Foreign Correspondent

As a former News Editor for The Student Life newspaper back at Pomona, I happily agreed to contribute to a new column this semester of correspondences from abroad. See, Pomona sends about 300 students (mainly third years) abroad every semester to far-flung locales--everywhere from Nepal and South Africa to, well, Edinburgh. Not having written anything since this in early August, I was a little bit rusty...and my task was to sum up my experiences here in one coherent swath. Here's what I came up with, pre-chopping block:

Edinburgh is the only city I know with buildings the same color as its sky. While it has been a little difficult for me to forego the sunshine of a Southern California Fall, the unpredictable downpours and perpetual grey of the Scottish capitol have, for me, become an integral part of the city’s charm.

The mixing of the historical and decidedly modern is shockingly pervasive here. My walk to class each morning sends me straight through the heart of old Edinburgh, a few blocks of Reformation-age cobbled streets and stone buildings interspersed with ad-plastered pubs and swanky townhomes. And, adding to my growing list of things I’ll never see in Claremont, I pass both a medieval castle and a McDonald’s anytime I need to go to the ATM.

American fast food and modern conveniences aside, there’s an odd air of history in the city that gives an added sense of importance to, well, everything. Coffee is not just coffee when you’re sitting in the same café where JK Rowling penned ‘Philosopher’s Stone.’ A weeklong freshman orientation is not just an orientation when it’s Fresher’s Week, the largest, loudest and drunkest university-sponsored party in Europe. And a university is not just a university when its alumni include Adam Smith and David Hume.

Dating all the way back to 1582, the history of the University of Edinburgh has not been lost on its marketing department. Where Pomona boasts Roy Disney ’51 and Bill Keller ’70, the University of Edinburgh’s list of noted alumni is a who’s who of really smart people with names like Alexander Graham Bell, Darwin and Robert Louis Stevenson. It’s a list, I’m guessing, of people that matriculating students are supposed to think they might end up like if they study here.

Truth is, with the hands-off academic policy on assigning and evaluating work, I’m impressed that they were motivated to get as much work done as they did. Unlike the American system of required reading and regular assignments, the Scots take a laissez faire approach to education. Reading lists tend to be three times as long as they are in the States, encouraging you not to read more, but to choose what interests you. It’s a system of self-guided education that students here find liberating, and I am still adjusting to. In addition, class sizes at the University of Edinburgh are, by liberal arts standards, jarring. Two of my classes have upwards of 250 students, filling all seats in their Little Bridges-sized lecture halls that take 15 minutes for everyone to shuffle in and out of. It’s education en masse.

Despite the sheer scale of the institution, however, there is plenty chance for person-to-person interaction. Navigating the long queues (that’s Brit-speak for lines) and the University’s fumbling bureaucracy with new Scottish friends has been one of the greatest parts of the experience, not to mention the time spent picking up on Glaswegian slang and the subtleties of discount cider with the flatmates.

In a university of 24,000 students, it’s easy to feel like a number (mine is s0895928). And while sitting in on 300 person philosophy lectures and partying with 2,000-Freshers is still slightly disconcerting, I’m beginning to feel like I am taking part in something big. It’s oddly rewarding to know that, just by being here, I am playing some role in the University’s history. And if not, at least the haggis, Strongbow and IRN BRU are tasty.