When I arrived for orientation in London, my teachers told me that British students are all crack heads. Ecstasy, they informed me, could be bought anywhere on campus for the equivalent of 30 cents a pill and heroin sometimes for even less, but forget about buying pizza?it costs more than 40 dollars to get it delivered.
Like many of the other students at the orientation, I left London with a rather skewed impression of Oxford University as a place where everyone walked around dressed in all black, taking pills, by the hour and living on beans and rice because pizza was so expensive. However, after spending less than a week at Oxford, I realized that, as my British friends might put it, my teachers were probably "taking the piss."
On the surface at least, Oxford is not too different from America. The signs are in English, you can shop at Gap and Borders, the students are all on facebook.com, and everyone is keen to see the latest episodes of "The OC" and "Desperate Housewives." In fact, it seems so much like home that sometimes it's only when you open your mouth and hear yourself as the only strident and brassy American accent in a sea of cultured British voices that you realize you're in a foreign country.
Nevertheless, after a few more weeks certain differences do become apparent. Certainly a comparison between Bowdoin's class-based method of teaching and Oxford's more independent tutorial system would be both informative and educational. However, it would be perhaps more interesting to discuss an aspect of studying abroad that American students are sometimes accused (unjustly of course) of focusing on unduly?drinking.
British students like to drink. So do American students. But it's only after a few weeks in Britain that you discover a subtle differences in the way in which alcohol is approached. Because the legal drinking age is 18 and is laxly enforced, many students have had easy access to booze long before they became legal adults. Brits are much more casual about alcohol.
Although you still hear stories about the freshman who got so drunk he cut his head open on the cobblestones before classes had even begun, in general, parties and drinking are more relaxed. Because alcohol is not a novelty, the focus is instead on the crazy costumes and "fancy dress" that are a staple of Oxford college parties and it's only when notice you're draining your fourth vodka tonic that you realize how trashed you're getting. Although that's another thing?British students don't count drinks and anyone informing another student, as I did, that it was 10 p.m. and he was already on his third drink, will no doubt be looked at oddly and told to "chill out."
In many ways then, the chill British parties seem an improvement over the five-shots-in-five-minutes, competitive pre-gaming culture of American drinking, where the focus is often on getting as trashed as possible before heading to the event. However, this relaxed attitude can mask a number of problems. The British may drink less intensely when they do drink, but they definitely drink more frequently than Americans. Alcohol is everywhere at Oxford and with Monday night trips to the pub, to "meet and greet" drink parties for every club from the hockey team to the Tolkien society, it can be impossible to escape.
In a place where you can buy wine from the college kitchens at every meal including breakfast, one has to wonder if this much access is a good thing.
On the other hand, the relaxed attitude makes it much easier for those with willpower to abstain. No one looks askance at you if you order orange juice without the vodka and with no drinking games and no one counting your drinks, it's much easier to stop your count at one. Overall, then, the British way of drinking forces students to take control and make decisions about their own drinking?in short, to act like adults, which is what university students are supposed to be doing anyway.
It can take an effort for Americans used to elaborate pre-gaming rituals with illicitly obtained alcohol to adjust to hearing an 18-year-old casually suggest a trip down to the beer cellar, but it's well worth the effort. The British way of drinking is a great deal of fun and definitely still exciting.
And best of all, takeout pizza actually only costs five pounds.
Kathryn Papnek '06 is currently studying abroad at University of Oxford in Oxford, England.