Integration

I was having a girls night in today and I jokingly said to my friend Rhiannon when she mentioned tortilla chips, "Don't you mean tortilla crisps?" when my American friend Juliana looked at me aghast and told me I wasn't going to survive in America for very long.

When I get to America I'm going to supress my (not so inner) English pedant and call things by their American name in order to better fit in with the natives. Chips and trousers will be suppressed in my vocabulary in favour of fries and pants, unless of course the occasion arises in which I feel it would be favourable to exagerate my Englishness and I suddenly develop a very posh southern English accent and start usng words such as "loo" and "petrol", or go entirely the other way and start talking in slang just to watch their confused faces as I talk about being "arse over tit" and going on a "bender". I must admit that when I think of English slang that will confuddle Americans the first things I think of aren't particularly polite...

On a slightly more serious note I do look at my time there as anthropological research into the American student culture, I fully intend to do my best to integrate, becoming as American as I can be, whilst not losing my personality. It strikes me that a lot of the international students at my University group together, that they experience minimal cultural exchange. I may well be wrong, but that it was I notice and will strive to avoid. There is another girl from my University going to Santa Barbara and I know her from a seminar group, I hope that she will not try and cling to me at first due to our previous acquaintence. It is a big change moving to another country and the integration will certainly be cushioned by surrounding oneself with people from a similar culture in a similar circumstance, and it is very tempting to hang around people in the same situation, but if I wanted to hang around with English people then I would be staying in England. I want to be pushed out of my comfort zone and if that means espousing contact with fellow Britains then so be it.

The exchange programme organises a few days of integration workshops for international students in an attempt to make the settling in process easier, but this has the side effect of forcing the international students together before they have had much chance to form bounds with American students. Although early friendships often do not last the common experience may create strong bonds. I was talking to an Australian student about this the other day and she concurred that this is what happens, in fact it happened to her and she made a really good friend out of it, but I need to remember that that is not what I am going to America for.

The first few weeks will be particularly hard, full of forming friendships and acclimatising to American life. I am going to really miss my friends, I have made some really good friends at University (you know who you are) and I will bitterly miss our cups of tea and chats. The more I think about this time the more scared I become.

UC class scheduling confusion

I've just recieved an email from the exchange programme today, the email itself was not too confusing, and yet the websites it told you to read were. I think they deliberately make them exceptionally complicated just to confuse international students, I swear that coming to an English university was not nearly this complicated. They have a schedule of classes to read to help with working out a timetable, but I cannot make head nor tail of it. For a start there are 132 pages, which is enough to frighten anyone. It begins with a complex calender that begins in Febuary of this year, it is very hard to know exactly what bits apply to me and sections that seem to contradict each other (registering for classes between July and August, and another one that says May) and confusing terminology about "Pass"es (and that does not mean passing an exam). I think I can ignore it all for the moment, but I'm dreading the moment that is no longer the case.

The general amount of information that I have been given is overwhelming, it would take me a ridiculous length of time to read it all and I could never remember it all, particularly when I am meant to be revising (meant being the operative word, haven't done any today). I hope this is all cleared up when I get there. I'm culturally confused already, what will it be like living there?

Preparations

When I came to University I knew I was setting out on a new stage in my life, it felt like an adventure even moving 200 miles away from home, going "up north" and now here I am going several thousand miles away from home to attend University. I wasn't even aware that we could study abroad when I first arrived at University, I was sitting in a lecture a few weeks into the year when the lecturer announced that we have the option to study abroad and told us about a meeting to discuss it, I dutifully wrote down the time and date and almost forgot about it. I somehow remembered about the meeting and turned up, not believing that I would really do anything about it. The meeting made it sound like a big adventure, and I knew I had to apply. I was slightly disappointed to discover that my department only did exchanges in America, somewhere that I had never had the slightest inclination to go to, but I thought I'd try for it anyway. I went home and looked online at the two Universities I could go to, Colorado and Santa Barbara. Colorado was my first choice, something told me that I didn't want to go to Santa Barbara, the girls were just too gorgeous and their teeth would be too white. So I went to see my department and discovered that unless I changed my major I could only go to Santa Barbara, so I applied to go to UCSB. My application was very last minute, I literally handed it in on the last day and never thought I'd get in, I forgot all about it till I received an email from the Study Abroad Advisor at my University.

When I got told I had got a place, I was astounded and really very scared because I knew that it was for real, there was no way I'd let myself get out of it now, to miss this opportunity would be stupid. I went along to a meeting with the Study Abroad Advisor and the others who had got in, there were 6 of us, out of the 120 who had applied! Goodness knows how I got in, some of them chose this University just so they could go abroad and had had their hearts set on California. I felt like a fraud, but the more I thought about it the more excited I became and the more I actually wanted to go.

The application process for the University of California is strange to say the least. You first apply to your University and once accepted by them you apply to California. There are 9 campuses in California and you have to choose 3 of them to apply to and hope you end up where you want to. At first I wanted to apply to Berkeley due to the prestige, but then I realised it would probably be as hideously competitive and arrogant as Oxbridge, also the course was rubbish. Santa Barbara is amazing, the course choice is just fantastic and it has a great link with my home department, it also a world class department. So Santa Barbara was my first choice, Davis became my second and Berkley my third. If I hadn't have got into Santa Barbara I would probably have cried, the more I found out about it the more I really wanted to go. It took months to find out where I was going (about 2 weeks ago) and when I finally found out I had got into Santa Barbara I was dancing around my room, I was just so pleased.

Since then I have been trying to get myself prepared, I've found myself a roommate (I have to have a roommate! I haven't shared a room since I was 7!) for the first semester and booked myself plane tickets. Its finally becoming real, people keep asking me if I'm scared yet, but it doesn't seem quite close enough yet. But I sure will be scared just before I leave.