If you have long had aspirations to be a college athlete or if you like eating at dining halls where employees grab food from your plate, then my study abroad program would have been perfect for you.
As soon as I arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the start of Winter Quarter, I reached the conclusion that part of the fun of studying abroad would be determining how my new home compares to my old one. The result of that exercise is the following analysis of the differences between the University of Edinburgh and Northwestern. At the end, you may be left wanting to sing the Cats’ fight song – or requesting a transfer application.
If you are like me, you spent hours as a kid shooting hoops in your backyard, hoping that your hard work would result in an athletic scholarship at a Division-I school. Despite not being good enough to make our high school basketball teams, my friends and I soon found ourselves practicing with Edinburgh’s varsity basketball team. Sure, the team was no better than your below-average U.S. high school squad, but don’t tell that to my Rec-Spec-wearing friend we nicknamed “Rudy.”
And you can cry about SodexhoUSA’s food all year, but at least you can eat as much as you want when you are in the dining hall. Not so at Pollock Halls.
Under the “point system” in the Edinburgh dining hall, each item of food has a point value. Several dining hall employees – or gestapos as we preferred to call them – count the points on students’ plates as they walk to the seating area. If a student has more than six points, a gestapo removes items of food from the tray. Can you imagine Allison Hall’s Seymour snatching an orange off a student’s tray? Neither can I.
But considering I often plan my days around what time I eat, I was not about to follow the rules. Stocking my jacket pockets with fruit, adding or removing clothing so I could re-enter the dining hall (no swipe system, baby!) and eating food while waiting in line allowed me to post double-digits. One night, I scored a Wilt Chamberlain-esque 16 points.
Having just six hours of class a week, on Monday and Tuesday only ensured that I would be spending a maximum amount of time traveling and minimum hanging with the gestapo. Even better, with my work for each class consisting of just one or two out-of-class papers and no exams, every week was like Reading Week. Heck, even “finals week” was no more strenuous than New Student Week. The closest thing I had to a midterm was a non-graded presentation.
Of course, not everything with the university went smoothly. At the term’s start, a delay in my matriculation process forced me to sneak past the security monitor just to gain access to the computer lab. As of the term’s final week, the records still showed my name as Jolian, not Joseph. And the university’s Internet service blocked some of the most desirable computer programs (i.e. AOL Instant Messenger) you would ever want to use.
Upon returning to NU, I have one final thought: If the best of both schools could somehow be combined, what a great university it would be.
