Matthew Barbour's Scholarship Report

Knowing where to start with a report such as this is always a problem, so for ease of structure, I'll start at the beginning and finish at the end. I applied to the Cornell Club of London's scholarship primarily because of the great things one of my brothers had told me about American universities (he spent a year at the University of Pennsylvania on an exchange from Edinburgh), such as the way people turn up to lectures before midday, the fantastic resources and how being a British student in America really opened your eyes as to how a university could work, given the money. So, I applied, knowing that Cornell was a top Ivy League University with a good Politics (or 'Government' as they insist on calling it) department, in the middle of beautiful countryside, and got the scholarship.

It's always interesting to compare your expectations before an experience, with the reality one finds - my main aims at Cornell were to get involved with the Cornell student papers (I started and run a free student magazine in the South West of England), play some sport, study the American political system, and hopefully make some friends along the way. Some of these expectations, perhaps predictably, changed as I wandered through my six weeks in the Finger Lakes.

My first impression of Americans was crystallised as I stood in the airport at Syracuse, explaining as calmly as I could to the man behind the Delta Airways desk that they had lost all my bags in transit from New York, at which point one of the queue of equally disgruntled bagless passengers behind me exclaimed, 'Oh, you're English!!!', as if I was some long lost relative that she hadn't seen for years. As we talked, she asked me if I had anywhere to stay, and halfway through explaining my situation, she insisted that I come and stay with her and her family in Syracuse. This definitely wasn't England. She might've remembered my first name at a push, but that was about as far as it went. So, as I sat in the front seat of her car, two of her children, and the friend she had come to pick up at the airport in the back, I felt that this was the best welcome I'd ever had, including even those I'd received from my own family in England. As I sat in her kitchen, jet-lagged, full of pizza and beer, recounting stories of England (to gasps of wonder), I was definitely looking forward to my Cornell experience.

The next day I got a lift to Ithaca, where I was met by David Yeh, the Assistant Vice President, who took me to lunch with his wife, after which he gave me a comprehensive tour of the campus, showed me my halls, and then whisked me off to a garden party, celebrating the opening of one of their friend's pottery exhibitions. I took the decision of standing at the bar, serving people drinks as a way of saying hello, rather then hovering on the fringes of conversations, which proved a good plan - before I knew it I was swapping e-mail addresses, telling my life story, and it was one in the morning.

I woke the next morning eager to meet my fellow students in Dickson Hall, got my keys, went to my bare-walled room, and after sitting in my room with the door open, took to walking the corridors to meet people, but only encountered closed doors or people with their faces pressed against their computer screens. It seemed so strange to have a hall of residence without any central focus point, no bar (alcoholic or otherwise), and no 'common room', and it seemed doubly strange to hear people introducing each other over the tops of the cubicles in the mens' toilets at two in the morning (my room was opposite them, so I heard every little word). Without bars, people tended to do one of several things; watch television fanatically, work fanatically or play sports on the field outside, which I jumped into headfirst. In a lot of ways, the experience I had was different to what a normal American would have had, as my accent seemed to turn heads like nothing else ever could. Playing volleyball and baseball before and after dinner, I made many friends very quickly, although what to do when darkness set-in was another matter altogether.

My two main friends whilst I was at Cornell were from a small environmental college called Warren Wilson in Virginia, both of whom were 21, which enabled us to sample some of the bars in College town, as well as a football (or 'soccer') friend called Laate who was from Yale, gaining credits for his engineering course there. Warren Wilson was a working college, based on the principle of all the students working for their rent and some fees in the campus shops and workplaces, which enabled a lot of low middle class students to attend a college they might have otherwise been prevented from attending. This lower middle class grouping seemed resentful of the educational system as it stood, the truly poor getting financial aid, and racial 'minorities' having grants thrown at them by the dozen, but to afford $27,000, as was the yearly fee at Cornell, many parents were forced to take up two jobs, often saving for a college education from birth. The number of convertible Mercedes and BMWs that a significant proportion of students drove to and from lectures was also slightly disturbing, at the same time as hearing tales of students whose families had martyred much of their lives for their child's education. Along with that, there seemed to be few obvious students who were studying a course purely for the love of the subject, except where credit requirements had to be met, so they would do a wine tasting or Swedish massage course. But to even compare the Ivy League Universities with the British ones would be almost pointless, because, whereas in Britain, by and large only the most intelligent go to the top universities, in the States the selection process seemed to be somehow tainted by money. To what extent Cornell was a 'good school' obviously rests on either the standard of the students, which varied from the very intelligent, to students who would have been more suited to one of the former polytechnics in the UK, or the quality of the teaching and resources, which definitely ensured that if you had the tiniest spark of enthusiasm for a subject, it would be encouraged unlike anything I had ever seen.

Another interesting comparison to be made with the UK universities was the way that students didn't 'major' until after their first or second years, so, whereas to get into a university in Britain, you have to committed to a course from the outset, many science-strong students in the States could change between say, engineering and medicine halfway through their time there. In a similar vain, due to the fact that you didn't major until much later, to get in to these universities you had to be strong all across the board, in English, Maths, Languages and Science, so if you were a maths genius, but couldn't spell, you didn't stand a chance. This I felt to be a pity, because the students weren't given room to play to their strengths, having to slog on with subjects that hadn't interested them for years. To deny a brilliant student access to the facilities at Cornell because he or she is either poor (but not poor enough) or whose overall academic rating is brought down by their weakness in one subject seemed slightly unjust, although on the plus side, a much rounded education was provided. Following on from this, because a student would only specialise after a year or two, the standard they reached in that particular subject would be much lower than if they had specialised from day one, so to reach a standard on a par with that of British universities, in terms of depth reached in their major, many would then go on to graduate school, again a very expensive year for the parents. But if you've paid over £100,000 dollars for your university education, you want to make sure that you can pay it off, so law school would appear to be a wise option, as many of my friends at Cornell tried to persuade me.

A fair proportion of the people at Cornell during the summer were high school students trying to ease open the door to Cornell, others, like my two friends from Virginia, were being paid to do scientific research using the fantastic resources at Cornell, and some were Cornell regulars, like my tennis friend, Iffy, trying to gain credits for the coming year. Getting to meet students who weren't either on my course or playing sport with me was a problem, but due to the fact that I was also sailing three or four afternoons a week on Lake Cayuga, sitting in the main arts quad sketching, and getting involved at the end of my stay with the student rag, I met ample people and made many friends with whom I'm sure to keep in touch. It really was a refreshing change to meet so many people who loved sport, unlike British universities which seem to attach a slightly 'un-cool' stigma to those who carry on sport from school.

The other startling difference as you made your way around Cornell was the odd houses with Greek letters on signs out front, which I later found out to be the fraternity and sorority houses, around which a whole culture of drinking and bizarre initiation rituals was based. This legitimised revelling, which in all other parts of campus was strictly prohibited, had formed quite officially into cliques of football players and high-fliers, and you could only join these houses if you somehow fitted the mould of each one, going to be informally interviewed and perhaps offered a place. It was no wonder so many first years wanted to be part of this scene, judging by the limits of hall life, although there was always the option of living out in Ithaca, but this was expensive and during mid-winter a real hassle for getting into classes. As with many of the volleyball matches and dining hall groups in Dickson, areas of College Town seemed to be almost racially segregated, not officially but almost as some unsaid rule, the Orientals living on certain streets, and the blacks on others. This strange dichotomy in the social grouping of the whole University was a subject vary rarely talked about, yet of such obvious importance, that it seemed to me a pity that nobody was really addressing it. However, being English and therefore a slight novelty, I seemed to be able to mix almost freely with lots of the blacks, who welcomed me to play games and hang out with them, but the Orientals seemed slightly less friendly, sticking to their cliques more than most other groups. To what extent Cornell promoted or discouraged this clique-style fragmentation of the students was not apparent, but in my eyes, it remains one of the most pressing problems.

My course choices were initially Contemporary History and Politics of the Middle East and Africa, and Introduction to American Government. The second of these courses I chose to help me with some of my units at university next year, as well as to get a better understanding of the political system there, but the course ended up being engineered for students who had absolutely no understanding of politics whatsoever, being taught from one book, upon which we were tested, chapter by chapter. The interest for politics for me lay in the arguments, the ability to analyse sources, to criticise and to formulate your own opinions rather than learn 'facts' by rote , but this appeared to be the way that units were taught in general, so after a long chat, my tutor seemed to understood my desire to change course. American students seemed to have this approach to work whereby they would 'do' a subject, get the credits, and move on, rather then cultivate some real interest to analyse what they were studying, which on the good hand meant they'd probably cover more work, but with no real desire to learn for the sake of learning. Perhaps because many realised the amount of money being spent on them at such a prestigious Ivy League college, all they were concerned with was getting a good grade rather than enjoying the course, although this is obviously a generalisation. So, I had made up my mind to change to Astronomy, a process which was amazingly easy, completed within ten minutes of entering the administration building.

Astronomy at Cornell was fantastic, with resources such as a particle accelerator, and several prestigious tutors, including Carl Sagan, the Nobel Prize winner, who gave us a lecture on the research being undertaken at Cornell. This, along with my other course, in which I was the only student, made for a very interesting six weeks. I would work from eight in the morning until lunch time, after which I would go sailing, or do art, and then for an hour or so before dinner I would play soccer with the Varsity team, who were preparing for a tour to Britain. Towards the end of my stay I made use of the libraries, losing myself in the miles of stacks, trying to find out information for my dissertation on Fiji.

Weekends were slightly different, in that the days were by and large empty, but due to the fact that I had made friends with two girls who were Cornell regulars looking after kids on summer school there, I had the opportunity to go on free trips to Buttermilk Falls and other parks nearby, which was a refreshing break from the Cornell campus. On the sunnier days, we would walk up to the plantations, swimming in lakes, jumping off waterfalls, generally playing at being Huckleberry Fin.

One weekend I had the pleasure of being invited on a boating trip on Lake Cayuga with Catheryn Obern (The Director of International Public Affairs), and her family, as well as Martin Tsang and his family, who were visiting from Hong Kong, each of whom were doing summer courses at Cornell, including Martin's mother, who must have been approaching 70. Martin was a Cornell graduate and visited his old university regularly, which seemed fairly common-place for many older graduates who I saw skipping around the arts quad with their children in tow. The lazy, laid-back feel of Ithaca made weekends a real treat, especially with such friendly, welcoming people as I had met at Cornell.

My contact with the college paper was limited to the last week, as the proper session was not due to start for three weeks after the summer session, but I did manage to see how they put it together, and look at some back issues. The other paper, called the Cornell Chronicle, wrote an article on me and the Cornell Club of London's scholarship, which was to prove excellent coverage for the scheme. In comparison to my magazine in England, the production quality of both papers was much lower, more on a par to that of most other university papers, and there didn't seem to be any really independent paper with the sort of humour and rudeness that you might expect a student paper to contain. However, they did have an excellent team, but I also felt that the editors weren't progressive enough with the room that a student paper could give.

So, in conclusion, Cornell was a frantic, fun-packed six weeks, helped on all sides by the friends of the Cornell Club of London and the Cornell Abroad Office, playing sport, studying two amazing units and making fantastic friends. As to whether or not I'd like to study at Cornell, I really don't know - at Cornell everything was amazing well laid on, so for someone like me, who needs very little encouragement to get out there and do things, many aspects of it became frustrating, and judging from the snow drift photographs of Cornell in the Winter, I'm very glad that I had the opportunity to spend a beautiful summer in the Finger Lakes. More than anything, it opened my eyes to how a university could be run, and will certainly make me envious as I scramble around for books at Bristol next year. As to how my expectations changed, I now feel glad that I didn't study purely Politics courses, as to not use the full scope of resources that Cornell offered would have been rather narrow minded of me. My time at Cornell proved to be a completely invaluable experience, giving me a different perspective on society at large and study that I believe no amount of books could have brought across anywhere nearly as well. I'm just very glad that organisations such as the Cornell Club of London exist, to give people the opportunity to expand their horizons and have a great summer in some foreign field.

Matthew Barbour, August 1996

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