Keeping in touch with former St Andreans: the Leibster Award

It has been nine months since we graduated from St Andrews (not that I'm counting!) and, as predicted, it has been a bumpy, if very exciting, transition for all of us. Sophie is a fabulous St Andrews friend, who is doing great things this year: her blog, HANS AND PETER, is food for the imagination and never fails to make me giggle. Recently, she nominated some of her blogger friends for a Leibster Award, so here I am. Thank you Sophie, I feel very flattered! These are the rules:

1) Thank the person who nominated you and link to their blog.

2) Answer their 10 questions.

3) Nominate your blogger friends and give them your own 10 questions

And here are the answers to Sophie's questions…!

1. What is your earliest memory?

I think it must be the time I got told off by my mum for doodling on our kitchen wall: I probably was about two or three, and I remember I loved spending time playing under the table in the kitchen. First time parents always learn things the hard way, I guess: don't give crayons to a toddler who likes to play in a house with white walls!

2. If you could live in any period and place in the world, where and when would it be? You’d be the same person and your family, opportunities etc. would be generally the same too.

That would be New York in the 1920s. Dancing the night away to jazz, short haircuts and hanging out with Dorothy Parker? Yes please!

3. What would your last meal be?

The flavour of extra virgin olive oil and grated parmesan cheese, and warm milk mixed with honey, are primordial to me; my last meal would have to include those ingredients. 

4. What's your favourite book?

What a difficult question! There are many books that have left an impression on me. Love in the times of cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez, is definitely one of the best ones I've ever read. I love The Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino, and If this is a man,  by Primo Levi. Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto, and Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami, are also wonderful. The Diary of Anne Frank was a childhood favourite. But who knows, I probably haven't read my favourite book yet!

5. Name eight people, dead or alive, fictional or real, who you’d invite to your ultimate dinner party.

Janis Joplin, Sofia Coppola, Ryszard Kapuściński, Charles Bukowski, Tina Modotti, Zooey Deschanel (yes, guilty), Oscar Wilde and Rosalind from Shakespeare's As You Like It. Planning the seating chart would certainly be a hoot! 

6. What is a law, custom, common assumption or norm you would change: why and how? 

What a way to put us on the spot, Sophie! This is a very difficult question. Something I've been thinking about lately, and discussing with my friends, is that there is no 'silver bullet' that can solve the world's problems; should we tackle environmental issues? Poverty? Ignorance? Abolish capitalism? Are all these not interrelated and mutually constitutive in any case? My opinion is that at the root cause of most of today's problems is corruption, and if there were a way to get rid of it there would be less suffering across nations. But how to do this? It would be wonderful if someone could come up with an answer to this question.

7. Describe your perfect day.

It has to be sunny and warm, warm enough to sit on the grass and for the grass to be dry. There has to be food, friends, good music and no concern for the passing of time.

8. What is something you have learned in the past year? (It can be a skill or specific interesting fact, but general realisations about yourself or the world are more fascinating).

I think something I've been learning all my life, but has become very clear to me since this summer, is that one thing we all seem to really want is to be listened to. It is so surprising that I should have met several people who tell me they like that I listen to them attentively (and in all fairness, I have been very surprised when someone repeats something to me that I had told them in passing or long before--"Wow, you remember me saying that?"). Listening to each other should be the norm, and yet it seems we hardly do it. Maybe that is why it is so common for some people to speak over each other--we are all trying to get heard. If it is such a simple thing to do, and if it makes others happy, why not practice listening to each other as much as we can? 

9. Name three qualities you most admire and three you most despise in a person.

Three qualities I admire: 1) generosity, 2) creativity, 3) enthusiasm. Three qualities I dislike: 1) selfishness, 2) negativity, 3) arrogance. 

10. Which three places do you most want to go in the world?

Bhutan, Japan, Morocco.

11. When do you feel most like yourself?

When I am laughing.

12. Name a skill/ ability you have and wish you didn’t, and one you don’t have and wish you did. And, one you do have and do enjoy or value, just to end things on a positive note! 

This is not an ability, but I definitely wish I was less clumsy and scatterbrained! I wish I could sing. And I am glad I am able to read quickly--this has certainly come in handy while doing a masters!

And here are my questions…

1. What do you remember about your first kiss?

2. What childhood game did you like the most, and do you think kids these days would still play it?

3. Where is your favourite bookstore?

4. What current affairs issue do you think everyone should be familiar with today?

5. How do you distract yourself when you’re travelling on your own?

6. Do you prefer homemade or restaurant food?

7. What is your favourite season?

8. Where is the most beautiful beach you have been to? Which beach destination is still on your ‘to do’ list?

9. Which writer(s) has inspired you the most?
10. Think of a moment in your life in which you felt particularly uncertain. What advice would you give your past self?

The End

How does one get over St Andrews? Is there a way to go on the rebound from a place? If you have any insight on this matter, please let me know. I am finding it hard to verbalise what these four years of university have meant, and even more so to realise and put into words what this final week has been about.

Let's begin with the graduation ceremony: no one knew what to expect, and it is probably one of the only moments during my time at St Andrews in which I did not have to think at all. Everyone ushered us around inside Younger Hall, dressed us up, seated us, gave us signals. Easy peasy. Sort of. For me, the experience was a fine balance between contradictory emotional and bodily reactions. The incredible need to wee and the thirst; hunger and intestinal blockage; hot flashes and shivers; laughing fits and tears. I managed not to trip on the stage, and that is already something to be very grateful for.

The garden party, with the very thought-through purple pastry: all graduands this year are wearing purple on their lips, did you know? Parents meeting other parents who thank each other for the very deep friendships their sons and daughters have established, telling each other just how important these relationships are to their offspring. The sons and daughters look at each other in a conspiratorial,  "If they only knew," way.

Meeting friends after their ceremonies, ALL those photos, endless meals and alcohol bottles...this week has definitely not been good for anyone's diet or liver. The lack of sleep, the anticipation for parents to leave and gradball to happen...

And then graball, the most awkward way to say goodbye to friends: a massive marquee where, inevitably, we couldn't really find each other, but where we kept bumping into the people you kind of know by sight but have never been introduced to. The free ice cream was a bonus. They could have spared us the ice sculptures.

Saying goodbye was just another strange element of this, already, surreal week. Friends are part of who we've become during our time in St Andrews and splitting up feels a bit like splitting ourselves up, too. Learning how to keep on growing without them will be somewhat like learning how to ride a bike without the little wheels behind. Not knowing when we'll see each other again is nerve wrecking. To preserve the integrity of my keyboard, I will not dwell on this subject further: once the tears begin it's hard to stop them.

A great friend told me today that he never took adults seriously when they said time flies when you're young, but that he now has to give them credit for this platitude after these fours years. What we've accomplished here is no little feat, and the motivation to do well from now on will just keep growing, I think. Knowing parts of me are currently flying off to many different areas of the world also increases my enthusiasm, and so does the prospect of taking little bits of everyone with me. 

I cannot put into a few words what the end means, and what my time here has been like; using a degree name and classification seem to be pretty popular ways of summarising this. For now, I can only say I have come to a deeper understanding of what the words 'gratitude', 'pride' and 'worthiness' mean. So I guess this is what I got taught at University.

Thanks St Andrews, thanks friends. Time flies when you're young, so I'll see you again. Soon.

Coming Back (and Leaving)

I am one of those people that needs to be away from a place in order to appreciate it. That's what happened to me with Mexico, and what is happening to me with St Andrews. Finally, two days before coming back, after almost two months of being away, I began to feel the need to return to the bubble.

Coming back is always a hassle--as is leaving, of course. All those flight connections, buses and trains or taxis. We begin to wonder if it is really worth coming all the way here to study, after all. Then we take that last turn on the motorway...behind a backdrop of grey waves and golf courses, St Andrews greets its returning travellers; once again, a weight lifts from our tired shoulders. This town is a home, after all.

I've been back for just a few hours, and already I have: spoken to a classmate on the train, saw three people I know on the way to my flat, shouted at a friend from my window and had her up for tea, and had another friend walk over from his house to mine in just a few minutes, just to say hi. Being back isn't that weird yet, I'm just settling back into this strange life we have all become accustomed to.

And I realise these are all things I should have never taken for granted, and forgive me if I ever did. Despite its slightly claustrophobic atmosphere, I will miss St Andrews. I think I'm not alone in feeling that, although being students here is probably the least stable aspect of our lives, living in St Andrews is something which provides a lot of stability as well. Being away also meant being far from many things that have become part of me now, and walking into the apartment was like landing back on earth after going to space. The reading packs, the wall of pretentious words, memories from my last few nights before leaving, the cards from friends still sitting on my desk: all small bits and pieces that I will never be able to run away from (and I wouldn't want to, either). 

The reality of our short remaining time here hasn't properly hit me yet: is there something wrong with me, or have I just made peace with the fact it will be a shock and I just need to wait for it? Isn't it true scientists say being born is the biggest shock in a human being's lifetime? I'm starting to think that graduating from St Andrews will be a bit like being born; we have nested in this safe space for four years and now the time has come to emerge. And there will be crying, like the first time we were born. But I have a feeling, this time, it's going to be a bit easier to carry on, away, from yet another bizarre home.

My Invisible Cities

Italo Calvino wrote about "invisible cities"; places that weren't real, but that represented each problem existing in a city as an entirely separate urban scape--vices, passions and thoughts. If I could write in this way about St Andrews I think I might also be able to come up with many invisible cities: of course, aspiring to write like Calvino is rather unrealistic.

But I wish Calvino were still alive and could embark on this project: representing all the eccentricities of St Andrews as different cities. I'd be curious to know what he would name each of them. I imagine there would be a city of confusion, with a very obscure name, where all the inhabitants are really young and look lost all the time--they enjoy being at the BOP and eating kebabs at three in the morning. There might be a city of indecision, where academic supervisors are completely useless and people never know what subject to pick for the next semester. There would be cities of success and failure, and clarity as well, cities of nostalgia and regret. I picture all these places as multicultural and lively, where creativity and diversity thrive, where arrogance always loiters in a corner. 

What would the cities look like? There would definitely be long beaches on all of them--some with stormy seas, others with quiet sunrises, painting the horizon with all different kinds of red and pink colours. People would all be used to running on the sand and finding its grains stuck in between their toes. There would be old castles that only appear after nightfall, and a cemetery where people take books to read and talk very softly. There would be a library, a nice one, made of stone and medieval secrets. 

It would always be windy in some of them, and the curtains inside the houses would dance to the rhythm of the draft coming in through old windows. The sun would also shine in other places, especially in April, when all the students are gone on break. It would rain inexplicably in some cities: thin rain that soaks people to the bone, horizontal rain that people can't defend themselves from, rain that turns streets into a palette of grey watercolours.

Some cities would be built for parties only and, despite the cold, every girl would be elegantly (or nor so elegantly) dressed in colourful ball gowns. Other towns would be built to have conversations in, and the sound of kettles boiling would be the only other murmur perceivable above the voices of the people talking. Vanity would be the capital of one of these metropolises, a place where images of luxury, beauty and happiness would be fabricated and renewed each year. There would be a city for heartbreak, one for art and music, and a city of friendship--that would be my favourite place to be in.

And there would also be a city of learning: but maybe this is what St Andrews is already. 

Coincidences

For a long time, I never questioned whether destiny existed or not: to me it had always been a bit of a given. A few months ago, when I told a friend of mine I thought having met her in St Andrews was destiny, she corrected me; "There's no such thing as destiny. Only coincidences." She said that the notion of destiny is inflexible, as if our whole lives have been predetermined and there's no room for chance and changes of direction. She still called having met each other a "lucky coincidence" and, although lucky, it happened because we were in the right place at the right time, nothing else.

The more I think of this, the more I'm convinced she's right, particularly looking back at my entire St Andrews history. To begin with, I ended up there having chosen it as a safety net and under recommendation of my ex-boyfriend, for whom St Andrews was the dream university--I had never heard of it. In the end, unexpectedly for the both of us, I ended up in Scotland and he in London, after being offered a place at a university that was a dream even bigger than St Andrews.

It seems that after that point it was all a succession of lucky and unlucky coincidences: being put in flat 5 in Donaldson at DRA where I met one of my best friends, changing degrees and finding a vocation, ending some friendships that did not necessarily bring out the best in me. My friend is right: if destiny existed, wouldn't things be much clearer and linear; would there really be so much room for error? Surely, it is because so many things have been determined by coincidence, rather than destiny, that it's been possible to go back and make adjustments. 

And maybe there's a part of me that still clings on to the idea of destiny a little bit; maybe because I don't like to think that everything that will happen to me is, ultimately, up to me (talk about commitment issues, huh?). But knowing that coincidences happen, and make us realise what we thought was "meant-to-be" isn't actually meant to be, is one of the best lessons a friend has taught me. 

Trust Issues

Being in mainland Europe for the past month or so has been, at times, a bit of a traumatic experience. One of the qualities that I think St Andreans love the most about the bubble is how safe we are there--no one steals, there are no criminals lurking in the streets at three in the morning, front doors can remain unlocked. By contrast, my Italian family is paranoid that burglars will break into their homes, or that they will be robbed on the bus in broad daylight. In Mexico, as you can imagine, the paranoia is also there (and, granted, slightly more justified). 

All my life I've been aware that there are countless reasons to be scared and always on the watch. Coming to St Andrews provided sweet release from this constant state of panic, and I could finally surrender to the natural conclusion that there's more good than bad people in the world. Unfortunately, of late, stealing is not so much a matter of being good or bad but is much more related to need. It is perhaps one of the most tragic consequences of the economic crisis that not only do people distrust their politicians and bankers, they also don't trust the people they encounter on a daily basis. 

So leaving St Andrews will definitely cause me to have some trust issues: not the kind in which I don't trust people, rather the kind in which I trust everyone. This isn't necessarily a negative thing--isn't it good to give people the benefit of the doubt?--but I think it might all come down to the level of trust issues new people around me will have. 

Technofobia

Am I about to be hypocritical? Perhaps. I am, after all, a dedicated smartphone user, an avid Skyper, a fellow Facebook addict. And as the time for graduation draws nearer, these are the comforting qualities that I am happy to share with my friends: it just means we can be in touch with each other in ways that people 20 years ago couldn't have dreamed of.

Yet...despite the wonder that technology provokes in me, I cannot help but feel an increasing apprehension for the role it has in our life today. Just the marketing that smartphones and tablets have seems, to me, outrageous. Has everyone seen the ad with the father and son on a camping trip? The father reads Winnie The Pooh to his kid off the tablet (don't even get me started on Kindles and e-books), they look at the constellations through the tablet, the compass is on the device, they light a fake fire on the screen...and I'm thinking, ok, if I were in the middle of the woods I probably would find all these things quite practical. Then the commercial ends and you realise the tent is set up in their backyard. Yay dad, thanks for this amazing adventure--I think we were even able to use the wifi from home to play out here! And have you seen the Samsung Galaxy ads? The one with the on-screen proposal? I'm not saying we should be expecting a candle-lit dinner proposal in this day and age, but I think we can all agree some things are better done in person. And the one featuring our very own town of St Andrews, with the mum getting all the photo updates from his son's travels? What will they talk about once the son gets home if the mum has already seen everything while he was gone?!

You see where I'm going with this: I think technology is not only making us lazy but it also is, paradoxically, belittling social interaction. It seems that by being in touch all the time via all these means, when we actually see each other in person it's just awkward. We already know everything about each other. Don't deny it, we've all been there: you're finally meeting up with that special someone you just met. You ask them what they did that week, but it's a pointless question: the Facebook stalker in you already knows where they were, who with and when that week. But we need to converse, right? Or do we? Families at restaurants don't seem to anymore. I am a little sad when I see parents handing an iPhone or iPad to a child who can barely hold its head up. An Italian newspaper reported that they are now making potty trainers with iPad holders attached to them. Call me crazy, but I would argue it is more important to learn how to deal with your own fecal matter before learning how to use an iPad. 

And then, what if there's a power cut? For real, this isn't just my Mexican paranoia. If your entire house depends on electricity to work, you're screwed. You can't cook if you have one of those fancy induction hobs, you can't even make yourself a coffee if on top of that you have an electric coffee machine. Least of all tea, if you're used to the kettle (or the microwave, as the first-year me used to be).

As much as I love that I am able to instantaneously know everything about my friends, and I can let them know everything about me, using technology, I worry that children today won't grow up learning how to write letters to each other and, by extension, be able to express themselves using full sentences and proper characters. I'm scared that bookcases will become obsolete and that no one will buy paper newspapers anymore. Above all, I'm scared we will all become accustomed to the growing lack of mystery there now is when we meet a new person--all we have to do is look up their name on Facebook or Google. Will we actually become less mysterious as we create and manage our online identities, which need to fit concisely on wall posts, albums or 140 characters?

Call me antiquated, but next year I am going to send letters and postcards to everyone, and I expect to get some too. Or at least an e-mail every now and then--and please don't ask me questions you already know the answer to.