The Erasmus experience

Life can be depressing. But when you go on Erasmus exchange you realize, that there are hundreds of poeple across the continent with the same problems as you have, same lifes. You meet them, eat with them, spend time together, travel, do shopping with them, study... and when at some point you sit in a room, you realize that every person is of different nationality. It suprises you that you haven't noticed earlier on. But who cares?

I'm him, him and her... I'm polish, scottish, english, irish, german, italian, spanish, portugese, romanian, bulgarian, hungarian, finnish, turkish, czech, sloviakian, french, lithuanian, croatian and american... I'm not one but several. I'm like Europe. I'm all of that. I'm a real mess!

Thanks for good and bad moments. For cheering me up, for all the meetings, dinners and trips. Whether we had a chance to see each other every day or only had a wee chat somewhere, I will miss you all.

I dedicate this video to everyone, not only people from the Room 216 (they know ;)), but also Aynur, Boriana, Courtney, Ania, Lucy, Eva, Kristyna, Masa, Adi, Martina, Aydan, Danny,  Rita, Lea, Katka, Adriana, Monica, Angela, Gokhan, Juan, Peter, Lucas, Tadas, Thea, Mina, Racheal, Robyn, Dunia, Aaron, Will, Anastasia, Amelia. Ivo, Edgar, Neil and everyone else. Thanks!

The University of Wroclaw controversy...

The Baron.

The ones who liked his lectures, often hate him after exam period. The exams are few hours marathons, which even half of the course fail at first attempt. He is said to be rude and even vulgar. He even made one female student cry during the class. But apologised afterwards since it was 'The Art of Negotiation' classwork. This is what I have heard. He is 38 years old and calls himself 'the Baron' in the university hierarchy and does not want to live in mediaeval anymore. Andrzej Dybczyński treats erasmus and international students in the same way that he treats Polish students. He calls us lazy parasites and laughs at national and cultural stereotypes and apparently has a great fun. He does not comply to any standards of political correctness. However, after the fun part he becomes absolutely serious. I remember after a lecture with him, me and my friend shivered for few minutes, wondering whether it was him or cold wind in the corridor. He is a controversial character not only due to his extraordinary methods of teaching but his article in Gazeta Wyborcza dated 28.01.2011 in which he criticised officials of the university and provoked a series of articles concerning the state of University of Wrocław and polish higher education. Since the debate is conducted in polish I will attempt to present main points of his criticism and the debate which according to the newspaper is the biggest criticism the university have ever experienced.

The University of Wroclaw.

There is a tradition that every single rector of the University of Wroclaw is to be portrayed after the end of his term. Recent debate at university concerns the portrait of the previous rector prof. Leszek Pacholski who wanted to be portrayed without rector's uniform - just in a white shirt and black trousers. The specialists, historians, physicians, sociologist and other university professors and doctors comment on this issue in mass media, criticising or emphasizing the symbolicism of this decision. Dybczyński feels embarrassed that rector's portrait is the main problem of one of the greatest universities in Poland.

Professor Klaus Bachmann, who seems one of Dybczyński's allies, has written that the portait debate is not only symbolic. Polish universitites are very weak on  the international stage. Even universitites from other baltic states do better in rankings. We cannot blame communism all the time, these are last 20 years of neglect. The worse university, department, institute is, the more byzantine rituals and more patriarchal structure it has. There are lots of students who deeply believe in great wisdom of their lecturers, believing they are the embodiments of  the greatest philosophers world has ever had. Their belief is profound... at least until they go for Erasmus exchange.

Why is that? According to Bachmann most of the staff at University of Wroclaw have been there for last 30-40 years just swaping 'seats'. Usually doctor at the university has BA, MA and PhD from the same university at which he works now. It is a small family which rules the institutes, departments and whole University. Social mobility hardly exists. Even open contest for positions are constructed in a way that one specific person can win.

Dybczyński argues that University of Wroclaw, like most universities in Poland, is a mixture of feudalism, capitalism and socialism. Mixture of the worst features of these systems. University maintains feudal dependence between young staff and professors, however seniors do not look after their vassals. Capitalist performance is expected when the salaries are rather socialist. Socialist bureaucratic patterns are preserved, while socialist privileges have been abandoned. In his hierarchy students are just peasants and are treated respectivelly. No one would imagine to punish lecturer if he did not turn up for a lecture, not even mentioning not replying for an email. Dybczyński's theory of hierarchy proved to be valid couple of days after his article, when current rector professor Bojarski sent an official order to the deans of faculties to delegate one person for a trip to Smoleńsk (place where polish president's Kaczyński plane crashed in 2010). Many of them refused, pointing out that this has nothing to do with university statute and they are not legally obliged to do so.

However, hundreds of supportive letters and emails Dybczyński has received show that he is not alone. 'Every university has it's own Dybczynski' says one of the article concerning debate. Poland is still a young democracy and changes are needed and with some effort and good intentions they will be implemented. Of course Dybczyński's provocation was planned, he is a professional negotiator after all. We will see the effects of it in next few years.

The Erasmus student.

I have never undertaken studies in Poland before. My high school never expected me to call teachers per professor as it was expected and practised in the best high schools in the city. In english language we do not use forms Mrs and Mr even in formal situations in spoken language very often. We have never had an opening ceremony with rituals at the beginning of the first year. 

From organisational point of view - I mean organisation of international studies - in my opinion, University of Wroclaw is almost a disaster. I had an informal conversation with one of the professors and she apologised me because I had never had chance to register for her modules. Only Faculty of Social Sciences has plenty of modules conducted in english, so other faculties send students to study International Relations and Political Science regardless of the field they are interested in. One girl who came here to study History of Art, but the only modules available in english were "Introduction to History of Art" and "Modern indian culture"... We did not get the plastic ID cards as polish students have, but paper ones. We have to register to each library separately. I cannot say anything bad about teaching level. My modules consist only of those conducted in english which I have to say are on pretty high level, not only because I have taken them from master's programme. It is hard to judge after one week of teaching though. I emigrated to Scotland two years ago and have been socialised into Scottish / British higher education culture. I can understand why polish universities work how they work but I know that from a foreigner perspective it might look ridiculous.

I am Polish. In Dybczyński's hierarchy I might be a merchant from abroad just visitng the country with special privilages. I am glad I have had the chance to study in Scotland and go for Erasmus exchange to Poland. I struggle to be an 'in-betweener' but I am also happy to be that way. I have always liked extraordinary teachers and teaching methods and this is why I like dr Dybczyński's lectures and classes. I admire his contempt for political correctness and courage to express his concers about University.

Links to the articles:

http://wroclaw.gazeta.pl/wroclaw/1,35771,9022221,Jestem_baronem__Nie_chce_dluzej_zyc_w_sredniowieczu.html

http://wroclaw.gazeta.pl/wroclaw/1,35771,9026007,Bachmann__To_nie_krol_jest_nagi__lecz_arystokracja.html

http://wroclaw.gazeta.pl/wroclaw/1,35771,9133022,Dr_Dybczynski_o_uniwersytecie__Chce_lepszego_dzisiaj.html

Bloody foreigner. I am.

I am a bloody foreigner. Since I have gone to Scotland to study I become interested in issues of national identity and so on. So in this note I feel bloody Polish. Next note, I hope will appear sooner or later, will reveal my wee research on Scots and my wee sense of Scottishness.

I would like to introduce you to several passages about Poles and Poland from a wonderful book by Richard Winder Bloody foreigners: The story of immigration to Britian. Chapter: Imperial friends and foes.

There had been a small community of Catholic Poles in England since the late nineteenth century. Joseph Conrad was its most notable member, but perhaps 1,500 of his compatriots came with him as evacuees from unsuccessful sprisings against assorted rulers of Prussia, Austria and Russia.

Just to clarify and introduce Conrad. His polish name was Józef Konrad Korzeniowski and he settled in England in 1894. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelist in english literature. On the Scottish Parliament debate celebrating Scottish - Polish connection (28 October 2009) MSP and historian Christopher Harvie pointed out:

A year or so from now, Glasgow will open probably one of the world's greatest transport museums. It would be excellent if it could commemorate the genius of the Pole Joseph Conrad, the novelist of the sea when the Clyde built the ships and the close friend of that other exotic, Don Roberto Cunninghame Graham, the first president of our own Scottish National Party. It was Conrad, of course, who said in one of his novels, about a character who appears in it:

"He claimed Scottish ancestry, but what ambitious man has not done so?"

It was a nice compliment from an elegant Pole, and something that I hope we will be able to repay.

But going back to polish immigration and history:

When Poland fell into twin invasions of Hitler and Stalin, its army scattered: there was a stampede north to the Baltic and south to Romania. A new government-in-exile landed in London, bringing some three thousands officials and loyalists with it, and settling in South Kensington and Earl's court, an area which soon became known as Little Poland.

The mythology of the Second World War does not always remind us that Stalin invaded Poland only days after Hitler did, in accordance with the agreed carve-up of territory. In the process, he forced the potentially troublesome middle class of eastern Poland into camps in Siberia and Kazakhstan. It is possible that more than one and a half million Poles were transported to the east at this time; nearly a million of them died, mostly from starvation, over the next two years. Somewhere in this population was the doomed army. Four thousand Polish officers had been executed in March 1940 in Katyn Forest near Smolensk and dumped in a mass grave. More than twenty thousand others had suffered tha same fate at various sites. Only under glasnost in the Soviet Union were these details confirmed, and the extermination of these Poles remains one of the most neglected atrocities of an atrocious century.

Ulitimately, a large Polish military presence was stationed in Britain during the war, with an even larger number falling under its dominion overseas... The Royal Air Force accepted fourteen thousand Polish airman from October 1939. Polish pilots shot down one in seven of all German planes destroyed in the Battle of Britain. (Poles from 303 Polish fighting squadron on photo) Polish intelligence units, meanwhile, played a decisive part in the cracking of the German Enigma code, having long before appreciated that modern code-breaking required mathematicians, not rugby blues. The Poles were heroes, and were much mythologised as such - eager, brave, talented, incomprehensible, and palpably our friends. Despite the entrenched belief that one Englishman 'was worth ten bloody foreigners', the public cheered them on, as they did the Czech pilots whose homeland had been overrun in a similar fashion, and who served on similar terms. But in government circles the Poles were thought to be a slightly awkward case: an expatriate chattering class of defeated cavaliers.

The Poles were a frustrating issue especially for the government. Churchill knowing that he was the weakest player at the Yalta conference did not even mention Poland. It was obvious that there was going to be no restoration of independent and free goverment in Warsaw...

The Poles had been flung so far and so fast that many new attachments had formed: some of the soldiers had Romanian, Italian or Egyptian wives, and they did't expect our hospitality (British hopsitality). There were soldiers, civilians, government officials, men, women, children, orphants and exotic wives - 160.000 in all. Churchill, swallowing his personal reservations, rose to the occasion, as he so often did, in the House of Commons: 'His Majesty's Government', he promised, 'will never forget the debt the owe to the Polish troops... I earnestly hope that it may be possible to offer the citizenship and freedom of the British Empire, if they so desire... We should think it an honour to have such faithful and valiant warriors dwelling among us as if they were of our own blood.

Churchill reviewing Polish troops

Unfortunatelly, Home Secretary followed by Foreign Secretary were concerned about other foreigners who would claim equal consideration, hence, situation in which British citizenship was offered to Poles never arosed. Instead, institution known as Polish Resettlement Corps was established. It functioned as a labour exchange assigning Poles to job sectores.

Those traditional opponents of migrant workers - the unions - were among the first to make their voices heard over all this. The government was hoping to make their voices heard over all this. The government was hoping to send two thousand Poles into the coal mines each week. In response National Union of Mineworkers banned all Poles from its pits, even thought there was an estimated labour shortage of a hundred thousand men in the industry.

Maybe these attitudes were a surly a response to the fact that the Poles were (and still are) legendarily hard workers. Perhaps the unions were afraid that their members would be shown up. Two Polish ex-soldiers joined a factory where workers were expected to produce five hundred pins a day. They felt that no one would mind if they produced twelve hundred, but they were sacked. 'Haven forbid that you should work with excessive speed or enthusiasm,' wrote Karol Zbyszewski in one of the many Polish newspapers.

The National Union of Mineworkers achieved a significant victory for its members by agreeing to accept Poles only in return for a five-day week. In January there were 2.764 Poles working in British industry; by October there were 43.000. In the spring of 1950 there were 177 Polish farms, 128 Polish watch repair shops. 78 Polish furniture dealers, 70 Polish fotographers and 50 Polish boarding houses.

There were still occasional episodes of bad-feeling. Ill-wishers accused the Poles of racketeering, prospering while the heroes of El-Alamein were shunned. When a Polish thief went on the run whit a revolver, the papers warned of lawless aliens on the loose in our peaceful little Eden. One opinion poll reported that 56 per cent of Britions thought that the Poles should 'go home'. But there were isolated incidents. there were no racist riots, no attacks on Polish businesses. For the most part, the Poles continued to be thought as valiant Churchillian warriors. Certainly, no group of foreigners had ever melted into british society with such speed and so little clamour. 

Immigration tradition continues in the XXI century.

'New Scots' from Poland doing us proud