Thomas and Cambridge Dining

Life at an 800 year old university is rather different than that at UTD. It tends to change one some. First off, I rather fancy tea now. Secondly, I now use the word “fancy”. From the restrictions of the various colleges (just try and sneak past the porters at Emmanuel!) to the gorgeous architecture, it’s a rather surreal world compared to back home. One of the coolest things about Cambridge is the way they still hold formal halls. These are the highest social grace amongst the colleges here. Each college holds different types of formal halls, has different chefs/ceremonies, and has different restrictions on who can attend. At my college, Hughes Hall, we keep things relatively modern and egalitarian. While suits and tuxes are required, we are flexible on the need for gowns. In addition to this, the fellows of the college drink and dine with us. We take our sherry overlooking the fields at sundown, proceed to dinner once the gong is rung, bow our heads for a single short Latin grace, dine amongst the fellows, and then proceed to our port. This stands in stark contrast to hall at Trinity, where the building is only lit by candle and torch, and the fellows are kept completely separate from the students. While the students sit at long tables and eat substandard food in plastic chairs, the fellows sit in throne-like carved masterpieces, eating meals personally prepared by Michelin-star level chefs. The rest of the 31 colleges fall somewhere along this spectrum, but it’s fascinating to see each hall and its specific rules. Life here at Cambridge is dominated by the colleges, and formal hall is your passport to each one. On that note, here’s a photo of me in proper gown fashion before hall at Trinity, home of Newton, Dirac, Tennyson, Bohr, Maxwell, and Byron.

800 Years of Politics

My college, Hughes Hall. Nice, but nothing super amazing.

King’s College. People really do go to school there.

Back home, we have a fairly simple way of viewing university structure. The president and provost sit at the top, under them are the deans, and under the deans fall the various departments and responsibilities of the university. Here at Cambridge, however, we have constituent colleges which hold a great deal of power, making university politics and policy a great deal more complicated. Some universities in the U.S. (Rice comes to mind) have constituent colleges as well, but they have more of a social function and mainly exist to promote diversity among the class. On the other hand, the college at Cambridge which you are a part of determines a great deal – your education, your social class, and your overall opportunities provided. For example, Wolfson is a relatively poor modern college which is located far from the city centre. Wolfson students have decent housing, are mostly foreign graduate students, and often keep to themselves. On the other hand, St. Johns is a very wealthy college. The students of Johns are located in the best part of town, have fantastic amenities (having your own turret in a castle must be nice), and are treated to all sorts of luxuries (Michelin star chef, free wine, special recruitment events, etc.). Should a St. Johns student want to study abroad or play a sport, the college will pay their fees or buy them equipment in order to further their experience. This disparity in wealth and experience leads to interesting situations as the colleges have completely separate budgets from the university and are under no obligation to share their money with it or with each other. In recent years, Cambridge has been facing many budget shortages leading to research cuts and difficulties paying faculty salaries. On the other hand, the wealthiest colleges of Cambridge often have yearly surpluses in the hundreds of millions of pounds. Because the colleges hold so much money, the university simply cannot act without their support and cannot regulate many things which the colleges control.

Recently, the UK is debating whether to raise tuition for its public schools leading to the belief of many that Cambridge will re-brand itself as a private university. This, of course, has been met with a great deal of controversy as Cambridge currently only charges 3000 pounds a year in tuition for UK and EU students. If it goes private, students will need to pay more like 20,000 pounds a year in tuition, making it completely unfeasible for the majority of students at poorer colleges. However, should the big colleges choose to flex their financial muscle and push the initiative, the smaller colleges will have little say in the matter, as a Cambridge without a Trinity or Johns is simply no longer Cambridge. It’s a bit like if we ran Congress without the Senate as an equalizing body. Ostensibly, every college is equal under the Cambridge banner, but in reality, size matters. It’s going to be fascinating to see what happens next, as the policies and standards the university establishes in the next five years are going to greatly affect its status as one of the great research and educational institutes in the world. Despite all the upheaval, two things remain certain: Cambridge must find ways to support its world-class research, and the largest colleges will continue to dominate the political life at the university.

Liz Living in Brazil

The world is flat—that is, if you ignore Aristotle and believe instead in Thomas Friedman, as I have so chosen to believe, based not only on his evidence in The World is Flat, but (perhaps more importantly) on my own international experiences.
I’ve been here in Florianopolis, Brazil for about a month and a half now. The biggest shock for me has been how similar life here is to life in the States. Internet access is widespread, the quality of life is high, and people are well-connected with the world around them, both within and outside of Brazil. Every other week, I pore through an issue of Exame (similar to Fortune in the States) that discusses both national and corporate problems—the costs and benefits of a bullet train between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, an analysis of corporate bonuses, the explosive growth of Southeast Asian economies. They suffer the same inequalities—of income, of regional development, of social prejudice.
They’re worried about the same things we are, and in turn, having many of the same discussions we are. The other day, I pulled up the Wall Street Journal, only to find that the hot-button issue of the day was infrastructure stimulus spending. Just today, I read an article arguing for (you guessed it) more infrastructure spending here in Brazil. Of course, that article was in Portuguese and referenced President Lula and the Brazilian Congress, but you could have just replaced those things with American references (and translated it into English, of course), and it would have been nearly the same.
What’s the lesson I’m learning? It’s more important now than ever to become a global citizen, not a citizen of a particular country. And while that sounds like an overwhelming task, the so-called “flattening” of the globe is making this task easier to achieve, as well as achievable from anywhere (although living abroad for a while certainly helps). It’s a matter of identifying global trends—trends in business, politics, regional development, and the like. Once you start to notice the trends, it becomes much easier to think globally rather than nationally. And that ability to approach things from a global perspective is necessary to succeed in our contemporary “flat” world—even if you still insist the Earth is round.

The Edge of Europe

Spending 6 weeks in Spain studying Spanish was an unbelievable experience. But, believe it or not, one of the most exciting experiences I had during my time in Spain was traveling to Lisbon, Portugal for a weekend. Not only is Lisbon the largest city in Portugal, but it’s also on the western coast of the country, facing across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States.
The monuments were fantastic. Belem Tower, which served as a ceremonial entrance to Lisbon and later a political prison, was an impressive sight. It sat just down the coast from the Monument to the Discoverers. This impressive structure serves to remind visitors to Portugal of the important role it played in new world discoveries.
Perhaps most impressive was the Castle of Saint George, sitting high above the city. This fortress was built over hundreds of years, and at its core represents impressive Moorish architecture built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This castle also afforded fantastic views of almost all of Lisbon.
My trip to the Western edge of the European continent ended with a trip to the beach, a truly cultural experience. The water was cold and the sand hot, but taking in the sun with Portuguese is an experience I won’t soon forget.

Erich in Spain

Words cannot express the feeling of witnessing a nation in the moment of ecstasy that follows a World Cup victory. Seeing an entire plaza erupt with spontaneous cheering, chanting, and celebrating is something that I will never forget. I know I will not be able to properly convey the feeling of this moment, so instead I will try to describe the scenes that led up to this once in a lifetime moment. The preparation for the World Cup game started hours before the actual game was to be played. With a scheduled kickoff at 8:30, my friends and I made sure to be at the Plaza Mayor no later than 4:30 to ensure our seats. Even still we were later than many people and ended up only being able to sit on the side without shade. Luckily all the spots to sit at in the Plaza Mayor are restaurants and cafes with patios and therefore we were able to hold our seat as well as have a nice afternoon snack while we waited for the game. Having secured our seats, we began to explore the main square that was to thousands of spectators for the upcoming game. There were flags hung from the multitude of balconies surrounding the plaza, a huge flag unfurled down the center of the plaza, and people everywhere dressed in the colors of La Furia Roja. As more and more people began to flow into the plaza, waiters began to set up large TV’s in front of patios. As the hour of the game approached, the mode quickly turned from a festive mood to a very tense, anxious mood that would last for the duration of the game. The game was a blur. From kickoff to the final whistle, I remember cheering whenever something went Spain’s way and joining the collective groan when it didn’t. All of that paled, however, to the reaction brought on by Spain’s late goal. The crowd exploded into a mass of spontaneous cheering, the likes of which I have never seen and most likely never will again. The fans would never return to their seats again as they either watched the rest of the game standing up, or commenced to start celebrating the victory, a celebration that would be kept track of by days, not hours and a celebration that will play on in my head forever.