Rolling into second semester

The first semester is all over here in St Andrews, and we are rolling into semester two. As I look back at my first five months here, I have to say I don’t regret a single moment. I met a great bunch of people from all over the world – and “from all over the world” is not just a talking point for the university – it’s a simple fact.

In my program alone, more than 60% of the students are international, most of them from the US (it’s almost a rule that Americans study international relations here), and from Germany, France, Sweden, Norway and China. Such an international community is a great advantage because you get to know experience and opinions that are totally foreign to you. I confirmed it this past weekend when I helped organize a student conference entitled “One Year Later: the Arab Spring Revisited” where we managed to invite students who personally participated in last year’s protests at Tahrir Square and were able to compare the current situation in Egypt with one year ago. This was a huge experience for me: a) It was the first time that I had organized such an event here at the university; b) listening to how their view of the entire situation was dramatically different from the viewpoint of most western media was impressive for me as an international relations student.

This was a very successful semester for me, and it confirmed to me that studying international relations was the right move. It was my most interesting subject in the past semester, and one that provoked the most thoughts about the contemporary world. To my pleasant surprise, my grades for the first semester were quite good, though there’s still room for improvement. For the second semester, I took political philosophy instead of management so now i will study international relations (international politics analysis), economics (macroeconomics), and philosophy (political philosophy).

I also continue playing one of the local university sports – lifesaving – this semester, and we are hosting a competition for other British teams here at St Andrews. This will be my first contest in almost three months, so we’ll see how I do. This semester, I will also take the first of the first aid tests for lifesavers, and we are preparing for it regularly in our practice sessions.

As I promised previously, I will mention some traditions that we have here at the university. One of the most interesting customs is ‘academic parenthood’: older students (third year mostly) adopt first year students at the start of the first year and help them to get around here at St Andrews. Towards the end of November, there is an event called the Raisin Weekend where first year students and their ‘academic siblings’ initially have a tea party at their academic mom’s, then go to their academic dad’s party, and the party peaks on Monday morning with a foam battle between all of the first year students in one of the oldest university courtyards. To get an idea, enter “Raisin Weekend” in Google.

St Andrews has a great and inspiring atmosphere to it, and I am thankful to The Kellner Family Foundation for enabling me to study here!