Cold North Sea

My second semester is successfully over (I even made it to the prestigious Dean’s List of Academic Excellence, a really great start for a first-year student), and I can say that I am no longer a “fresher”. I want to pass my experience that I gathered this year (and there’s quite a lot) on other students, which is why I will volunteer in September, helping new first year students to get around at our university.

The entire semester was about escalating workload, especially in international relations. But I am immensely happy to be studying international relations right here in St Andrews because they say this is one of the best international relations schools in Europe. There are many guest professors from Ivy League schools; in fact, the head of our university is the former head of the Harvard University’s Institute of Politics and one of the leading experts on terrorism. She was also one of the Pentagon’s main academic consultants during the evaluation of the aftermath of the attack on the Twin Towers. Interestingly, she and her colleagues agreed that the US should not have invaded Iraq, as the project was totally counterproductive. We spent half of the semester discussing case studies and the factors that influence politicians’ decisions in international politics, so it was very interesting to hear the accounts of such decisions firsthand.

Other intriguing lectures included one given by Ma Jian, a Chinese writer and dissident living in London who saw firsthand the protests (and their suppression) at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. You don’t get many opportunities to talk to someone like him, and I’m happy that he came to our university. China has always fascinated me, and I’d love to get to know its culture and worldview closer, and not just due to its increasingly important international role.

In March, I qualified for and participated in the national university lifesaving championship in Bath. I didn’t win a major prize, but the experience was great and I hope to follow up on it successfully next year. I will work as our club’s treasurer, keeping accounts (and storing tons of invoices) as well as searching for sponsors, starting in September. I will be one of the club’s most important people, since we cannot go to any competitions without sponsors. I hope to be successful in fundraising and to collect enough to get our team to the international lifesaving competition in Brno and show my schoolmates my beautiful country. As a team member, I also helped out as a lifeguard during one of the university’s traditional events, the May Dip, where students run into the sea at daybreak on May 1 in memory of a student who saved four sailors from a wrecked ship near the St Andrews coast 200 years ago, and then died a year later due to complications from hypothermia (it is the North Sea after all). It was an unforgettable event with a great atmosphere, and it made you realize why you don’t want to mess with the Scottish sea!