Defne Tekin, Grade 11
UWC Maastricht
Community, late-night conversations and heated discussions. If I had to summarise my UWC experience so far, I would use these words to do so because they remind me of an experience I had with a friend of mine earlier this year. It was at that special moment that I understood what UWC was about and what it meant for me.
The clock at the front of the bus, next to the driver’s seat, showed in highlighted red that it was minutes before dawn: the sort of red used in warning signs that say “STOP” on them. We were returning to school from our Project Week trip to Prague, and I had been sitting on the same bus seat for the past 13 hours, incapable of falling asleep. It felt extremely hot and stuffy inside the bus. It was then that I started talking to my friend who was sitting next to me. We were both bored and sleepy, so we wanted to pass the time.
What started as a mundane conversation on a topic so ordinary that I did not even pay enough attention to remember it soon became an eye-opening discussion. To explain it further, we ended up having an interesting discussion about nationalities and how we identified. For example, what did it mean to be from a particular country? What was it to belong somewhere? Could we feel like we were from a place that we had never actually lived in? Or did we have to speak the language of the countries of which we were citizens to truly be “from there”? How were these things present in our school? Why was it that, even when you insisted that you were from a certain country some people did not believe you? And really, in essence, what did it mean to be from a culture? Was it really possible to only be from one culture or have characteristics associated with that culture despite how globalized the world is? As much as I enjoyed the discussion with my friend, I must admit that our viewpoints were in fact, drastically different. I thought that nationalities were social constructs and as a concept didn’t deserve to be made into a sense of pride like they are being made now, nor did they need to be valued this much. For me, the divisions of the world like the East or the West, or the Middle East simply existed because we came up with these names. They didn’t signify much about a person on their own. Obviously, I acknowledge that there are different “cultures” in the world, but these shouldn’t define us on their own. They shouldn’t be storing us in a box and then labelling that box. My friend, however, thought otherwise. For her, despite not having lived there, it was important that she identified with a certain country and its culture. This didn’t quite make sense to me when I first heard it, but afterwards, I began to understand where she was coming from. Whether or not we had the same ideas didn’t seem to matter.
At the end of our conversation, and more so looking back at it now, I was impressed at how we were able to discuss these topics with such eagerness despite being so exhausted on the bus! When we had to stop talking because we had arrived in Maastricht, I realized what being in UWC meant to me. That was the first time since I had embarked on this UWC journey that I realized what it truly meant to be a UWC student: It was listening to other people in our closely-knit community, letting go of your prejudices, having wonderful conversations after check-in just like the one I had had at the bus, and knowing that you don’t have to agree with someone to show respect.
The clock at the front of the bus, next to the driver’s seat, showed in highlighted red that it was minutes before dawn: the sort of red used in warning signs that say “STOP” on them. We were returning to school from our Project Week trip to Prague, and I had been sitting on the same bus seat for the past 13 hours, incapable of falling asleep. It felt extremely hot and stuffy inside the bus. It was then that I started talking to my friend who was sitting next to me. We were both bored and sleepy, so we wanted to pass the time.
What started as a mundane conversation on a topic so ordinary that I did not even pay enough attention to remember it soon became an eye-opening discussion. To explain it further, we ended up having an interesting discussion about nationalities and how we identified. For example, what did it mean to be from a particular country? What was it to belong somewhere? Could we feel like we were from a place that we had never actually lived in? Or did we have to speak the language of the countries of which we were citizens to truly be “from there”? How were these things present in our school? Why was it that, even when you insisted that you were from a certain country some people did not believe you? And really, in essence, what did it mean to be from a culture? Was it really possible to only be from one culture or have characteristics associated with that culture despite how globalized the world is? As much as I enjoyed the discussion with my friend, I must admit that our viewpoints were in fact, drastically different. I thought that nationalities were social constructs and as a concept didn’t deserve to be made into a sense of pride like they are being made now, nor did they need to be valued this much. For me, the divisions of the world like the East or the West, or the Middle East simply existed because we came up with these names. They didn’t signify much about a person on their own. Obviously, I acknowledge that there are different “cultures” in the world, but these shouldn’t define us on their own. They shouldn’t be storing us in a box and then labelling that box. My friend, however, thought otherwise. For her, despite not having lived there, it was important that she identified with a certain country and its culture. This didn’t quite make sense to me when I first heard it, but afterwards, I began to understand where she was coming from. Whether or not we had the same ideas didn’t seem to matter.
At the end of our conversation, and more so looking back at it now, I was impressed at how we were able to discuss these topics with such eagerness despite being so exhausted on the bus! When we had to stop talking because we had arrived in Maastricht, I realized what being in UWC meant to me. That was the first time since I had embarked on this UWC journey that I realized what it truly meant to be a UWC student: It was listening to other people in our closely-knit community, letting go of your prejudices, having wonderful conversations after check-in just like the one I had had at the bus, and knowing that you don’t have to agree with someone to show respect.
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