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| I finally emptied my London Fund a few days ago! |
On Independence Day 2010, instead of revelling in the midsummer mood of the freedom of our nation as well as my own from the classroom, my mind was abuzz with, well, school and fleeing the country. I was about to begin my senior year of high school (that year where all 17-year-old sanities go to die) and was becoming increasingly worried that the dream I had been cultivating for ages of going to university in England was not going come to fruition after all. Tuition after the currency exchange rate was outrageous, the distance from home vast, and the sheer shock of self-sufficiency in a foreign nation (even though I would stubbornly refuse to admit it at the time), probably too severe to handle on my own. But I was dogged in my search to find a way. |
| King's College was my dream school |
Now, I'm not one for fatalism, but by some happy occurrence, these gloomy frustrations were poking particularly petulantly at me while I was at my family's annual Fourth of July reunion in Pleasanton, Kansas. That day, lured by the bouquet of burning barbecue, I approached a picnic table surrounded by chatty groups of people. The words "study abroad" and "Cork, Ireland" snatched my attention at once. They came from one Kat Gleeson, the 26-year-old daughter of a family friend and I had no idea how they would utterly change my life.
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| Kansas family cabin, viewed from the fateful picnic table |
About an hour and a half after I had eagerly ingratiated myself into Kat's conversation, I was with left effervescent hope and a start: a torn piece of paper, flecked with barbecue sauce and crammed with information, most notably the words "Arcadia University" circled emphatically in blue ink.
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