Life in the Kingdom

The mean of transport that I have finally used to get to the Kingdom was coach. (I prefer to use Kingdom instead of England, as it has the connotation of here ever present monarchy and conservatism, thanks to which Great Britain has been able to keep its traditionalism and distance from the continental Europe). In the moment of buying plane tickets their cost was three times higher than the cost of bus tickets, which was the reason why I chose to spend thirty hours by travelling (eighteen to London, four on Victoria Coach Station, five to Exeter and three in a traffic jam just between Exeter). There was a direction sign on the Exeter bus station, saying that the University is twelve minutes from the station and so I decided to get there afoot. After an hour of wandering about the city and campus I finally managed to find the halls with the cacophonic name Lafrowda. I have been warned that their outlook resembles to the one of prison, so I didn’t get startled by non-plastered brick walls and surface-led electro installations and I unpacked my suitcases and I introduced myself to the eleven of my British flatmates, with whom I share kitchen and bathrooms. Thanks to the fact that I am self-catered, I keep learning new things about British cuisine every day. What I found recently is that you can put almost anything, including sausages, raisins and eggs into the famous pudding.

Fresher’s Week facilitated the process of getting to know each other and the overall socialization, even though in a quite wild manner at times. It introduced to us the wide spectrum of activities, sports and volunteering offered by the University, Student’s Guild or local community. I have subscribed myself to six societies. I spend part of my time with the Debate Society, which is one of the oldest and most prestigious ones on the campus. Except for the debate training and tournaments with other UK universities it offers fantastic show debates, where there are significant personas discussing on various topics with the student audience voting about who persuaded them on whichever side of the motion. The motion of this week is: “This House Believes Feminism Has Gone Too Far”. What attracts the numerous spectators isn’t the topics itself, but the clash of interested personalities, which are not afraid to defend their positions. A feminist author and local entrepreneur will encounter philosophy professor and the representative of the holy church.

Outside of the debating society I also meet the West Slavic society once a time (meeting forum for Czech, Slovak and Polish people). Then I cooperate with two volunteering societies and with a trekking and expedition society. I have already had the opportunity to get involved in the local community during weekends. First, we were cleaning a clogged stream and then we built many bird houses, which will accommodate local songbirds.

Thanks to the trekking society I have met a few great friends, who have a similar passion in afoot discovery of terrain as I do. Every weekend we make walks on the coast, where we are fascinated by the sea, seagulls and the climate conditions.

Indeed, the famous British weather is a chapter for itself. It is commonly known, that it rains all the time, however this is not completely true in the South of England. It doesn’t rain at all times, there’s just the possibility that it can start to rain anytime. Precipitation can occur immediately and it is no exception that it rains heavily and shines at the same time. It happens frequently that you set off to a lecture in a sunny weather, than you catch a downpour on your way and by the time you reach lecture theatre, it shines again. The weather changes at all times, as illustrated by the below attached photography. The average temperature during the last four weeks was comparable to the temperature in Prague (around 14 degrees Celsius), thus I cannot complain about cold. Moreover, now when it started to snow in Czech Republic, the warm temperatures remain in here. In spite of all expectations, it is also quite warm inside as well.

Fortunately this is the year when the massive construction work has ended on campus after three years. We, the freshers can enjoy can enjoy state of the art buildings instead of noise, closed pathways and construction machines. The main showpiece is the monumental Forum building, which connects the library with the Student’s Guild building and which offers the meeting space, where there is the centre of all happening.

 The University invests millions of pounds not only into new buildings, but also to various support programmes, like the systematic development of employability of students, language courses or cooperation with foreign universities. Thanks to high academic standard, student satisfaction and investments into future development, the University was awarded the title of the University of the Year by the British newspaper Sunday Times, which publishes university rankings every year.

I cannot compare with other universities, but my impressions from Exeter are more than good so far. Except for the atmosphere of British campuses, which can hardly be described with words (red bricks buildings, tree parks with squirrels, lakes, freakish professors) I really like the variety of nations represented at the University (in the Business School there is roughly one third of home students and the rest is composed of all imaginable nations), then the possibility of spending a year abroad and finally the width of study. As part of the Economics and Politics degree I study the history of economics, mathematics for economists, statistics, the system of British government, the study about democracy, discipline concerned with the problems and challenges of the twenty first century and of course theoretic economics. I have around 14 lessons weekly and about a third of this is tutorials, where we discuss the concrete aspects of study. These lessons in small groups remain me of Open Gate lessons much more than the huge lectures with hundreds of students, even though there are often discussions in them as well. My goal for the first semester is to get to know the system of teaching and evaluation, so that I can achieve the same results as I did in the IB.