Features
Where in the world is Kaitlin McCabe '16
By Kaitlin McCabe ’16
March 6, 2015
Everyone who knows me can agree on one thing: I’m an obsessive workaholic. When I left for my semester in London on New Year’s Day, I was coming out of a mentally and physically exhausting, highly caffeinated semester of five classes, two jobs, two Editor-in-Chief positions and networking—all while maintaining some semblance of a social life and sanity on a campus that sorely lacked some of my closest friends. My parents were not joking when they told me that my semester abroad would be a recovery period, a chance to regroup and have some carefree fun before senior year and, well, the “real world.”
During orientation, my fellow King’s students were encouraged to ‘STUDY abroad’ rather than ‘study ABROAD’ (i.e. extra gallivanting around Europe, minus schoolwork). In truth, the program advisors had a point: the English academic system is highly different from that in the United States in that it is predominantly independent and bases one’s course grades solely upon one (or a generous two) papers or exams. King’s is a highly competitive, world-renowned institution, we were told. Our lecturers expect a lot from us, so if you want to pass, you will need to put in the effort. Want to meet the locals? Get involved: join a society, play an intramural sport, hang out in the student union.
So yeah, I followed their advice. I did my usual ‘Hermione Granger thing,’ as it’s been called, taking ridiculously extensive notes and actively participating in seminars. I hung around other students in between lectures to kill time and make all efforts possible to be around other people. At the end of my first month, I realized that I was developing the same workaholic, 24/7 do-do-do behaviors that I fall prey to at Hamilton. Not only that, but I saw myself in my overachieving flatmate, Yasmin, a final year law student who studies day in and day out. How could I tell her to live a little and not take every meaningless reading so seriously if I couldn’t do so myself?
I always dreaded receiving the inevitable request to write this column—I’m going to the UK, I’m hardly seeing a third world country or learning a new language, what the heck am I supposed to write about? To be honest, I didn’t think that I had much to reflect upon. I guess I have Lucas Phillips ’16 to thank for inspiring me to really think about how I’ve grown in the few short months I’ve been away from the Hill. “Who are you, and where’s the Kaitlin I know?” he teased when he visited the other week. “You’re usually so uptight. Now you’re…chill.”
Here’s my advice: stop ‘doing’ and ‘planning,’ and just live in the now. In order to see the world and to ‘live deliberately,’ you need to experience it without expectations and plans.
I contemplate my homework assignments for maybe an hour a week—let’s be real, I’m not going to learn about London by rereading Heart of Darkness for the hundredth time. Instead of seeking company between lectures, I walk around London with neither a destination in mind nor a map, just curiosity, and at night, I am content just chilling in my kitchen with my flatmates. However, I’ll always accept your invitation to roam around, even if it messes up the schedule I’d already organized for my day (as my friend Sara jokes, “Kaitlin is always down,” something I don’t think anyone has ever thought about me in my life).
For perhaps the first time ever in my life, I do my own thing and don’t really care what anyone else thinks about it. In setting my own agenda, I have reclaimed what it means to ‘study ABROAD,’ by truly experiencing and learning the most about London, the people and, most importantly, myself. By just sitting in my kitchen, I have learned how to cook Indian dishes and where the best, non-touristy Punjabi restaurants are in London; the intricacies of British politics; how to make tea ‘like a Brit and not like an American; and a real taste of British culture that extends beyond the stereotypical things we gather from BBC America. I, the girl who needs exact directions and is entirely useless as a navigator even with Google Maps, can now confidently find almost anything in London based upon instinct. Better yet, I’ve grown to relish opportunities to explore the city on my own; while I love being with my friends, I no longer feel uncomfortable being alone. While my time in London is temporary, my personal growth and self-reconciliation will return with me to Hamilton next semester.
Throughout our college experience, we are constantly joining clubs, taking classes and going out to events we don’t want to just because we think we have to for our resumes or to boost our social life. As we reach the end of our time on the Hill, we grow to dread our classes and only think about how we are completely screwed for, and terrified of, the future. If I’ve learned anything from my experience in London thus far, it’s that life is too short to stress over every little thing that we do or to sacrifice good times and happiness in the present because we are living in, and for, the future. I guess I’m encouraging you to pull out all the stops, to embrace #YOLO, to do you and carpe diem, etc. I think Peter Jorgenson ’16 said it best in his “Where in the World”: only once you forget about who you and your peers think you are and expect you to be, once you see yourself as a blank canvas, can you truly find and ‘know thyself.’