Sleep the Clock Around

It’s strange to finally have arrived here in St. Andrews­—strange not only in that my arrival had been delayed for so long that it seems surreal, but also in that it has been a slowly unfolding process. I imagined that I’d arrive off the airplane and find myself, immediately, in a nexus of student activity—it was certainly what I’d hoped for after a winter break that I would describe as somnolent. I foresaw first-night-of-school parties attended by the entire student body, days spent buying course books and coffees and discussing Hume, and Prince William and Kate Middleton joining me for a Guinness at the conclusion of a busy day. I’d be able to travel to all the cities of Europe, even the more obscure ones.

Notions that I’d plunge immediately into student life, or travel ever again, vanished by the time I arrived at my dorm by taxi, after two buses, two trains, and two flights—the conclusion of a flurry of activity that began the day before in Boston. All I really wanted was dinner and a three-day nap. After unpacking my suitcases and realizing I hadn’t smuggled in any steaks between my sweaters, though, I decided to walk into town for dinner.

The walk is lovely­­—no Duane Reade assaults the eye on the approximately 15-minute stroll down Hepburn Gardens and the charmingly named Doubledykes Road. One sees rabbits playing in mowed fields. The walk has become a daily ritual, undertaken whenever I want to go somewhere other than my dorm room. But the peak was on that first night, so fixed was I on obtaining food not prepared by American Airlines. I had a burger and a pint in the corner of a little pub as I read Evelyn Waugh. Everyone there seemed very student-esque—they played pool and loudly joked about Rihanna’s haircut. I didn’t feel much like a student yet, and I felt my apartness keenly in my gauche, broad American accent and in my uncertainty over whether or not to tip. The walk home seemed longer than it had been on the way there. As I headed back, I started to think about where in continental Europe I wanted to travel over breaks: The array of choices suddenly seemed paralyzing.

I hadn’t only been stymied by decisions about travel. My first few days­—having arrived before orientation, class registration, and British students returning to classes—were complicated by my fixation on sleeping habits. Am I sleeping enough? Am I jet-lagged? Will I become more so? What if I have an early class—how will I make it into town in time if I oversleep? I am happy to report that I have no truly “early” classes, and only three days of classes per week. The fact that I got into the classes I wanted is especially notable as I overslept and missed my in-person registration appointment, and then had to wait in the longest queue I’d seen since customs at Heathrow Airport.

In my first few nights here, I tried to force myself to stay awake until a reasonably late local time. To fill the hours—Evelyn Waugh was beginning to lose his luster and a Bill Bryson book on European travel seemed somehow too real—I decided to go to a movie. The only film at the small cinema that I hadn’t seen was the wartime romance mélange Australia, which had done disastrously in America. Even as a Nicole Kidman fan, I concede that it was not good, and hardly plausible at that: Kidman plays a British aristocrat who finds herself suddenly at home rustling cattle in the Outback. Still, as I looked at the near-sellout crowd laughing at every joke Kidman made, I began to think that there was a chance I’d end up finding a place for myself in this country.

Little adventures like this one have made up the bulk of my time so far at St. Andrews. I’m still somewhat in suspended animation—I thrive on routine, and I hope to establish new routines now that I know some of the notable places in town besides the student union and the movie theater. Without any coursework to give my day structure, though, I often find myself craving a mid-afternoon nap, something I’d rarely indulged in while infinitely busier in New York. Perhaps, one week into my travels in Europe, my body’s still adjusting.

The trick is, I suppose, to not take that long walk back to my dorm until the day’s adventures are over, but to wander and discover more. For all I hope to see in continental Europe, I may as well start by mastering the town in which I now live—its restaurants, its stone archways, its coastline. “Take a walk in the park / take a Valium pill,” advises the Scottish band Belle & Sebastian in their song “Sleep the Clock Around,” which I used to play in New York while thinking sentimental thoughts. The latter prescription might help me normalize my sleep schedule, or at least assuage my anxieties. Still, the former shall have to do to help me make sense of my days now that my clock has—painstakingly but finally—been reset.

Daniel D’Addario is a Columbia College junior majoring in American Studies. He is spending the semester at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The State I Am In runs alternate Fridays. Opinion@columbiaspectator.com">Opinion@columbiaspectator.com