My Semester In Scotland

By popular demand (my mother) I have been asked to post these two funny little stories. They both demonstrate some interesting cultural differences between the US and Scotland.

Short Story #1 – Before I came on my trip I received many publications from Napier about my housing situation including many rules and regulations that were different between the US and Scotland. I opened the housing lease and a pamphlet fell out that said “Don’t forget to buy a TV license”. I said to my family… I need a license to watch TV??? What am I getting myself into? Sure enough, this past week I just got a letter in the mail telling me that I was being investigated by the UK government for not owning a TV license at my place of residence. It was very official looking and described exactly what the rules were and that if I did not buy a license I would be fined 1,000 pounds! Come to find out after looking into the law more carefully, the license is merely the cost of connecting to the cable jack in my room. It stands in place of having to pay a Comcast or other cable company. I called the TV licensing department and informed them that I did not have a TV and they said they would drop the investigation. The part you should know is that every student at Napier received one of these letters and we all get to be lucky enough to call and dispute the investigation. Crazy!

Short Story #2 – During orientation week we had a housing meeting where we had to sign our lease and collect our keys. During the presentation we got the normal… don’t play with fire extinguishers, don’t tamper with smoke detectors etc. etc. The next slide was titled “Unacceptable Behaviors”. One of the bullet points of the slide said… Don’t be anti-social… you will be fined heavily!! At this point I’m thinking you have got to be kidding me. Every American student in the room looked at each other as if to say this has got to be a joke. There is no way they can fine you for being in your room alone and not socializing. So one brave soul raises his hand and asked… would you please define antisocial behavior? The woman giving the lecture looked at him funny and replied that antisocial behavior is being loud and disruptive when you were drunk or having a party at 3AM when other residents were trying to sleep. All of the Americans at one time went Oh! Again the woman looked puzzled and asked what we thought antisocial was. Someone shouted out what the American meaning of antisocial was. We all had a good laugh at that one and still from day to day will say to a fellow roommate who has been in their room a while to not be antisocial or we might have to fine them heavily!