Seren Happs, a recent scholar on our Secondary School Exchange programme, tells us about her experience
The English-Speaking Union was not an organisation I had come across in my quiet life in West Wales. However, early in my first year of A levels I happened to read about a scholarship to the ESU’s Debate Academy in Stamford through the Seren Programme [a Welsh government initiative dedicated to supporting the most able state school students to achieve their full potential]. I applied and, to my disbelief and joy, was accepted onto the experience which proved to be life-changing for many reasons, but mainly because it was here that I heard a young debate coach reference her year in America on the ESU’s Secondary School Exchange (SSE).
With my interest piqued, I got home and, recovering from a week of making some of the most amazing friendships, began to research the SSE – a chance to spend a year abroad at an American High School, studying whatever I liked and with bursaries available to cover the costs. When I looked at the programme, I kept thinking, there has to be a catch? But, luckily, there wasn’t. I applied with little hope of success but was invited to interview and subsequently chosen to attend Culver Academies, a private military boarding school in rural Indiana.
My first impression of America was the realisation that, wow, things really are a lot bigger there. The roads, the trucks, the drink cups… but mostly the personalities. Soon enough, I reached my school and was overwhelmed. The first person I met, a cheerful girl from Florida, stuck with me in the clammy heat while dragging an overweight suitcase. She showed me exactly where to go, helped me locate my dorm, drop my bags and meet my councillor, then took me to the dining hall. I met my roommate, who promptly began dusting the furthest corners of the room. Another girl knocked on my door, made herself at home on my bed and began regaling me with stories of her visits to Germany, which, surely, I have been to as a European? (Not at all). I look back on these early interactions fondly, remembering how nervous I was; how at home these early friends made me feel and what influence they would have on later people I would meet.
With every term came new classes and new friendships. Teachers helped me settle in and I began to feel encouraged rather than pressured, coaches offered judgement-free advice, and families invited me into their homes during Thanksgiving, long weekends and Spring Break. This is not something unique to me, either. Other scholars speak warmly of friendly faces who supported them in times of need, with a level of acceptance that was both unique and universal. Because of these people, I got to attend an ice hockey game in Nashville, explore the galleries in Washington D.C. (below), see baby alligators in Florida, and to be whizzed around a little town in Ohio in a golf cart.
During my time at Culver I studied a range of topics, from fiction writing to economics. Having lived in a structure of education that requires early specialism in the UK, being allowed further freedoms through senior electives at Culver was eye-opening. There are areas I have found incredibly beneficial, such as learning about the foundations of philosophical ideologies and key thinkers that I am already finding useful in my degree. However, there are areas that I chose solely because I was curious – an opportunity I had not had before in education. Whether this was analysing Jaws in film studies or calculating the size of a black hole in physics, I was supported by staff to explore my interests freely.
Often we were put in positions that, as an introvert, I struggled with, such as group dance parties and team-building exercises. Culver could be difficult, whether it was adapting to the sometimes unappealing rules like a nightly phone turn in and having your socks pulled up right to the knee, or the incredibly busy schedules. But, leaning into the rigour of the opportunities and trusting in the potential of the experience led me to find my place there.
Many times in secondary school in Wales, I had found myself in friendships borne of living near to one another or because we shared long bus rides to school, but Culver and the SSE made me interact with people completely different to myself. People who brought tanghulu (sugar-coated fruit) or plantain chips to my room because they had too much, or taught me words in Mongolian, Afrikaans and Mandarin. I started making connections despite obvious differences because we could all relate to one another. Somehow, we had all ended up in the middle of nowhere in Indiana and, most of the time, we only had each other.
Ultimately, the experience changed my mindset. It made me explore religion, something I had been very closed off to; helped me to make friends with people on the opposite side of the political spectrum, and allowed me to act as an older sister to people a lot younger than me. After graduation, I travelled to Nova Scotia, Maine and Boston, with a bittersweet homesickness for the people I was leaving behind.
If anyone were to read this, unsure of what to expect from the SSE, I wouldn’t be able to tell them, because the experience is what you make out of it. This autumn I began university, and felt almost no anxiety because this was my second experience of starting over – I just didn’t have to move 4,000 miles this time.
