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Musings About Moving to Scotland

By Jenna Luetkehansonm
Monday 2nd November 2009
In three weeks I am moving to Scotland. While all of my peers are driving to private colleges and state universities, I’m still at home, preparing to leave the country. I know the look quite well: the raised eyebrows, the half-open mouth nearly ready to whistle, laugh or gape, the confusion in the eyes. Yes, I receive that look quite often when I say that I’m going to college in Scotland.  The University of St Andrews: my future home. A small university nestled on the east coast, looking over the North Sea. The town is most famous for the golf course where golf is said to have been born. There must be dozens of stories explaining how it all began but this is the one I’ve heard: Two shepherds were watching their flock and were knocking stones with their staffs. They started a little game between the two of them to see who could hit the stone in a nearby rabbit hole. The game caught on. I can imagine it now…the locals are gathered at the pub later that night, chatting about their days over a pint. The two shepherds give a play by play of their wee game, the others listen interestedly. Some of them try it out themselves a few days later; it becomes a friend favorite and is featured at the annual market fair where more people are introduced to it. The rest is history. But I digress. St Andrews is isolated; there are only three roads that lead in and out, which also makes it rather safe and quaint. Safe enough for the prince to attend...bummer he graduated already. Graham, the innkeeper of Devron House equates St Andrews with London as it was 200 years ago. But cleaner. The university is the third oldest in Great Britain and the oldest in Scotland. It is haggardly beautiful. There is a rawness, a freshness, a vitality in the air, which may come from the ever present North Sea breeze. It has been quite a journey to get to this point, it’s sort of surreal. I’m moving to Scotland. It is a sentence I have repeated to myself numerous times every day since the April morning I decided to accept my offer of a place in the school of Arts and Divinity to study Modern History. Months later I am truly confident it is the right fit. It is unexpected, but probably one of the best things for me to do at this point in my life. There is an odd paradox in it, the uncomfortableness of it and yet the total peace and comfort I feel there. Why am I doing this? Everybody asks and I don’t seem to have a very good answer. The simple answer is that I want to. I’m always hankering to go over there, why shouldn’t I live there? Maybe it is because I want to prove everybody wrong, prove that I can be bold, daring, and unusual. Maybe it’s because I fear who I will become if I don’t do this. I fear being stale, uncultured, content with knowing only one place, cowardly, and unwilling to take risks.  Sometimes I think I’m crazy, irrational, stubborn, but the reasons I come up with for not going don’t seem to be quite good enough to give it. I refuse to let fear be my excuse. Little by little I see it working out for the best.  
 


 In the next issue, read Jenna’s reflections on St Andrean study a year on.