Self-Realization While Settling Into “Old” York

As I sit here in my comfortable single at the University of York, trying to meet my Spec deadline while simultaneously watching 30 Rock online and scooping cookie dough ice cream straight from the carton, it’s as if I never left 114th Street. But then I realize there’s no Strokos downstairs, that I can’t go to the library because it closed hours ago, and that there’s no one to go out with on this Saturday night, since the weekends around here are for locals, and students stay in. So far, I can’t tell if ultimately the similarities or differences like these are going to be the more meaningful aspects of this study abroad venture.

Unlike many study abroad programs, mine doesn’t come with a welcome party or a group of fellow Americans looking for a cultural exchange. I am simply here as another student, taking the same classes and living in the same dorms as everyone else. This format had more appeal than the others—if I was going to go somewhere different, I didn’t want to be sectioned off from the locals most of the time, even if it meant not going to Spain or South Africa, like some of my friends did. Of course, that also meant, as one of my friends from NYU who went to Prague for a semester last year predicted: “It will be interesting, since you won’t be with 8 million people who just want to get drunk in a new city every weekend.”

So I’ve made some friends—closer to eight than 8 million, but I’m getting there. The town of York is seven minutes away, and has a beautiful walled city center with pedestrian-only zones, plenty of pubs, and one movie theater that only just started showing Juno. I can’t really complain—except for the fact that I have yet to start on that more adventurous path one is supposed to go down on as a foreign exchange student. Of course, at first I planned on all the exciting activities like taking weekend trips to London and living the nightlife dream of an 18+ bar and nightclub policy. But that was before I factored in the ghastly exchange rate and the fact that going on out weeknights here involves then having to wake up the next morning and go to class—two very discomforting, albeit British, dampers on my adventures.

Exchange rates and party planning aside, though, life here is not so different. And perhaps I’ve learned more about myself than about the British people, spending most of my day alone, trying to figure out ways to fill in the time between my one class a day and sleep.

It’s too early to know whether or not I will end up glad I came, even if I didn’t have the cliché EuroTrip spring. What I do know is that on a calm campus with a large duck pond in the middle and a library that closes like normal places do, clarity of mind isn’t as hard to come by as in a city where quiet is a fantasy—and I’m loving that. Don’t get me wrong—I love me a loud city. But even if I wasn’t quite sure when I picked this place, I know now that I came in search for that stillness, a stillness I could only realistically deal with for six months, tops.

Even though I keep waiting for something to happen à la “this is the first day of the rest of my life,” I realize I should probably stop waiting and go find it myself. And while this term is more than halfway done, I can’t help but feel like I’ve made some worthwhile breakthroughs, and that my experience isn’t too far away from a true beginning.

The author is Columbia College junior majoring in political science. This semester she is studying at the University of York.