Chevening: The Journey
In September 2017, along with 5 extraordinary young Moroccans I was selected by the UK Embassy in Morocco to pursue an Msc. in the United Kingdom, all expenses covered, through the prestigious Chevening Scholarship. In this piece I call “The Journey”, I talk about the year of my life that I spent learning about myself.
Chapter 1: Landing
After weeks of preparation, I arrived in London on the 16th of September, a typical rainy British day. My flight landed in London Gatwick airport, just 20 minutes by train (or so Google said) from my new university: University of Sussex. “Mind the Gap”, the announcement at the train station said, and I want to keep this sentence here as I will be referring back to it somewhere at the end of this post.
I took the Southern Railway train to Brighton, from which I took another train to Falmer, a quiet village right on the outskirts of the city, where the university is located. I had watched almost every video on Youtube about the university, but seeing this large concrete sign at the entrance was a whole different experience :
If you’re reading this and you’re going to Sussex Uni, keep this in mind: the campus is huge. It took me a while to find my accommodation, which was on-campus, at the Northfield blocks (I’ll add a photo for suspense sake) with the help of university ushers who were there to assist on moving day .
After unpacking my 5 suitcases (only one of them turned out to be useful as far as the UK weather is concerned), I took the rest of the day to explore campus, and if you’re going to Sussex, I recommend you do the same on your first day.
Chapter 2: The Orientation
One month in, it was finally time to meet each and every one of the 1,700 selected 2017–2018 Cheveners (that’s what we call ourselves) from across the globe under one roof, at the ExCel convention centre in London.
If there’s one day you should look forward to as a new Chevening scholar, it’s the orientation day. It’s the day you meet some of the brightest minds of your generation (and sometimes of different generations) in one place, and begin to forge (sometimes lifelong) connections with some of them. And it’s the day you get to thank your POs for all the hard work they’ve done to date.
The orientation is also what I like to call the day of the cultures. Chevening encourages to dress traditionally for this gathering, and for good reasons. Unluckily for me I couldn’t dress up traditionally for this one, but I will later in the post.
And also an opportunity for Chevening-branded photos.
All the photo-taking aside, we started the year with an excellent speech by Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick CBE who spoke to us about many of the topics that Chevening stands for as a brand, and an international excellence programme. I highly recommend replaying his speech video, which I’m linking to here.
Chapter 3: #UniLife
The main part of the Chevening journey is of course your studies, after all that’s primarily why we’re in the UK.
UK universities have a somewhat intellect-centric approach to teaching, insofar that the entire programme is designed to encourage the student research, debate, challenge and criticise the textbooks. It is all about ‘Critical thinking’. It may be difficult at first to adopt this mindset, especially when we are taught that the teacher is right, always. In the UK education system no one is right, which may be odd at first, but there is always an open debate, and the more you participate in the debate and bring in novel ideas and arguments (or counter-arguments), the higher your grade is.
I was taking the Information Technology and Management course, it was an intersection between IT, which is my profession, and business management, which is something I love to study. UK universities tend to offer these inter-disciplinary programmes to broaden the scope of the student’s specialisation, and sometimes to create new disciplines altogether. The programme was thought-stimulating to say the least, as the content was challenging and intellectually rich at the same time. I had the freedom to create, which I found to be extremely fascinating, by that I mean I had the ability to improve upon existing theories and sometimes building counter arguments as to why a widely adopted approach may not be the best. This again brings us back to the critical thinking approach followed religiously by the UK universities. And I believe that’s an integral factor of what sets them apart in the league tables.
Uni life is not just study life is it?- because Chevening covers all expenses, I had enough time to join university groups and societies, participate in all kinds of activities and events, help out on university open days, and volunteer to teach girls to code with Code First Girls UK.
Chapter 4: Brighton and Hove
I was based in Brighton, the actual name of the city is Brighton and Hove, after merging the city of Brighton with the city of Hove in 2001.
Brighton is a vibrant city in the southern coast of Sussex County. It is perhaps one of the most vibrant cities in England, especially in the summer months when the pebble beach of Brighton is usually filled with people from neighbouring cities, especially those from London, which is 50 minutes away by Train.
If you’re going to Brighton, here is a piece of advice: beware of the seagulls. they think they own the place, and they will confiscate everything you own, especially chips.
Brighton is famous for a few things, its iconic fish & chips, the Palace Pier, the Royal Pavilion, and it was ranked in 2018 as the world’s capital of hipsters. There is plenty to do, again especially in summer.
Not very far from the city are a few must-sees as well, such as the Seven Sisters cliffs in Seaford.
Chapter 5: The travels
Anyone who knows me knows I love travelling, and the Chevening year was an opportunity for me to travel around the UK. From the busy streets of London to the Halal food stores of Birmingham up until the stunning architecture of Edinburgh and crossing the sea towards the breath-taking views of Belfast, I have seen a good part of the country. You may think the British accent is, well, British. But to my surprise every part of the UK has its own accent, the most difficult for me to understand were those spoken in Liverpool and Glasgow, whereas I felt more at ease with the London and Brighton accents.
Travelling in the UK does not feel like travelling within one country, as each and every part has its distinctive features that make it feel like a whole new experience, which is why I only left the UK to visit my family in Morocco, I took the time during my holidays to discover as much of the UK as I could.
Here are some photographs I’ve been collecting for different things:
- Castles: there are over 1,500 castles in the UK. Granted I’ve only seen a few, but there was a Chevener in the past years who made it her mission to see them all.
- Busses: this one may be odd to some, but I love collecting photographs of busses. Their unique colours are carved in my head as a signature of the city they operate in.
- universities: the UK is home to some of the best universities worldwide, it’s not difficult to see why some of these are considered educational icons.
Chapter 6: The Chevening Conference
Every year Chevening scholars gather on 3 occasions, 2 of which are mandatory gatherings: the orientation and the farewell, and one depends on availability as it falls in the middle of the academic year, this last one is called the Chevening Annual Conference. In 2018 it was held in the beautiful city of Bristol.
The Chevening conference is somewhat like a ‘mid-term’ gathering where Cheveners present some work (research, posters, reports, etc ..). It’s an opportunity to catch up halfway and measure our progress thus far and renew energy and motivation for the second half of the journey, and for travellers like me, explore another city.
And of course, never miss an opportunity to #represent.
The annual conference brings us together to discuss the major issues of our world, I remember participating in a debate around ‘Fake News’ and how this phenomenon has taken various shapes and sizes in recent years.
After 2 days of intellectual stimulation, it was time to go back to studying.
Chapter 7: The thesis
The 3rd semester of the year in the UK is the thesis, or dissertation semester. This is a 3 to 4 month period where students are asked to choose a research topic or a project to work on and apply the knowledge they’d learned throughout the year. It’s an opportunity for the student to create a genuine piece of research or a novel project entirely by herself/himself, supervised by one of the faculty members. My project was about something called the Blockchain and how it applies in a smart home context, but I won’t really get into detail here.
This is the part of the year where we spend half the day in the lab and the other half in the library, adopting the ‘a sandwich is a whole meal’ mindset and reading as many journal articles as we could fit into a single day.
Keep in mind, this period can be intense, and may cause some mental hardship. But eventually, the project or research almost always comes together nicely and we submit on time.
By the end of these 3 months, comes arguably one of the proudest moments of a student’s academic year: Graduation.
Chapter 8: The Chevening Farewell
If the Chevening orientation event in London is probably the day we anticipate the most as Chevening scholars, as it officially kicks off the Chevening journey, the farewell event has got to be one of the least anticipated, because it marks the end of the journey. On that day, July 4th 2018, all Cheveners from across the UK gathered in Victoria Palace in London to celebrate a year well spent, to reflect on the adventures and challenges of the first phase of the Chevening journey, and get inspired and energised for the next phases. I say first phase because the year in the UK was only the beginning of a long journey of self discovery, and worldwide excellence. The farewell event is also a snapshot of what Chevening is all about : diversity. We were encouraged to wear our traditional outfits again for this one, and I think that was a brilliant idea. For about half a day the Victoria Palace had been a colourful representation of many of the world’s cultures, heritage and history. We were all studying different things, we had business analysts, law specialists and artificial intelligence experts, but that event wasn’t about studying, it was about culture, and stories. Each one of us represented their country, shared stories about their local food, and opened up about their plans for a post-chevening life. So, after a year of world class learning, reflection on self, and loads of fun, we were ready to go back to our home towns and tell our people about the new friends we made from countries we (sometimes, rare times but it happens) didn’t know existed. Every one of us was an ambassador of their culture and customs, and I was proud to represent Morocco, and my hope is that someone somewhere knows a little more about a country that shaped the course of history on many occasions. Chevening is about many things, one of the most important is embracing one’s own heritage, and at the same time being open and excited to discover others.
Chapter 9: Graduation
I don’t think this chapter needs me to write anything. But I will write about the feeling of completing a Master’s degree in one of the world’s leading universities; it was surreal.
It was time to go home.
Thoughts
I remember the gentleman who said ‘Mind the Gap’ when I first arrived in London, he probably meant the gap between the train and the platform. But I think we should all be mindful of the gap between where we are and where we want to be, if that gap seems a little larger than we’d like it to be, maybe it’s time to take on a new challenge. After all that’s how we grow as humans. This year was challenging in every aspect, but the growth was proportional in every aspect.
If you are considering applying for the Chevening scholarships but you think you’re not quite there, I’m here to tell you that I was in that place, and again, it almost always turns out fine. The key is to take on the challenge and give it the best you can. And trust me, it is worth it.
و السلام
