I arrived at COA as a freshman, but by the time I graduate, I will have only spent two academic years at the college. The academic structure of the college has allowed me to experience a variety of educational experiences and environments. The most significant example of this is the year I spent attending the London School of Economics, an institution that, in many ways, is the antithesis of the College of the Atlantic. I have realized through the different educational experiences that I have had, that while both institutions have their positive and negative elements, they have provided a level of balance in my education that I value highly.

The overall experiences I had at the two colleges were very different, however, the process by which I ended up attending the schools was very similar. I began my experience at both colleges sight unseen. I was a student at Pearson College when I came across a viewbook for the College of the Atlantic. On the cover was a blond man wearing an Indian tunic, sandals and carrying a mountain bike over his shoulder. By the time I had reached the end of the viewbook, I had been convinced to apply. Due to the high costs of attending American universities, I had not previously considered going to school out of the country. In the end, it was the availability of the Davis Scholarship that facilitated my attendance at the college.

I found the view book for the London School of Economics on a table in the Davis Center. I was just returning from Berkeley, California, where I had been working with the Institute for Food and Development Policy on an internship program. Because I had found the viewbook so late in the spring, the deadlines to apply for study abroad programs through COA had all passed. Fortunately for me, the flexibility and intimacy of the college community enabled me to take advantage of the opportunity to study at one of the most prestigious schools in Europe.

Unlike the way I ended up attending the schools, my first impressions of the colleges were very, very different. My first memory of arriving at COA occurred in the kitchen of Seafox. I was staying in the dorm during my OOPS trip, so I was able to meet some of the returning students. The first person I met was in the kitchen baking bread. He was pouring little vials of liquid into the bread dough. Being an enthusiastic and curious new college student, I asked him what was in the vials. He replied that they were filled with the distilled essence of flower spirits. He went on to educate me about how many people believe that flowers have souls, and these souls, in combination with the living yeast in the bread dough combine to make a much better loaf. While I hated to feel so cynical so early on in my experience, I was more than a little concerned as to what I had gotten myself into. Luckily, not everyone I met here had such metaphysical beliefs on baking bread.

The first person I met at the London School of Economics, on the other hand, told me she wanted to be an accountant. She wasn't particularly interested in accounting, or even finance, but she wanted to be rich. She understood that for eight hours a day, for the rest of her career, she would be in an office doing something she didn't particularly like, but she would be financially well off. Money was enough of motivation for her to pursue a career she wasn't passionate about, and coming from COA, this was a relatively foreign concept.

My first impressions of the two schools weren't necessarily illustrative of the overall experiences I had there. This being said, the social environments of the two schools were very different, and I enjoyed them for very different reasons. When I was out in the campus bar at LSE, I would get into debates. For the first time since high school, I was socializing with people who held very different opinions from my own. At COA, I tend to get into political rants with my fellow students, and I find that many (though not all) of us share similar political beliefs. It is implicitly understood that COA students would, for example, never have voted for George Bush in the past election. This kind of assumption could never have been made at LSE, a school where first-year students were wearing suits to their lectures. When I would get into friendly debates at the campus bar there, I would be forced to defend my opinions, to back them up with examples and evidence. I was challenged by my peers to support my stance. For the first time, I was exposed to the opinions of very intelligent students who were far more conservative than myself. One of my closest friends at LSE was a graduate student in the economics department. He was a conservative Republican from Minnesota, and one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. I never would have believed that I would become friends with someone seemingly so different from myself, but I did. One of the things that brought us together was our love of heated discussion. He forced me to back up my statements and enlightened me to a very different perspective on the world that I never would have seen at COA.

While I had variety in political opinions at LSE, I was missing the influence of the arts and sciences offered here. Until I went to LSE, I had taken for granted the influence of the different disciplines that COA has to offer, and the extent to which they are integrated. The crossover of the arts, sciences and humanities provides a much more nuanced understanding of issues in any of the three subject areas. The majority of my classes here have been in the human studies area, but there has always been a level of interdisciplinarity, both in class and outside of it. The students at LSE were incredibly focused in their areas of study. The British school system begins channeling students into certain disciplines as early as the age of 16. As a result, the university structure is very specialized. There is little room to explore and expose you to different fields of study. Over my four years at COA, I have watched myself and my friends dabble in various disciplines and almost invariably find something that ignites a very special spark. That, to me, is what Human Ecology allows•an exploration of a variety of perspectives. Without the flexibility to do this, I may have never discovered my interest and aptitude in economics, a field that I had no interest in upon my arrival at COA.

The interdisciplinary position of COA, as well as its size has positive and negative consequences. One of the most amazing aspects of COA for me has been the small class sizes and close relationships with my professors. I rarely spoke with any of my professors while at LSE. Even the graduate students who taught the small classes once a week seemed unapproachable. This would never be an issue at COA, a place where I know professors I've never taken classes with by their first names.

The upside of attending a large school is the names and reputations that come with it. I was not only able to sit in on lectures by researchers whose papers I had studied at COA, but was able to take courses from them. And while the personal connection was missing, the opportunity to hear Robin Burgess and Stuart Corbridge lecture on a regular basis, not to mention the incredible guest speakers who appeared regularly at public lectures at the school, was an amazing experience. In some ways, it brought academia down to a much more accessible level for me. I realized that the authors behind articles aren't old men with white hair who exist solely in the ivory tower, but are actual people who are actively involved in research and discussions to better articulate their arguments. Having direct access to these significant names in the field of international development made me a more critical reader of academic papers. So while the size of LSE and COA is vastly different, each situation has its own positive qualities.

Perhaps the most abstract way in which I saw a difference between the two institutions is in the way in which students are encouraged to learn. My macroeconomics lecturer told me that the class shouldn't study in groups for the final exam because we couldn't take the final exam in groups. This was a completely foreign notion to me. The collaborative learning process that occurs at COA is one of the most valuable aspects of my education here. More often than not, I am able to learn more from small, informal study groups and conversations outside the classroom than within the space and time of the course.

The London School of Economics, like many British institutions, emphasizes memorization of facts and techniques within a well-defined series of classes that produce professionals with a clearly understood set of skills. I've taken two final exams during my four years at COA. The approach here is very different. But while I've done little in the way of memorization, I feel like I am adept at gathering the information I need for papers or presentations. One experience that struck me at LSE occurred in my geography class. We were preparing to write an essay, and unlike COA, most of the papers that were written had both the topics (and a suggested bibliography) assigned. We were told to come up with our own research materials for this particular essay and the students were at a loss. There was a swarm around the professor of desperate students trying to figure out where they were supposed to gather this kind of information. This would never be a problem at COA, where we are encouraged to not only create our own research questions, but are expected to be able to gather the information we need to answer these questions. Since arriving at COA, I have been encouraged to engage in my own learning, specializing in the areas that I find most interesting through focused research papers and final projects. I feel that having the ability to create one's own questions is equally, if not more important, than finding the answers to questions asked by others. I feel that the distinction between the learning approaches can be best articulated as follows: while LSE teaches you what to learn, COA teaches you how to learn.

The dichotomy of the College of the Atlantic and the London School of Economics has provided me with a balance in my education that would not have been achieved had I limited my educational experiences to one institution. It was the flexibility of the Human Ecology program that has allowed me to specialize on the issues of economic development from an interdisciplinary perspective. By allowing me the freedom to create my own path of study and incorporate other institutions and their perspectives, I have been able to prepare myself for whatever comes next.