Jake Bigelow: University of Edinburgh - Scotland

My time so far in Edinburgh, Scotland, where do I begin? I suppose the best place to start is with school. I have been in class for three weeks, and I have not turned in a homework assignment yet. It is extremely different from back home. All third year engineers take the same classes for the most part. There are nine classes that the engineering students here are currently taking. Of course, if I took nine engineering classes back home I would be dying right now. Here the classes have a slower pace, and we do not meet three days a week. Sometimes classes only meet once or twice a week. I think they can go slower because they do not have to take any of the humanities electives back home. By their second year here, students are already doing things that I would be doing third year back home. Lectures are about the same as back home.

We do have tutorials though. Tutorials are an assigned time when students work on their homework and the professors are there to answer questions. I think I am really supposed to work on the homework outside of the tutorial and come to class with questions, but it does not seem to work that way. I find that my life has taken a 180-degree turn around from back home. I am used to going to the library in the evenings, but here I have time to go out in the evenings. As a matter of fact the library closes at 8:00pm here.  Also, the earliest classes start at 9:00am. Most third year students do not have class until 10:00 or 11:00am.

Anyway, I think that is enough about school. How about some of my travels?  Two weekends ago, my roommate and I took the train to Stirling, Scotland for the day. Stirling is a town 30 miles north of Edinburgh. In Stirling, I toured a castle and saw the Wallace Monument. The castle was built on top of a volcanic bluff and seemed to be a smaller version of the Edinburgh Castle. The royal people of Scotland stayed in the Stirling Castle more often because it was better protected than the one in Edinburgh. When Robert the Bruce beat the English in 1314 at Banockburn, just down the road, he destroyed most of the castle so the English could not retake it again. Years later King James rebuilt most of it.

The Wallace Monument built in the 1860's is beautiful. It was built on the same spot Wallace stood watching the English come up from the south before he defeated them at Stirling. The monument is a tower over 200 feet tall. The view from the top is unbelievable. From the top, I could see the snow capped highlands in the distance. I also saw Wallace’s sword.

Last week the Scottish history department had free guided tours of the city (Edinburgh), and I went on a few of these when I had time. I toured the royal mile in Edinburgh. It is the street that leads from the castle to the palace. There are a lot of historical facts about the buildings and things. A few were John Knox’s house and St. Giles Cathedral. The Cathedral was beautiful. I also went on a tour of the National Art Museum. At the Museum, I saw my first Van Gough, Degas, Monet, Surat, Renoir, West, and John Knox paintings. I really enjoyed the art there.

The University of Edinburgh history club also set up two trips. One was to the “highlands” and the other to the “borders”.  Both trips were quite nice. During the “borders” tour we saw the remains of three abbeys, which must have been magnificent in their time. All were built around 1500. Since they were close to the English border, they were often destroyed and rebuilt. The landscape there was awesome. There were large rolling hills with tons of sheep.

Last but not least, I have been going to the Church of Scotland just down the street form where I live. They have a holiday for Robert Burns here that is somewhat like Martin Luther King Day. It is traditional to have a Burns supper that evening, and so I went to it. The supper was fantastic! I learned some real Scottish culture there. There were about 100 Scottish people at the supper, all over 40, and one American 22 year old. Everyone was so nice to me. At the dinner we ate haggis and irn bru, read Burns poetry, listened to bag pipe and violin music, and sang Scottish songs. We ate and listened to just about everything that is truly part of Scottish culture. The following Sunday I went to church and I had people I have never seen before come up to me and ask if I enjoyed the Burns supper.

I encourage everyone to study abroad at some point in their college career. It is a chance of a lifetime to live in a different country, learn about a different culture and make friends with people from all over the world! Studying in Scotland not only let me learn about European culture, but also allowed me to see America and our culture from a different perspective.

January 29, 2002