism. These debates are necessary; and will continue into the following weeks and months. It has also been a difficult time to be a foreign student, and the battle with homesickness was a hard one in the following 48 hours. Several memorial services have been held, and classes were cancelled for the school to have a day of reflection and mourning. The school itself has been fantastic, and has provided a huge amount of support to both students and faculty members.
When tragedy strikes it is impossible not to reflect. The past few days have certainly been a time of personal reflection. I have noticed that despite the horrors of Friday night, I keep hearing of stories that show the courage and compassion of my fellow students. These stories are small comforts. They are lights that shine in the darkness. They remind me that where there is suffering and heartbreak there is also love, and hope, and strength. The courage of the students who ran to help others demonstrates what I know to be true; where there is evil, there too will be goodness.
We will never forget what happened to the poor victims of 23/5. But I will never forget the heroes of 23/5, either. I do not regret my choice of exchange school at all. Whilst of course I wish the events of the past weekend had not happened, I have had and will continue to have a fantastic experience at UCSB. My experience has not been a constant high. It has been better. It has been wholesome. This is what you are not told about studying abroad – you will learn more about yourself just by sitting outside of your comfort zone than you could ever imagine. Change is hard, but usually good.
Lizzie.
By Elizabeth Hardy (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA).
Needless to say, the cold weather has not hit Santa Barbara. In fact, most people were celebrating when it rained this past weekend – it has been the first big rainfall I have seen in the five months I have been here.
Life here has recently been very, VERY busy. It seems Study Abroad is an opportunity to get involved in just about everything…. so that is just what I’ve been doing. Since I arrived back in January I’ve volunteered at Santa Barbara Film Festival, signed up to run my first 5K, started life drawing classes, got an internship and been getting a bit more involved with my co-operative house as the social chair.
My classes this quarter have been really interesting. Whilst my Anthropology classes at Manchester are often theoretical, there is a much larger focus here on a more practical approach to Anthropology. This means sometimes I will have a class where my professor will talk us through their fieldwork photos, or ask questions about we would like to learn about in the syllabus. This different academic system takes a lot of getting used to, but it is refreshing.
My love for the co-operative houses is growing the longer I stay in California. They are an entirely different, (and sometimes challenging) way of living, but I now cannot imagine returning to living with the average 4 or 5 people that is so common in Manchester. After learning how to share my space, chores and responsibilities with 30 other people, there will certainly be a readjustment period.
Time seems to go far quicker whilst operating on a term, and not a semester, system. My second quarter here at UCSB is nearly done and finals are once again looming. I am however looking to my holiday, the well-known ‘Spring Break’. My parents are joining me for a road trip around the main sites in California, and it will be a great opportunity to see some great landscapes, such as Big Sur, Lake Tahoe and Death Valley. Photos to follow.
That’s all for now.
By Elizabeth Hardy (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA).
Well, I seemed to have blinked and my first quarter is over and done with, wondering where on earth a third of my time in the states has gone. It’s been a while, so I’ll give a recap of what has been happening on the west coast.
Thanksgiving and Black Friday were, certainly, an experience. I was lucky enough to be invited by a friend in my house to visit her family in North California (near San Francisco) for Thanksgiving, so we took the 8 hour journey from Santa Barbara to experience the other side of California life. I found North California to be different but just as beautiful in comparison to my Southern California home, albeit a little colder! Thanksgiving itself was all-American – Turkey, potatoes and just about everything else you could imagine from a feast. With a few hours to recover from our food comas, Midnight struck. This meant one thing – time to hit the shops.
The famous San Francisco trams.
Black Friday was an experience like no other. People were running and pushing, and there was chaos. Needless to say, I loved it. If you are in America during the Thanksgiving period, this is an event not to be missed – if only for the meal we ate at Denny’s close to 4am.
Less than a week after the shopping extravaganza, it was time for finals and the fun of thanksgiving was but a dim memory. As I have mentioned academic differences before, I will not go into too much detail but there were some striking elements. For example, my experience of exams in Manchester means I am used to preparing for exams several weeks before, creating revision notes and working at a much slower pace. This means by the night before an exam I will finish studying at 6 or 7 – the attitude being “If I don’t know it by now, I never will.” The attitude of students at UCSB could not be more different. There appears to be a culture of not studying for a specific exam until a few days before, but then studying intensively or ‘cramming’, getting little sleep and learning as much as possible overnight. Of course there are exceptions to this, but there certainly is a noticeable trend. I am also not saying one way is better than the other, but it was a shock after two years of studying in a particular way at Manchester. Study leave is also a myth to American students; classes continue right up until exam time. This means you have to plan your time much better!
With finals finished and the smell of freedom in the air, it was time for celebrations and inevitably, to say goodbye (if only for a short time). Since coming back to England to spend time with loved ones, I’ve found it interesting how it is not only jetlag that has affected me. So far I have been home a week, and the adjustment period has been longer than I initially expected. This isn’t to say I haven’t missed England – baked beans and marmite have been often in my thoughts this past month. However, it’s been interesting to see the ways in which I have adapted to Californian life so quickly. I am looking forward to returning – bring back the sunshine!
Happy New Year, everyone.
By Elizabeth Hardy (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA).
Happy belated Haloween!
With midterms finally done and dusted, I guess it’s as good a time as any to tell you all about the different between the UK and US academic systems.
So, let’s start with midterms. They sort of do-what-it-says-on-the-tin. I.e., an exam halfway through each module, just to see how you’re getting on. This highlights one of the main differences I have found – that there is far more of an emphasis on continual assessment in the states than in Manchester. For example, in one class I have had 3 scheduled tests, 3 unscheduled tests, a midterm and a final. This essentially equals out to a test on the material every week – so there is no time for slacking or missing even one class! The upside of this is that there is far less weight placed on one final exam, so if you do have a bad day, then it isn’t the end of the world.
Terms at UC are quick. Unlike Manchester’s 15 week (2 semester) terms, Santa Barbara has 4 quarters (with summer quarter being like a summer school) which means that the time whizzes by. I can’t believe that I am already the first way through my first term! This means you have very little time to get used to the system – so making the most of the support system is important. The professors here have office hours too, and just like in Manchester, graduate students act as teaching assistants and are a great resource.
The final big difference I’ve noticed is the way that students consider and emphasise their subject specialisms. In the UK, if you study Maths, you are a ‘Maths person’. This means all you do is Maths. In the US, you are expected to have a far ore rounded education. This means not only that you take classes from a wider range of subjects (notably your major and minors), but also that courses themselves are more inter-disciplinary. In my example, I study Anthropology. And yet, in several courses I have had to study elements of Archaeology, Geology, Biology, Chemistry, Economics and Maths. Whilst this was initially intimidating as I haven’t studied science or Maths since GCSE level, it has served as a fantastic opportunity to remind myself I am still capable of academic endeavours outside of Anthropology.
With every challenge these changes have presented, I am learning more about myself and how Study Abroad is slowly changing me and making me a more capable, independent person. Hooray!
That’s the boring bit over – next time, I will update on all the exciting Californian things I’ve been doing recently (including Haloween and Disneyland!)
Lizzie.
