Emile Brozaityte, Grade 11
UWC ISAK Japan
My roommate and I are crying on the floor in our room and hugging each other, I hear her say: “You are safe. And next year we will raise our voices about this”.
It is Fall Break, and because of corona I am still not in my UWC and studying online. I decided that I want to travel. I remember that there is Wi in Estonia (then UWC ISAK, now UWC Thailand) whom I have never talked to before. I write to them and they accept me to their house for 5 days and show me the country…
It is 3 am and my housemate and I are talking about everything you can imagine…
Me and Wi from UWC Thailand are planning a trip to Norway and a UWC alumni offers us their home for free for a week…
UWC shocked me to my core and made me grow like nothing I had ever experienced before. It was the people. It was the community.
As our Head of School Rod Jemmison says “UWC is your home. We are your second family”.
As my grade’s UWC story was a little different I found that to be true quite quickly. Due to the coronavirus, Japan had very strict immigration measures and international students were unable to arrive on campus until late March. This gave me the opportunity to travel a little and meet Wi as I mentioned before, however it also meant that we had to spend 6 months of our first UWC year studying online. For some students it was crazy as their time zones caused them to be attending classes from 2 am to 10 am. And feeling segregated from the rest of the world as well as staring at a screen for hours was taking its toll on us.
We were given the chance to defer or even withdraw but almost nobody gave up and pushed through what were extremely hard times. And that was what made me realise how strong the UWC spirit, the UWC community is. We all felt that our home was waiting for us, our family was working hard to get us exceptional visas and get us on campus, our home.
The ideas Kurt Hahn planted into the core of UWC are so moving that some people who come in touch with this community feel and see purpose in it so strongly that they chose to dedicate their lives and careers to building this community. Take Lin Kobayashi as an example. She finished UWC Pearson herself and then created the youngest UWC, UWC ISAK. The school that I, 180 current students and hundreds of alumni now call home. Kurt Hahn started one school and in 60 years it has grown to 18 schools that created a community of over 60,000 alumni and hundreds of thousands of family, friends, staff and teachers.
UWC is the definition of community, trust, and diversity. It is home.
Bibliography:
It is Fall Break, and because of corona I am still not in my UWC and studying online. I decided that I want to travel. I remember that there is Wi in Estonia (then UWC ISAK, now UWC Thailand) whom I have never talked to before. I write to them and they accept me to their house for 5 days and show me the country…
It is 3 am and my housemate and I are talking about everything you can imagine…
Me and Wi from UWC Thailand are planning a trip to Norway and a UWC alumni offers us their home for free for a week…
UWC shocked me to my core and made me grow like nothing I had ever experienced before. It was the people. It was the community.
As our Head of School Rod Jemmison says “UWC is your home. We are your second family”.
As my grade’s UWC story was a little different I found that to be true quite quickly. Due to the coronavirus, Japan had very strict immigration measures and international students were unable to arrive on campus until late March. This gave me the opportunity to travel a little and meet Wi as I mentioned before, however it also meant that we had to spend 6 months of our first UWC year studying online. For some students it was crazy as their time zones caused them to be attending classes from 2 am to 10 am. And feeling segregated from the rest of the world as well as staring at a screen for hours was taking its toll on us.
We were given the chance to defer or even withdraw but almost nobody gave up and pushed through what were extremely hard times. And that was what made me realise how strong the UWC spirit, the UWC community is. We all felt that our home was waiting for us, our family was working hard to get us exceptional visas and get us on campus, our home.
The ideas Kurt Hahn planted into the core of UWC are so moving that some people who come in touch with this community feel and see purpose in it so strongly that they chose to dedicate their lives and careers to building this community. Take Lin Kobayashi as an example. She finished UWC Pearson herself and then created the youngest UWC, UWC ISAK. The school that I, 180 current students and hundreds of alumni now call home. Kurt Hahn started one school and in 60 years it has grown to 18 schools that created a community of over 60,000 alumni and hundreds of thousands of family, friends, staff and teachers.
UWC is the definition of community, trust, and diversity. It is home.
Bibliography:
- “United World Colleges.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 13 July 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_World_Colleges.
“Lin Kobayashi.” Varkey Foundation, https://www.globalteacherprize.org/person?id=2031.
www.unitedworldwide.co