Deciding to go to Cornell was, by all accounts, an unorthodox decision. No one from my school had ever gone to school in the United States, let alone Cornell. I had to register my school on the Common App, spending hours cajoling my high school’s bureaucracy to make it happen. But I knew Cornell, and more broadly the States, was where I wanted to be. A land of good and plenty, of dynamism and opportunity: compared to the apparent stagnation of Great Britain, the New World beckoned to me, a better, bigger, brighter recapitulation of British culture. A culture of a country still being built, rather than one slowly fading.
I imagine some readers by this point are rolling their eyes at this wide-eyed, naïve attitude (it was hard enough to write, trust me), but I promise this is how I felt. Freshman year, I quickly realized, through a series of successive surprises, that no, America was not merely a bolder, newer version of Great Britain, but something very different entirely. 250 years, it turns out, allows for significant cultural deviation. Alcohol, cars, urbanism, parties, religion, policing, malls, supermarkets, scale — all vastly different in nearly every respect. To some degree this was an unwelcome, disappointing surprise (what do you mean I can’t order a drink?), but in another sense it encouraged me to explore America’s differences, understand why they occurred, and develop an appreciation for its cultural innovations, and a sharp argument against its regressions. I love this country, and I love England, and in the spirit of inducing an even “more perfect Union,” this column will venerate and denounce these differences in turn.
‘Chasing Egregores’ was another name I considered for this column. An “egregore” is a quasi-mythical entity which represents a group's collective thoughts or emotions, so to chase egregores is to seek out the motives or reasons behind particular decisions or phenomena. This spirit (pun not intended) will permeate this column and I hope also inspire others to chase egregores too, to seek out the reasons behind stated reasons, and discover what it is you actually are complaining about.
Why are Cornell’s (and really all) new buildings so ugly? Why can’t we cycle in the Commons? Why can’t I order a beer? The answers to these questions lead to surprisingly deep and unexpected places, and I hope you will follow me as I embark on a journey down various cultural rabbit holes, with an eye, always, to that island across the sea, the great progenitors of these United States.
Wyatt Sell '27 is a (British) student studying Electrical & Computer Engineering. His fortnightly column, An Englishman's Perspective critiques popular social, cultural and political phenomena at Cornell and beyond. He can be reached at wsell@cornellsun.com.
