Agnes in St Andrews

On 7 September, I took a plane from Oslo to Edinburgh, followed by an equally long bus ride to St. Andrews, to begin my highly anticipated study-abroad semester. For months, I had honed my English on Donna Tartt, Evelyn Waugh and The Crown, each feeding into my picturesque vision of university life.

However, already in my first week, I would fall sick with the lesser-known freshers' flu: ‘The St Andrews Syndrome.’ A refurbished version of the Paris Syndrome, mild psychiatric symptoms emerge when reality collides with your romanticised vision of the campus tourist trap. 

It started brewing the very first night. I was sleeping in a room that was ceiling-rose-free and communal-carpet-full. My hall looked far more communist than aristocratic and had a slight smell of cabbage. The following day I pub-crawled a few chain-cafés, since the tables at the two “authentic” ones were full. 

As I hit the social scene, the symptoms started worsening. I had imagined a set of slightly arrogant Scots drenched in corduroy, dazzled by my thick Norwegian accent.  

But I was far from being an exotic commodity; I was an additional face in the non-Scottish majority. My fellow students and hallmates were not what I had envisioned either: they were frustratingly nice, American and eighteen. The romantic prospects were bleak; I was lumped in with the teenage freshers, whose eyes widened when they heard me utter my ripe age of 22.  

Finally, I decided that a self-diagnosed syndrome deserved a self-made cure. My prescription will consist of some mutated expectations and a deliberate hunt for the distinctive strangeness and beauty of St Andreanity, through this mini-column. Bound to report on my experience here every other week, I am thankfully obliged to give this hide-and-seek a proper try.

Illustration by Ana Brockmann Aldasoro