What makes me sick about St Andrews

Small town I don't mind. Miserable weather I don't mind.

Here's what I've come to hate in first year: apathy. Are all universities like this? In extracurriculars-the most involved people in school only care about getting drunk. Otherwise, they just fritter their lives away in their rooms watching bad bootleg movies. But more than that--I accept not everyone wants to join every society. It's in academics. First year is a joke. First year is a waste of time. You need a 5 to pass, and a retarded monkey could get that. So many people I know go to under 50% of their lectures (keep in mind, Arts students have only 9 hours of lectures a week!), again, sitting in their rooms, doing fuck all. I've missed lectures to go to other lectures and seminars and more interesting talks. Just a few minutes ago I got back from a talk from a professor from another UK university that I'd seen advertised as an 'open talk' about the postcolonial mentality, volunteering overseas and the transnational person. So much applied to my current experience, where my thoughts are in the future, and even stuff like currently reading Heart of Darkness (set in colonial Africa) that stuff clicked in a way it hasn't done in a long time. "This is what education feels like!" I thought. This is what I thought university would be.

But quite aside from the fact that only 1/2 of any given lecture's audience shows up on a given day, there's the fact that NO one engages. So simple. So easy. Ask a question. Get clarification. But that's my American bias showing through. The reason that it seems St Andrews has so many Americans is that we are the only ones who ask questions, who speak up when the professor asks for an opinion or answer. I'd be really interested to see the inside of a British school to see where this comes from. Is it all students exhausted from their A-levels and Highers who will perk up next year and in Honours? Is it a ritualized thing here that teachers ask questions and its the students job to not respond for as long as humanly possible? People here are intelligent. People DO have questions! I've talked to lots of people who have e-mailed really good questions to professors and gotten really illuminating answers, but by e-mail its only for their benefit. Lectures and tutorials are carried out in an air of dead silence. Why? I want to know why.

And, as an American, I don't want to be *that* American, the one with the horribly piercing voice, who is always the one to answer questions and always asks their own questions, which are usually not as intelligent as other people's, and because others don't ask theirs sound even stupider--like a fundamental question rather than a request for clarification. Yeah, people seem to do their own reading, to seek their own answers, which is great. There is a dependence and babying in US high schools and (I believe) universities where students expect the teacher/professor to hand them everything on a silver platter. But this is not the solution! This way, there is no dialogue, no interaction. I feel closer to the support staff who I've interacted with, to our cleaners, than to any of my professors or tutors.

This is my dissatisfaction. It does not make me despair, but it does make me want to fight. Against apathy.