University of Malta VS The American College Dream
An Uncanny Resemblence
Growing up watching American TV shows like Zoe101 and Good Luck Charlie made me pretty hyped to finish school and start University. I imagined myself packing all my stuff into brown boxes and labelling them with a permanent marker I pictured saying goodbye to my friends and my annoying sisters, leaving them all to go to “College” and start my adult life. I dreamed of wearing varsity T-shirts for every occasion, joining a sorority and swearing to the vows of sisterhood and hanging out with my multicultural group of friends on the lawn in front of the main building.
As I grew older I realised that none of this was going to happen. Much to my dismay, University of Malta offered none of the above and my years at Uni were pretty anticlimatic. I didn’t get to move into a new dorm and design it with wallpaper and fairy lights. Instead, I got dropped off at the Luxol Bus Stop on September 30th 2016 and this foreshadowed the rest of my UoM experience.
I don’t want to sound melodramatic and unappreciative. It wasn’t all bad. Looking back, UoM had more similarities to American TV shows than I thought.
1. Fresher’s Week
Fresher’s week included signing up to student organisations just for the freebees, entering competitions I’ll never win and playing games at the Vodafone stand. Not to mention getting talked into a career in accounts by some Deloitte employee dressed head to toe in Deloitte merch. If you look at it from a far, it did actually look like a scene from an American college movie, minus the bomber jackets and cheerleaders. The thing about student organisations at UoM is that the majority are related to the course we study. There’s no “Drama Club” or “Feminist Society”. We fall into groups according to what we study and not according to what we’re passionate about. This limits the possibility of making friends with people with similar interests. One of the only non-course-related clubs I can think of is the Malta University Sports Club, which brings me to my next point.
2. MUSC
The Malta University Sports Club gave me a little hope that my dream of being head cheerleader could potentially come into play. Unfortunately, in order for University teams to work, they need other University teams to play against and unless MCAST have been training some secret sports team, MUSC was forced to enter amateur leagues which didn’t create enough hype to get a fan following on campus and have weekly pep rallies around a bonfire.
3. Merchandise
Baseball T shirts, Hoodies, Re-usable coffee mugs and anything that can have an emblem plastered all over it, is what I expected to find as I walked around campus. But other than the KSU coffee cups which spill coffee all over my car and the “One less bottle” which is ironically made of plastic, no other merch has caught my eye. 3 years later I have finally discovered the UoM merch (which can be bought online or outside the canteen next to the KSU office). Here are a couple of my personal faves.
- Firstly, a T-shirt that’s got 6 cats climbing on a “UM” sign. Although there are a couple of cats running around on campus, I wouldn’t really classify this as a defining feature of my university experience, worthy of being put on a T-shirt.
- Secondly, a snapback for anyone who wants to keep the scorching sun out of their eyes or get tremendously bullied to the point of dropping out.
- Next up, and I’m pretty sure the “mascot” for UoM is an owl (Kokka), is a teddy with a “UM” T-shirt on.
- This hoodie is actually pretty cool and comes in 5 colours, 2 shades of grey, navy blue, burgundy and black, which could potentially be considered the colours of UoM so it’s a pity that this is literally the only thing in these colours.
- And last, but most definitely not least, a fan for those ancient lecture rooms that don’t have an AC (which can be purchased for the bargain price of just 2 euro!).
4. Chilling on the “Lawn” with my “Multicultural” new friends
The only thing I could potentially tick off from my university expectations list is this one. Although its not much of a lawn and more like 12 square metres of artificial turf and my multicultural new friends aren’t really multicultural they’re just people who I don’t know from school or dutrina and don’t know everything about me since the day I was born. It’s also completely out of the way in an area that no one really passes from and can probably fit 2 groups of people comfortably.
So even though I didn’t get to live out my American College Dream at the University of Malta, I have done some pretty fun things, met some cool people and learnt an adequate amount of stuff to consider my University of Malta experience so far an almost successful one.
