Rohan Vora, Grade 11
UWCSEA (East)
Born and brought up in the Indian city in Mumbai, I was quite conservative. I believed that nationalism was an irrefutable feeling and that abortion was immoral. Friends around me thought the same. I was surrounded by a collective ideology rather than individualistic ideas and beliefs. ‘Different’ was not a word that I had truly known, and ‘diversity’ was unheard of. No one challenged my views, and my academic world was bereft of any intellectual stimulation.
Then...UWCSEA happened. The little bubble I lived in slowly dissipated as I met with teachers and students that challenged my political knowledge and countered the fabric of my academic and cultural intelligence. During the first week of boarding school, I was thrust into a completely unknown world as I met students from Thailand, Vietnam, Brazil, South Korea, etc. I had only ever known of my Indian culture and festivals such as Diwali or Janmashtami, but as weeks progressed and friendships were forged, I was introduced to the Tulip Festival in Korea and Carnival in Brazil. In another instance, my British friend, Eve, taught some of the boarders how to make a traditional British chicken pie. All of us worked together, chopping the vegetables, making the sauce and most importantly, filling the pie. It was one of the best experiences of my life - we laughed, we danced to rap music while cooking, and we ate. The process of moving to boarding school started to get easier, and friendships started to cement. My mind started to stretch and expand, the one-dimensional world I was living in broke into pieces and from the ground, ascended this multicultural persona.
In the classroom, I was incessantly challenged by my teachers. In English class, the capitalist ideology that I had so carefully formed in India slowly started to disintegrate. As Mister Watson, my English teacher persistently questioned my beliefs on topics such as social inequality and redistribution of wealth; I was awestruck. Was my political ideology weak? Or worse…. Was it false? In history class, Mister Verrill elucidated the historical bias that is prevalent in every historical piece of evidence. In my mind, I had always thought of history as a dry subject, one that is smeared with facts. Slowly, as classes progressed, I realised there was a deep subjectivity embroiled in the subject. Was my perception about history wrong? These questions gravitated towards me throughout my academic year in UWCSEA, and steadily began the evolution of my intelligence.
Intellectual curiosity did not cease in the classroom. Lunchtime wasn’t a place to eat and laugh but instead became a battleground. A group of interested friends and I sat together debating topics ranging from Bernie Sanders policies to whether the Vietnam War was justified. In boarding school, my friend Oki and I would talk for hours, sometimes, on various issues. Each conversation taught me something divergent - whether my political position made sense, whether the contradictory opinion was stronger than my own. In another instance, my friend Arjun barged into my room after the Indian government announced the construction of the Ram Mandir, a religious monument. Again, a discussion that should have been a couple of minutes grew to hours, and I realised that to truly understand political science, one has to engage in discourse. I gradually grew from an ignorant and pugnacious individual to a student that was democratically spirited.
To me, UWCSEA is truly a place that is not only an educational institution but a movement that brings inharmonious ideas and entities and essentially bridges them. It brings together individuals from cultures spread across the world to a certain region, truly acting as a melting pot. It’s a place I like to call home, not only because I stay in the boarding house, but due to the reason it gave birth to many of my ideas and stemmed the political fibre that runs through my very DNA.
Then...UWCSEA happened. The little bubble I lived in slowly dissipated as I met with teachers and students that challenged my political knowledge and countered the fabric of my academic and cultural intelligence. During the first week of boarding school, I was thrust into a completely unknown world as I met students from Thailand, Vietnam, Brazil, South Korea, etc. I had only ever known of my Indian culture and festivals such as Diwali or Janmashtami, but as weeks progressed and friendships were forged, I was introduced to the Tulip Festival in Korea and Carnival in Brazil. In another instance, my British friend, Eve, taught some of the boarders how to make a traditional British chicken pie. All of us worked together, chopping the vegetables, making the sauce and most importantly, filling the pie. It was one of the best experiences of my life - we laughed, we danced to rap music while cooking, and we ate. The process of moving to boarding school started to get easier, and friendships started to cement. My mind started to stretch and expand, the one-dimensional world I was living in broke into pieces and from the ground, ascended this multicultural persona.
In the classroom, I was incessantly challenged by my teachers. In English class, the capitalist ideology that I had so carefully formed in India slowly started to disintegrate. As Mister Watson, my English teacher persistently questioned my beliefs on topics such as social inequality and redistribution of wealth; I was awestruck. Was my political ideology weak? Or worse…. Was it false? In history class, Mister Verrill elucidated the historical bias that is prevalent in every historical piece of evidence. In my mind, I had always thought of history as a dry subject, one that is smeared with facts. Slowly, as classes progressed, I realised there was a deep subjectivity embroiled in the subject. Was my perception about history wrong? These questions gravitated towards me throughout my academic year in UWCSEA, and steadily began the evolution of my intelligence.
Intellectual curiosity did not cease in the classroom. Lunchtime wasn’t a place to eat and laugh but instead became a battleground. A group of interested friends and I sat together debating topics ranging from Bernie Sanders policies to whether the Vietnam War was justified. In boarding school, my friend Oki and I would talk for hours, sometimes, on various issues. Each conversation taught me something divergent - whether my political position made sense, whether the contradictory opinion was stronger than my own. In another instance, my friend Arjun barged into my room after the Indian government announced the construction of the Ram Mandir, a religious monument. Again, a discussion that should have been a couple of minutes grew to hours, and I realised that to truly understand political science, one has to engage in discourse. I gradually grew from an ignorant and pugnacious individual to a student that was democratically spirited.
To me, UWCSEA is truly a place that is not only an educational institution but a movement that brings inharmonious ideas and entities and essentially bridges them. It brings together individuals from cultures spread across the world to a certain region, truly acting as a melting pot. It’s a place I like to call home, not only because I stay in the boarding house, but due to the reason it gave birth to many of my ideas and stemmed the political fibre that runs through my very DNA.
www.unitedworldwide.co