This post is part of The Writer's International Culture Share, where writers share their experience of world cultures. Emily Mah Tippetts discusses life at the United World College of the Atlantic, an international school in Wales.
The United World College of the Atlantic
I was seventeen when I left my home in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and went to live in south Wales to attend the United World College of the Atlantic.
There are now about a dozen United World Colleges around the world.
Atlantic College, as we called it, is the founding campus. It was also
one of the first schools to adopt the International Baccalaureate
program. The term “College” is here meant in the British sense and
refers to the last two years of high school.
The
school had: 1) A medieval castle as its main building, 2) about 350
students from over 80 countries, and 3) an international staff of
teachers who were devoted to the school’s goal of promoting world peace
through personal connections. My first year I had roommates from
England, Egypt, and Romania, and my second year they were from
Uzbekistan, Kenya, and Italy. As students we had little in the way of
personal space or possessions, and this was by design. We could decorate
or own little corner of our room, and had one closet sized locker and a
cubby in the communal bathroom. Even the showers were communal.
The
idea, I believe, was to take us all out of our comfort zone so that we
would rely on each other emotionally and socially, and to a large extent
this worked. The student body ran the gamut from the hyper-religious to
the militantly secular, from the strictest conservatives to the most
flamboyant liberals, though given the mission and aim of the school,
most of us were left of center. It also provided a top class education,
so when Oxford and Cambridge interviewed prospective students, there was
a large contingent of us there. Many private school educated Brits
looked askance at this boarding school that churned out people with
their jeans torn and their hair dyed with henna.
On
top of the usual strains of living in close quarters with each other,
we had to work closely with one another as well. All of us were required
to do some kind of service, and of the several options, I chose to work
on the farm. This means that while I had a full academic courseload, I
also learned to drive a tractor and birth lambs, and yes, I had to get
up in the middle of the night to serve my watches during lambing season.
You haven’t lived until you’ve been up at three a.m. with someone
swearing at you in Spanish because you’re having trouble turning a lamb
so that it can be born, or had a Mandarin girl write in your yearbook
that the time you yelled and screamed at her to tear the amniotic sac
before the lamb suffocated, then wrote on the board that she had been a
hero was one of the highlights of her year.
While
many have asked me how we all found a common ground in this
environment, I think it’d be misleading to say that we did. Our social
circles were diverse and overlapping, but learning to cope with other
cultures was something we had to do one on one. Everything from what
distance on approach it was appropriate to look up and nod a greeting to
how to express annoyance without causing offense was an ongoing project
for all of us. There was never a day when I felt I had it all learned,
and I don’t think anyone did.
The
culture clashes could happen within a culture as easily as they
occurred between the cultures. I know all six of us from the United
States wished at times that we could disown each other. A person from
the Pacific Northwest might find themselves more comfortable with the
Canadians, and the Mexican students and I shared a lot of food and
celebrated Cinco de Mayo together.
Did
we come out of the experience equipped to spread world peace? In some
ways, but I also feel an odd kinship with people I see on reality tv
shows like Survivor. At times we were stretched to our utmost and we had
to find a way to work it out. We weren’t allowed to vote each other out
of the school, though sadly, some students elected not to stay.
Sometimes it was because of inter-student politics, but it could be real
world politics as well.
Together
we saw South Africa have their first free elections, and on that day
our South African economics teacher, decided to tell us about his past.
As it turned out, he had been on Robben Island, in work camps, and
eventually was exiled. People had spread rumors about him for years, but
that was the day he confirmed them, and then got up and resumed the
economics lesson. Together we saw NAFTA signed, and then the Mexican
peso crash. We saw South America begin to conquer hyper-inflation. I’ll
never forget the time my Argentinian friend returned from break in
tears, because for the first time the money she had in her wallet when
she arrived at home could still buy something. We saw the Eurozone
progress as people planned their futures with fewer thoughts about
borders than their parents had. We saw the tiger economies roar and were
the first generation of students to have email addresses.
We
learned how to recognize a language from how someone answered the
phone, which was necessary in a house of 50 students, 40 nationalities,
and one pay phone. The person at the other end was likely paying through
the nose for the call (there was no Skype back then), so one would
often hear the desperate shout of, “I need an ___
speaker!” We learned what rude gestures insulted which culture groups,
and who would want a kiss on the cheek in greeting, and whether it would
be one or two.
We
learned to recognize national flags at a glance, and would fight over
what cultural activities we should be allowed to have as privileges. We
Americans always wanted to watch the Academy Awards after curfew, but
the school said no. They let us have the Super Bowl instead, even though
several of us didn’t know the rules to American football. The student
body demanded an American prom from us, even though we were the types
who’d ditch our own proms back home. Every year we’d reluctantly meet
up, come up with a theme and decorations budget and give them a prom. A
prom where alcohol was served and no one had a dress that cost more than
$30.00.
People
often ask what was the most difficult part of the experience. It wasn’t
the racial insults or heated cultural disputes. It wasn’t the times
when global politics split open rifts between roommates and best
friends. It wasn’t the heartbreaks or the traumas we inflicted on each
other as adolescents. The hardest part, for me, was saying goodbye at
the end of two years. Even though the rise of the internet, Facebook,
and Skype have made much of the world a global village, there were some
of us from corners of the world so remote that I will never cross paths
with them again. The hardest part of the two years, was that for some of
these friendships, it was the only two years we’ll ever have.
Emily Mah Tippetts currently lives in London, England.
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