Hannah Johnson

There was something quite surreal about my flight to New York on the 24th June 2004. Just two days earlier, my US visa was showing no sign of appearing on time, and my flight tickets had somehow located themselves in the central post office in London, both due to circumstances quite beyond my control. Indeed, after receiving the acceptance email, entitled "Cornell Club of London Scholarship", having had some rocky experiences with email in the past, I certainly felt it had made it to my inbox through no fault of its own. It was only as I landed in Kennedy, nose stuck to the windowpane and eyes wired open, that I realised exactly where I was heading.

The journey to Cornell from New York by bus was very interesting. The differences between the British motorway and American highway were already evident; the latter punctuated by characteristic high flying advertising signs which seemed to appear randomly, in the middle of nowhere, seemed to reflect more of a Futurama sketch than my British home - it certainly felt alien. As I headed north, the New York landscape was at least as picturesque as I had been informed. The concrete metropolis of the University of Warwick, and its trademark, rather fetching shade of Midland Grey Sky contrasted with the splendour of the Cornell arches and famous Clocktower. After settling in my room, I introduced myself to the others in my hall. The people in the dorms were diverse in age and background, and this certainly gave me the chance to meet a real cross-section of students at the Summer Session.

Certainly, our accents soon became the novelty of Cornell. We soon learned that most students had not met a "real life" Brit before. Admittedly, the responses to this were both diverse and hilarious.

"You're not British - your teeth are too straight." replied one.

"Wow! A female version of Austin Powers!" retorted another.

Yet perhaps most memorable was an encounter with two highly unlikely best friends; one from Kentucky, and the other from Alaska who talked to us with the fervour and utter enchantment of someone unexposed even to the notion of being British.

"Have you met Prince William?!" they inquired incredulously, before extending the conversation.

"Y" know that is so unfair, we don't have anything interesting like that." They paused. "We want a Monarchy!"

After assuming this was some nouveau riche form of American Irony(!), it soon became apparent that their enchantment with the effectiveness of this residual British Feudalism was very real.

When I began my modules at Cornell, I had just finished my second year exams in Politics and International Studies at Warwick. Always taught the values of interdisciplinary analysis, and ready to move away from essays for the summer, I fully entered into the sciences. Enticed by the Astronomy departments bold headline "Cornell on Mars", and intrigued by the mythologised representation of Einstein"s ideas, the first module I chose was "Relativity and Astronomy". Having not studied Physics since GCSE, or maths since AS, I knew this class would be a challenge. I can safely say that I found the course extremely difficult.

Only slightly terrified before my first lecture, I stood, apprehensive in front of the seven story Cornell Space Science building. I half expected some sort of metamorphosis to take place. Recalling the infamous Harry Enfield sketch in which "Kevin" dramatically transforms into a teenager within a minute, I wondered if my entry into the Physics building would produce a similar result - exiting with that notorious "Einsteinesque" crazy grey hair, bespectacled face and white coat. My apprehension was certainly not eased when, in the first lecture Professor Saenz boldly and unashamedly proclaimed "We will be covering more Relativity in this module than someone doing an Astronomy major - a fifteen week course in just six"!

Luckily, it was the unique nature of the Cornell Scholarship that allowed me to experiment with this module. A brief chat with the professor meant that I took the chance and went ahead with the course. Whilst the course was testing to the extreme, I would also say that coming out on top of it was one of the biggest academic achievements of my life.

I gradually got to know the characters in my class - and characters they were. The Californian Astrophysics teacher who got caught up in his sums with the Evangelical Fervour of someone who had just seen The Awakening. The young red haired high school student who refused to be late for class, shot her hand up to answer every question before I had even worked out what the problem was, and turned up early to class even on her birthday. Then there were The Coasters on the other side - those who chose the credit/no credit option because hey! it was summer and it certainly was not about stress at this time of year for a university student!

There certainly did seem to be an overall difference in the types of people that take "hard" sciences like relativity as opposed to the humanities background I am used to, and I certainly relished this insight into the life of a physics student at Cornell. It certainly seemed tough!

My second choice of module "Introduction to Cognitive Science" was a lot more straightforward. Again, lured by the "interdisciplinary" nature of the course as stated on the course synopsis, I was excited by the prospect of multi-faceted analysis to a single problem. Yet in some ways I found the course frustrating. Its mode of assessment was very much scientific and exam based. This in itself seemed to erode its interdisciplinary ambitions. I had once been told that successful education leaves you with more questions than answers. This module seemed to present many positivistic "answers" as opposed to questioning the question itself. Certainly, psychology has been diagnosed as having "physics envy", and in class time, I found this inherent within the discipline.

Luckily I got on well with my psychology tutor who had just won the prize for teaching last year. I gained more with this lecturer in his office hours after class, especially after discovering that his major was in philosophy. He was very interested in my views even after learning my interests lay in what he laughingly termed as "postmodern foo foo". I felt vaguely frustrated that even in a philosophy major, students were not acquainted with this "Continental School". Certainly, as a student of Politics in Europe it should be unthinkable not to know the details of this "under-represented"(!) school. The assessment method geared toward remembering facts was difficult to adapt to. The two education systems are based on different assumptions of what a student should be able to do at certain stages within their educational journey. I now see myself very much a product of the British system and inevitably more suited to the British style of graduate education, although this "shock" may only be limited to my experience in the Sciences.

There was a series of free, open lectures in all disciplines available at Cornell during the summer. The ones that most interested me were in the School of Critical and Cultural Theory, as well as a series in the Space Science building entitled "What I Do In My Office And Why You Should Care". These lectures vary in their intensity. Certainly when Urmee and I went to a lecture on the "Metanarrative of Law" out of curiosity, a lot of it seemed to be above our heads.

By the end of the six week session I felt I had really gained a lot from the experience. Bill Clinton mentioned in his autobiography that by far what he had gained from his Rhodes scholarship lay outside of his courses of study. Having completed the six week Summer Session, my experiences were memorable to say the least. They say that great memories act as the only pillow guiding you through to old age. I certainly have plenty to hold my hand in the journey to come.