A few notes: for the most part, I will be writing British English, as I have studied, lived, and worked in the UK for years and that’s my new normal. The one exception will be the oxford comma, which is such a wonderful clarifying thing when making a list and ironically, not used often in the UK. This is my hill to die on. The oxford comma rules.

Secondly, I want to acknowledge that I am writing this from the privileged perspective of a white, American woman. Immigrating to the UK was a brutal, lengthy process, but being a native English speaker with white skin meant I was not met with the racism and xenophobia that some of my fellow immigrants experienced. It’s not right and needs to be called out.

It’s also one of the reasons I identify as an immigrant rather than an expat – it generally seems only wealthy white people ‘get to be’ expats, and I don’t personally want to use a term that feels so exclusionary. The struggle and cost of immigrating, the spirit, hard work, and contributions of immigrants that has made the UK what it is today – I’m proud to be a part of that, in my own small way. Immigrants are my people.

Right, let’s crack on with the story, yeah?

It’s August 2017, I’ve started my fifth year of teaching, and I come to three conclusions: I’m feeling burnt out from teaching, I want a master’s degree, and I want to travel. I quickly realised one idea might cover it all: quit my job and get a master’s degree abroad. Ahh, the enthusiasm and confident ignorance of youth. I was going to need it!

First step – got a new passport. Second step – started looking at graduate programmes overseas.

So how did I end up choosing Scotland?

Well, I knew if I was going to be in a graduate programme, I didn’t also want to be learning a new language at the same time, so I focused my search on English speaking countries. I’d been to England before, so that held less interest.

I looked at university programmes in Ireland and Scotland before finding a course that looked both interesting and vague enough that I could potentially use the degree in more than one career: Educational Studies at The University of Glasgow. I was already a teacher, so a degree that built new skills but in a familiar field seemed perfect.

Was it possible that a certain book I read years ago called Outlander was on my mind when I chose Scotland? I can neither confirm nor deny this. 🙂 I certainly had built a romantic notion of Scotland in my mind. Which, to be fair, has mostly held up, even after all these years.

Benefit of master’s programmes in the UK? They tend to be only one year long. Major downside? International tuition. But I figured tuition in the States for a two-year (or longer) programme might be about the same as one year tuition in the UK – plus I’d get to travel. Basically, I was doing all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify the cost of this plan.

Ultimately, I was 27, my dad had just passed away at Christmas, I was making very little money as a teacher in Colorado and wanted an adventure to give me a new purpose. So, I went for it! Applied to The University of Glasgow, got accepted, and informed my boss I’d finish the year of teaching, then resign.

I have since learned there is a term for this: pulling a geographic. Changing one’s physical environment in the hopes that one’s problems will magically go away in the new place. Huh.

I mean, it didn’t NOT work? But life is gonna life, and as they say: wherever you go, there you are. This would be a concept I understood all too well within the next few years. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves! Back to the beginning of the adventure. 😊