Anthony Titcombe, Grade 11
UWC Costa Rica
Tempered into the finest of steel and fired into the toughest of porcelains, I can firmly say that UWC is the most impactful experience I’ve had in quite short of a time. I have smoothened edges I never thought I could shape, harnessed skills in more ways than I can conjure. It is 2020. Now I write, as an activist, and for its pleasure as well; I speak with the animation and confidence of a legion; I am selfless, with a little touch of ego; I am strong; I am like water, seamlessly passing through the slimmest of opportunities like water passes through the fingers, but I can still hold up the heaviest of ships in the ocean like the force of the IB, the weight of CAS activities, social activities, I cannot forget the dilemma sometimes that involved either maintaining my mental health or passing the IB. But wait! I jumped far ahead of the story.
8th of August. I came to Costa Rica from Nigeria. Being the student I am, I researched extensively on Costa Rica to know what to expect. I became increasingly confident as the minutes passed by, learning that here English is spoken extensively. The minutes passed into hours as I entered the first restaurant. I spoke for a good thirty seconds just for the waiter to reply to me completely in Spanish. Okay. I said Hola and then she replied in English. She said, ‘Hi. I don’t speak English’. I ordered ‘chuletas de cerdo’. I had no clue what ‘chuletas’ meant. Not even ‘cerdo’ for that matter.
13th of August. I stepped foot on the campus. I greeted. I smiled. I talked. I had given up the
opinion of myself being the special one, the hero out of the pack. I was told I was going to
receive a culture shock right from Nigeria. I was told everything- life hacks, manners, you name it. These hours had transcended into days and the shock I received was yet to come. It did come eventually, in a variety of ways. Mainly because my background and UWC culture had some very very dissimilar paths. I realized in the first few months that I was more human than I was a hero.
You see, UWC makes you a man, a woman way faster than anyone who walks on Earth’s soil. Listen, being an adult is not just a thing of physicality. It is about learning that sleep is a blessing, not the punishment that we often despised as children. We learn that living in a community is just like a structure built with stones, that each stone has its rough edges and we have to work together to smoothen those rough edges and build the sustainable, loving, caring community we self-acclaim. You learn that trust is pretty valuable to give to cheap people but like scooby doo, the people, the monsters that flaw you are, more often than not, close to you. You learn that as a leader, you are a servant to your subjects and not the served. You learn that as the king and leader that you are, the crown does nothing but add to the burden you have to bear. You learn that our races, our colours give us an identity that we must dearly uphold and that we need to complement each other like the colours of the rainbow, creating the ecstasy that glitters across the sky on rainy days. You learn that confiding in family, friends and others allays pain and that those people are the most priceless jewels you will ever have. It’s about keeping your head high when all around you seems to crumble. It’s about not letting your self-control out of sight and not allowing your compassion and understanding out the door because we come from different parts of the world, with different beliefs, different cultures, and different views. It’s about knowing that racism, sexism, toxicity were all learned and all that is learned can be unlearned.
Now it is 2020, back to the beginning of the story. The burden of the IB increases on the two-year journey with each second seeming longer than the last. It gets easier, believe you me. Now I write as an activist; I speak with the animation and confidence of a legion; I am selfless; I am strong. Saint Ignatius of Loyola says ingratitude is the greatest sin and so I must say that I am grateful to the brave, courageous students that decided to undertake the IB at UWCCR and pledge alliance to the movement.
8th of August. I came to Costa Rica from Nigeria. Being the student I am, I researched extensively on Costa Rica to know what to expect. I became increasingly confident as the minutes passed by, learning that here English is spoken extensively. The minutes passed into hours as I entered the first restaurant. I spoke for a good thirty seconds just for the waiter to reply to me completely in Spanish. Okay. I said Hola and then she replied in English. She said, ‘Hi. I don’t speak English’. I ordered ‘chuletas de cerdo’. I had no clue what ‘chuletas’ meant. Not even ‘cerdo’ for that matter.
13th of August. I stepped foot on the campus. I greeted. I smiled. I talked. I had given up the
opinion of myself being the special one, the hero out of the pack. I was told I was going to
receive a culture shock right from Nigeria. I was told everything- life hacks, manners, you name it. These hours had transcended into days and the shock I received was yet to come. It did come eventually, in a variety of ways. Mainly because my background and UWC culture had some very very dissimilar paths. I realized in the first few months that I was more human than I was a hero.
You see, UWC makes you a man, a woman way faster than anyone who walks on Earth’s soil. Listen, being an adult is not just a thing of physicality. It is about learning that sleep is a blessing, not the punishment that we often despised as children. We learn that living in a community is just like a structure built with stones, that each stone has its rough edges and we have to work together to smoothen those rough edges and build the sustainable, loving, caring community we self-acclaim. You learn that trust is pretty valuable to give to cheap people but like scooby doo, the people, the monsters that flaw you are, more often than not, close to you. You learn that as a leader, you are a servant to your subjects and not the served. You learn that as the king and leader that you are, the crown does nothing but add to the burden you have to bear. You learn that our races, our colours give us an identity that we must dearly uphold and that we need to complement each other like the colours of the rainbow, creating the ecstasy that glitters across the sky on rainy days. You learn that confiding in family, friends and others allays pain and that those people are the most priceless jewels you will ever have. It’s about keeping your head high when all around you seems to crumble. It’s about not letting your self-control out of sight and not allowing your compassion and understanding out the door because we come from different parts of the world, with different beliefs, different cultures, and different views. It’s about knowing that racism, sexism, toxicity were all learned and all that is learned can be unlearned.
Now it is 2020, back to the beginning of the story. The burden of the IB increases on the two-year journey with each second seeming longer than the last. It gets easier, believe you me. Now I write as an activist; I speak with the animation and confidence of a legion; I am selfless; I am strong. Saint Ignatius of Loyola says ingratitude is the greatest sin and so I must say that I am grateful to the brave, courageous students that decided to undertake the IB at UWCCR and pledge alliance to the movement.
Guest Writer - UWC Costa Rica |
Gratitude to the staff as well, the finest of their generation, for their cooperation and their unrivalled hard work and service. From the tios, tias to the teachers and residence coordinators, to Aberdeen, Mauricio, Leila, Nancy, Paula and the rest of the management team. Never will your hard work be in vain. You all are, with no exemptions, part of the finest of persons the world has brought forth from its mouth. You all are the heroes, the ones without a cape but still, rekindle the flame of the idea of Kurt Hahn’s UWC movement. You are the heroes, the superman, the Wonderwoman, that make my rejection of UWCCR at first instance the unkindest thing I almost did. You see, we live as a community, one with the roughest of edges. But our mentality of ‘you are my brother’s keeper, you are my sister’s keeper’ is what helps us finish the two-year race: an individual race but won as a group, one that keeps the dreams of Kurt Hahn alive.
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