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Mia Shlaen

Transitioning UWCs

Moving from one UWC to another has been a challenging albeit interesting experience. Moving country, or moving back from a different country is challenging in itself. A question which I have heard frequently is ‘Oh you’re from UWC Thailand? Which do you prefer?’ A common answer I’ve heard myself say is that ‘Oh, well they’re different.’ So different. For one, UWC Thailand is in the middle of ‘nowhere’ essentially. It is surrounded by rubber tree plantations and virgin rainforest. UWCSEA is located within a global hub- Singapore.

In addition, UWCSEA has a much larger student population. With around 380 pupils in the class of 2020 cohort alone, this is larger than the entire school’s population in Thailand. UWCSEA is also a much older school, with a longer history. As we can see from the alumni posters dotting our campus, many of them have graduated, we can say, quite some time ago. This is in contrast with UWCT which was only established as a United World College campus in 2016.


In Phuket, there was one tiny restaurant down the rubber tree road where they sold Thai food and drinks. This was the only other option if you did not like the food that they offered at school. Whilst here, there is FoodPanda and Grab Food. At school, during break and after school there would be snacks offered for each class as no food was sold. This ranged from apple slices (most commonly) and other fruits, mixed seeds, yoghurt, break sticks, and occasionally mango sticky rice. During lunch, there was a buffet and salad stall catered by the health resort and hotel next door to our campus, as no food was sold either. We had a small student run cafe called ‘Shaka Shack’ where people could go to have their coffee or Thai milk tea accompanied sometimes by a brownie or cinnamon roll, made by one of the DP students running the cafe. Good music always played from the teal painted trailer that is the shaka shack.


In UWCT, there is also a much larger ratio of boarders to day students, I myself was a boarding student in Phuket. I feel that there are many advantages of being a boarder, some of which I will discuss later. I will begin with one disadvantage which I have observed in both places, despite not being a boarder in UWCSEA. As a boarder, you tend to become very comfortable with your environment- this is good. However, I felt that this also led to a feeling of disconnection from the actual country which you are in. Many of the boarders I knew felt that they were disconnected from Thai culture, and Phuket as a place. They did not really feel like they belonged to the island, but more to the little community we had built on one part of the island. And it was no fault of their own, we lived on a small campus with an extremely international community, exposure to Thai culture was not a daily occurrence. Similarly, after speaking to some of the boarders here in Singapore, they feel that they have not seen enough of Singapore and are very much living within their own bubble.


My time at UWCT was the only experience that I have had with boarding, however it was an extremely rewarding one. Living with two exceedingly different people from different countries and utterly different characters was both challenging as well as really fun. I had never seen myself as someone who would be able to board and live with others in that way. I value my personal space and enjoy being alone at times. In boarding, you are essentially never alone. There is always company, always noise. You go down to the kitchen at 12am and there will be someone making popcorn, or eating someone else’s food from the fridge, or eating dried fruit from their grandmother’s garden in Armenia. There is always something going on, and this was something which I really enjoyed about boarding- the vibrancy of it. As a boarding student, you come to rely on and interact differently with those around you than you would as a day student. You eat, sleep, and study alongside people around your age. You are there for each other when your families are continents away, and it sounds cliche, but it did feel a lot like a family over there, a very large extended family. There were quite a few teachers that lived around campus, and so seeing them on weekends was common. Whilst this may sound terrible, it was actually pretty great. The relationship between the teachers and staff members was brilliant, and I very much enjoyed the dynamic.


Since the student population in UWCT is quite small, everyone knows one another, and basically has no choice but to befriend those around them. People that one might not have had the chance to get close to if the situation had been different. I ended up forming some of the most meaningful relationships with diversely different people, partially because the school was so small.


During the October break, I went back to Phuket and whilst I was there I spent a day in my old school, UWCT. Visiting the place gave me incredible happiness, however I was also greeted with nostalgia. I was asked the same question over and over again ‘How is it there? Is it better than over here?’


It is much easier to be unhappy with the situation that you are in than to relish it and value it above other possible situations. As cheesy as it sounds, and as much as it pains me to include this saying: ‘The grass is always greener on the other side.’ It is human nature to want what one does not have, and to envy those who have it. Leaving that place in the middle of nowhere was challenging, and I am still in the process of adapting to this new one. However, I will end this article by saying that both schools are great, and that instead of comparing colleges, we should appreciate and make use of the time that we have here. This is something that I am constantly reminding myself of, and slowly it is being registered.


I miss the vibrance, the people, and I miss the rubber trees. I miss the company and the strong connections that I formed over there. However, I look forward to meeting more people in this school, and discovering all the small intricacies that form within large communities such as our own.

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