To My Scottish Adventure

I don’t think I can start writing about the next chapter of my life without bringing the last one to a close. Last year, after some tiring months of rejections, that blessed email from St Andrews showed up in my inbox, telling me that I had secured a place in their Economics program. It was a time of mixed emotions. Gratitude at being admitted at a great school but mild dejection that it was not the best Economics program in the country nor the most prestigious school. But life handed me lemons and the only thing left to do was make some sweet sweet lemonade.

Scotland educated me, in all the ways one can be educated. At the end of my year with St Andrews, I have walked a hundred steps deeper into the very soul of the subject that gets my adrenalin pumping. There are hundreds more to go, but I have come far.

I discovered the art of cooking, by which I mean the ability to recognize ingredients and put them together to produce an edible output. Here I have taken only fifty steps in a thousand step journey, but it is a feat worthy of some praise. Let me explain why. “Cooking is an uneconomical task. A meal that takes you 15 minutes to eat takes you 60 minutes to put together. I will never cook. I will hire someone to cook for me before I step into the kitchen” was the essence of my take on cooking. The fact that employing a cook was a luxury I could not afford at St Andrews was the nudge I needed. And having a fabulous Canadian flatmate who loved to cook helped. I watched, assisted and experimented. And then there was even a day when I cooked for her!

My education did not stop there. I made one more discovery at St Andrews: the Germans. The Germans are a beautiful race that define punctuality, organization, intelligence and hard work; sometimes a bit rigid, but let’s call that opinionated and sticking to your guns. Some of my best friends at St Andrews are Germans, without whom my St Andrews experience would have be so incomplete.

My year in Scotland was everything I had hoped it would be and then some. From intelligent peers to Scottish pubs, from haggis to the Highlands, from royal weddings to gorgeous views overlooking the sea. It was all there.

A few days ago I made my final St Andrews submission – my 12,000 word masters’ thesis. At this point I had already started the next chapter of my life, so the overlap was a bit unsettling. With this post today I close the lid on my St Andrews box. The final seal will go on it in three months at graduation, but for now, I turn the page to San Francisco. To Dolores Park, to delicious sushi, to Californian wine, to Golden Gate and.. well I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.