Study Abroad Advice/Tales of Your Experience

lderochi
Mon, 24 Jan 2005 22:21:50 +0000

lizschup,

I Went to Northern England – Bradford University in West Yorkshire. I loved it, but it’s sort of a joke with English people when I tell them. Bradford does not have the greatest reputation amongst the British. The city itself wasn’t that great (an industrial city far past its prime), but it had a lot of great pubs and clubs and more curry houses per square block than Bombay. It was centrally located, which made for some great weekend getaways (Whitby, Scarborough, York, Blackpool, the Lake District, the Dales). Bradford was also in a very politically radical area – our Student Union President (a very nice guy) ran on the Worker’s Militant Socialist Party ticket or some such, and he was on the moderate side for Bradford – so I may have had to deal with a bit more anti-Americanism than might exist at Oxford.

Re-entry wasn’t really difficult as much as it was somewhat lonely. I’m sure I was a complete bore with my friends, going on and on about my incredible year, and it was difficult not being able to really share my memories with anybody. Well, that’s not really true. People were interested, just not as much as I wanted them to be! Frankly, my Senior year was pretty much a “let me out of here, I’m ready” situation. But I was able to stay in touch with some of my fellow study abroad folks via postcard and phone (the days before the Internet – how did we survive?), and a few of them are still my very good, if long-distance, friends now 22 years on.

One more piece of advice – if your S is planning on going to Grad School or professional school down the road, make sure that the procedure for his grading in his year abroad is well established. In my case, I was part of a foreign exchange program between my school and Bradford, and it was the first year of the program. Nobody really thought about grading, exams, etc., and my school really didn’t know what to do – so they gave me a “Pass” on my Bradford classes. 30 HOURS of Pass/Fail in my Junior year! Try explaining that on a Law School application. But it all worked out.