Arcadia Scotland

This week Jessica Watson, Arcadia's University of Aberdeen Scholarship recipient, shares a few thoughts on her semester in Aberdeen.

Three weeks from today I will be on a plane back to Connecticut where my lovely family and friends reside.  That statement isn't completely true and I’ll tell you why. Aberdeen has become a huge part of my life.  And even though my friends will not be carried back in a suitcase of 50 pounds or less and my “family members” aren't blood related I cherish them as much as the people who await me back in the warm Connecticut and Pennsylvania air.

Aberdeen University began for me as an educational decision.  I wanted to be somewhere that valued music, culture, and educational prowess.  For me, Aberdeen wasn't a social invitation or a vacation it was work… and a lot of it.  I never could have imagined the amount of doors this establishment would unlock in my future.

My journey started with a Ceilidh.

I didn't even know how to spell that word let alone say it 5 months ago, now here I am endowing my cultural enlightenment on a word that once had no meaning.

The first week of being in Aberdeen there was a Welcome Back Ceilidh.  Me, being a sucker for a good dance, attended and started the journey of a lifetime.  It was there that I met about a dozen people from study abroad who today I wouldn't give a second thought to meeting them for a sandwich at the hub or staying up until the early hours to rant about nothing and everything.  I know you’re probably saying to yourself, “Yeah, you can meet people anywhere it’s not a big deal.”  And I will tell you a secret… you have never been more wrong.

With one of those people I spent 3 weeks in Spain, England, and Greece, with another I took the most difficult course in the history of agonizing Biology lectures, with yet another I made a friendship that will now have ties from Canada to the States, and still another I finally understood how to compose beautiful music and play the colors that are painted inside the crevices of my mind.  I found a way to combine a love of music and science with people I would never have had the opportunity to meet in any other feasible encounter.  I learned that international boundaries are in fact mole hills we so often make into mountains.

Aberdeen has taught me valuable skills in scientific research, writing, music composition, vocal performance, and international relations.  It has taught me that you’re never too far from home because sometimes it may just be travelling with you in a suitcase next to your best friends.  I have become an integrated part of the community with club involvement, I have sung in the world premiere of an Elegy, I have met one of my favorite composers and had his personal help with my own composition, I have dissected sharks and squids, I have met people who have ultimately changed my life for the better, had an opportunity to see the world, but most of all I have had the opportunity to see the world light up like an Evergreen on Christmas morning.  Aberdeen has given me that.  Aberdeen has given me culture.  And study abroad has given me the ability to paint with all the colors of the wind whether it blows in Scotland, Spain, or at home.

Thank you Aberdeen University and Arcadia University for giving me the pastels to color outside the lines!

If you would like to read Jessica's post in its entirety as well as see some of her previous adventures, you can visit her blog.