Dispatches from the North: My Anglophile Story

I usually keep my blogging pretty safe, even in my personal blog I tend to avoid the intimate and personal. I write to inform, to relate my observations and to entertain. Putting my feelings out there is just too exposing, like giving someone your diary to read. However, emotion is a huge part of my Anglophile story and I guess since I have been writing for Anglotopia for nearly a year its probably about time I told it. My story isn’t really one of events and places, its a story of dreams and changes. These are the things that brought me here, and in turn being in Britain has changed who I am in many ways and redefined me, all in just over a year.

I have made two “big moves” in my life, and the two moves were so completely different. I graduated from Michigan State University the day after my 22nd birthday and 6 days later I was in a hired U-Haul on my way to Chicago. I had decided before I started my Senior year at MSU that was where I was going. I arrived in Chicago with a goal, and a perfect plan for how I was going to achieve that goal. To make a long story short, my perfect plan had a major flaw. That major flaw was that the Chicago advertising industry didn’t want new graduates. I had to get two years agency experience, but the catch 22 was I couldn’t get a job to get the experience without the experience. Today I only know one person who was able to break into a Chicago ad agency and she did so through family connections (oh, and she hates her job). So I made a career change, got myself in at the ground floor and quickly proved myself and got what I didn’t even know was my dream job until I got it.

My first winter in Chicago

My career in Chicago was one of the most satisfying experiences of my life, so its a testament to how meeting my husband changed me that I left that job and made the second big move of my life. This move to Britain in no way resembled my move to Chicago. I had no plan, I had no expectations, I had no dream. I had a visa and ten boxes which carried all of my earthly belongings. I came to Britain completely free of goals, open to possibilities. For me, this is completely unheard of. I sit here today, and after 15 months in Britain my dream is still forming itself. Its one of those hazy, foggy dreams. It in no way resembles my crisp, vivid and vibrant dreams, the dreams that ultimately carried me to places I didn’t know I wanted to go. The difference is, this is the dream I know will come true. Its the dream I am working the hardest on forming, and its the one that is coming out of what my life is and not what I want my life to be. Its more of a premonition than a story, which I guess is the reason it is so fuzzy.

This first year in Britain has shaped me in ways I didn’t know were possible in a year. I learned to keep in touch with the people who are important to me, I learned how to be a good friend. I learned that I am capable of handling pretty much anything and doing the right thing. I am confident in who I am, and it is this very alien experience that has made that happen for me. My dreams in the past have always taken me to a place I didn’t want to go, first to a career I didn’t know I wanted, and then to a country I didn’t know I wanted to live in. It is only a matter of time before my dreams catch up to my life, so what is my new British dream going to be?

I’ve been thinking lately about two things, the first being starting a family and the second what I want to do with my career. I have started looking into getting my teaching certificate, its only a year course and because of my degree I could teach up to the Sixth Form College level. Sometimes I step back from my life for a moment and look at it, and I don’t recognize what I see. If you had asked me 4 years ago if I wanted a family and if I would consider teaching as a career, I probably would have been insulted at even the suggestion. Now maybe its just plain growing up, but maybe it really is that Britain has changed me because teaching and having a family are things that just seem to fit for me here. I decided to look into teaching because living in this town I see kids who I think really need some inspiration and who could benefit from my experience. I would love to be that person who encourages a kid to enjoy reading, start writing or even to inspire a kid to go to university and get an education that will take them to new places.

I don’t attribute these changes in me to plain old growing up, I really do think they are direct results of my new environment. I finally have found a place where I can see missing pieces around me and these are spaces I want to fill. Instead of getting the feeling like I need to carve out a place for myself, in some ways it feels like maybe there was a place here for someone like me. Out of all the strangeness around me, at the end of it I find I that I fit in here more than I have ever fit in anywhere. Maybe I will be wrong again and this new dream of Britain will once again lead me somewhere I didn’t know I wanted to go, but I have a feeling this dream is going to be the one that sticks.

My first winter in England, atop the North Yorkshire Moors