Prior to this school year, I had only written sports articles for the Maine Campus. When I went and studied in Scotland for the fall semester of this year (my senior year) I really wanted to write the study abroad column for the paper, because I knew it would be a great way to document my experience as well as to share it with other people in a way that wasn’t, “Look at me, look what I’m doing,” but rather a shared experience where I could make fun of myself and have fun discovering the land where legends like Groundskeeper Willie and Fat Bastard uttered their first words only a few short decades ago.

The weekly study abroad column was rightfully part of the culture section so I was a writer for culture throughout the fall, but I never really felt like I was necessarily in the culture section, or part of that group of writers. I was thousands of miles away, so most of my writing felt like it was its own thing, and it pretty much was. I had a ton of fun with it, and at the end of the fall semester, when I had arrived back in Maine for spring semester, I was asked if I wanted to continue writing for culture. I said yes, not really thinking about it, but then was sort of nervous and unenthused about it. What did I know about culture? How was I supposed to knowledgeably write about it? Was it just going to be a bunch of art galas and ballet recitals?

While there were certainly art galas and ballet recitals to report on, peers of mine who were much better suited for the job undoubtedly wrote them. The stories I did cover, however, heavily shaped my perspective on journalism in ways that I hadn’t necessarily given enough consideration to. Experiencing clubs like the Dungeons and Dragons Club, interviewing people for the #YouMaine stories, reviewing albums and comic books, and being forced to write thoughtfully on poetry slams and combined band concerts expanded my journalistic skill set as well as opened my eyes to the events and opportunities both at the university and in the greater Bangor area.

The Maine Campus is essential for journalism students because, at least in my case, it gives professionalism and legitimacy to what becomes a considerable chunk of the body of work in our resume and portfolio. Prior to this year, all the consistently-paying, journalistic-style writing I was doing for a legitimate publication was for the Maine Campus, and it was always about sports. All my writing other than my sports writing was for a class. While writing papers for a class can sometimes produce great stories, it can often be harder to find those stories and gain access to crucial people associated with the story because you don’t have a publication behind you. Sometimes it feels foolish to say to a potential interviewee that it’s simply “for a class.” But when it’s for the Maine Campus, it feels more legitimate both in the writer’s and the interviewee’s eyes, at least in my own experience.

Writing for the culture section opened my eyes to the University of Maine and its unique culture. There are so many events that I never would have gone to and clubs that I never would have known about had I not been part of the culture section, simply because many of them need to be sought out. They rely on people seeing and reading flyers in the Memorial Union. And it took until the final semester of my senior year to really understand how much is going on! If I could go back in time knowing what I know now, I’d first stop the Brady strip sack on the final drive of the 2017 Super Bowl, and then I would write about culture sooner.  Writing for culture was a welcomed new experience, and I think sports writing has helped improve my culture writing and vice versa.

If this isn’t an endorsement to try to write for the paper and to perhaps dabble in genres you may be unsure about (and if it isn’t just me doing some nostalgic navel-gazing), it’s certainly an endorsement to make an effort to experience both the UMaine culture and the cultures surrounding the university.

The University of Maine Campus Activities Board (CAB) hosted their biannual poetry slam in the North Pod of the Memorial Union on Friday, April 6. Eight budding poets shared their original poems in a three-round competition.

The host for the night, Cameron Grover, started things off by telling the audience that they were part of the poets’ performances. He encouraged audience members to snap when something resonated with them and to be engaged and participative listeners.

Grover has been a part of many of the CAB’s poetry slams and was visibly happy with the turnout for the ninth poetry slam the organization has put on since Spring 2014.

“Creative and emotional outlets that give students a voice are what is needed on college campuses today,” Grover said.

Then it was time for the first round, which was highlighted by Annabelle Osborne’s “10 things that will happen when the person you fall for just wants to be friends with benefits,” Cara Morgan’s piece about why Pride Month isn’t bull—-, and Jennifer McArthur’s piece, which included lines such as, “You are Purell in an open cut” and, “You are the pots and pans on the stove after having just done the dishes.”

The poetry slam felt very communal, so even though the poets were competing, they helped each other and gave feedback on one another’s work.

“I wrote one of the poems I performed tonight last week from 4 to 5 a.m.,” McArthur said. “But I have other poems I’ve worked on for two years. So I guess it all depends on the poem. But I look at my poems almost every day.”

“Poetry is alive. It’s always moving and changing and evolving. And that also comes from people outside of your work,” Morgan said. “So exchanging poems like we do and giving feedback to each other is so important.”

Many of the evening’s poems were deeply personal, and everyone had their own unique process for writing and recitation.

“My process is basically spilling my heart out and then making it into something decent,” Osborne said.

The next two rounds were highlighted by Aliya Uteuova’s “A Sacred Lesson,” in which her grandmother compares the fingers on a palm to the religions of the world, Harmony Stetson’s piece that compared surrounding oneself with others who have like-minded opinions to “strategically placed windows” in a home and a moving piece by Morgan about a friend’s overdose.

“That was something that took me three years and I wrote it in 40 minutes,” Morgan said. “So it kind of depends on how long you’ve had those thoughts and how you need to get them out.”

After much deliberation from judges and many drum rolls from the audience, Osborne was awarded third place, Uteuova second and Morgan first.

“I have never participated in a poetry slam before. My reading has been very personal and with my friends in a very small group,” Osborne said. “This is very incredible to have people think that I’m actually good and have people come up and compliment my work.”

Regardless of how they finished, all of the poets seemed happy to have a place to share their work and bare their souls.

“I think people have this idea of poetry as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. You expose people to slam and they find something they can connect with,” Morgan said. “It’s the communication of emotion and feeling through poetry. It’s such an important art form. A lot of the people today, we didn’t know each other but we all just exchanged information and we’re friends now.”

This article has been updated from it’s original publication.

The premise of Fred Armisen’s comedy special “Stand Up For Drummers” is in the name. The Netflix special starts with cuts of fans in line outside a theater playing snare drums as a drumming trial to get into the show, with the bouncers letting only the competent drummers pass. Already, the show was a little different and I was intrigued.

Armisen is best known for his time as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2002 to 2013 and for his performance on the popular Independent Film Channel show “Portlandia.” He is now the leader of The 8G Band, which is the house band for “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” Armisen proves his drumming chops with a little solo at the beginning of the special and with other solos and riffs throughout the show.

Armisen’s jokes and bits move quickly. He switches from thought to thought with few long, drawn out premises. He relates to his crowd and doesn’t go too far above them. It’s very conversational, clever and relatable and the laughs for his jokes build from smatterings to very collective within each joke. It feels as if the people in the room are looking around at each other, recognizing they’re all drummers, and realizing how funny the jokes are because of their common thread.

But even for the non-drummers at home like myself, it resonates. I was in my high school band so I have a decent amount of musical knowledge and I can see the humor in it, but I think it would resonate for everyone. While the majority of Armisen’s premises are music based, they often split off into impressions, funny hypotheticals or a genre-related critique encompassing a switchboard that Armisen himself controls from onstage with the tap of his finger.

Armisen touches on hotel lobby music, jazz, circus music, blues, heavy metal and doo-wop music within the first 10 minutes of the show. The hilarious remarks on each give the feeling that only Armisen could come up with them, because they are so uniquely him.

He then begins to point out drummers’ quirks and the sometimes ridiculous lengths drummers go to because of their particularities and neuroses. Armisen fills the silences perfectly and plays off the audience’s reactions masterfully, similar to the way he did on SNL and now does in bits on Late Night.

Beyond the already inventive idea of drumming while doing stand up and centering most of his jokes on drum equipment and the comedy of drumming, Armisen also gets creative with a bit where he walks offstage saying he’s going to go get a double kick pedal and then appears on a TV screen onstage in a prerecorded bit.

He then takes a break from drumming and indulges the crowd with accents from across the United States. After saying he’s toured a lot and noticed the way different people talk, Armisen brings out a long pointer stick and a map of the United States and proceeds to point his way across the country, offering hilarious accents along the way — including him rapidly switching between the different accents of the boroughs of New York City. It is masterfully done from start to finish, an absolute riot and a quick break from drumming-related comedy.

A little over halfway through the show, Armisen takes the audience on a journey of “drum kits through the decades,” starting with the 1920s and 30s and ending with the 2000s. Armisen still drops funny lines but this portion is primarily dedicated to teaching and basking in his, and the audience’s love for drums.

Don’t be deterred if you’ve never drummed, thought about drums or cared at all about drums. This special will make you laugh, as Armisen’s range is on full display and it’s staggering.

Alpha Omicron Pi (AOII) held their 16th annual Mr. Fraternity event on Wednesday evening, as a man from each University of Maine fraternity chapters competed for the hearts of the audience and the judges in a beauty pageant-style competition. The event is put on each year to raise money for the Arthritis Foundation, which seeks to find a cure for the joint disease.

The event consisted of three rounds of competitions: the introduction, the talent round, and the formal wear and questions round. Eight judges from various UMaine sororities judged the 12 contestants. The Collins Center audience, which was practically full other than the balcony, rivaled that of a UNH hockey game when it came to sharing their delight and distaste with the performers.

The introductions consisted of each contestant being introduced one-by-one on stage by AOII announcers Faith Perez and Morgan Campbell as they critiqued each of the men’s bios. After the introductions, Pi Kappa Phi’s representative, Emmett Craggy, revealed that he would donate his winnings to ending childhood obesity — a noble cause, no doubt, but one that was shut down by the announcers as they had to break it to Craggy that all money would be going to arthritis.

Zach LaBonne of Alpha Tau Omega christened himself not “the hero that Greek life needs, but the hero it deserves,” while Elliot Sanders of Iota Nu Kappa cut right to the chase saying he deserves it simply because he “has the personality and is tall.” Dominic Haritos from FIJI told the judges: “When you think of Mr. Fraternity, you think of me.”

After the introductions, the crowd was itching to see the men’s talent acts and they equally impressed and disappointed — often times within the same act.

Oskar Matero of Alpha Gamma Rho kicked it off by unicycling in a circle, dismounting and then juggling three balls. As the roar of the crowd built, Matero — perhaps unscripted — began to attempt the unicycling-juggling combination, which progressively earned him more and more boos as the unicycle wobbled and the balls went every which way. Luckily Matero was able to escape the stage with some cheers, as the crowd seemed to appreciate the effort.

Not to be outdone, Jesse Hutchinson of Alpha Sigma Phi lit the arena on fire when he stripped on stage for not one, not two, but three of his fraternity brothers dressed in business attire. Clad in a rainbow boa, a blue wig and some black lingerie, Hutchinson popped, locked, grinded and thrust to the crowd’s approval.

Next was LaBonne from Alpha Tau Omega, who went in a different direction with the talent portion. LaBonne decided to read Dr. Seuss’s “Oh The Places You’ll Go,” a book his grandmother used to read to him when he was younger.

“My grandmother would always read books to me, and the book I chose to read one stage was one of my favorites,” LaBonne said. “My grandmother had rheumatoid arthritis and died of a brain aneurysm when I was six. My goal was to raise awareness within the crowd, and help AOII with their goal.”

Other performances included singing and guitar by Delta Tau Delta’s Teddy Crockett, Sigma Phi Epsilon’s Andrew Arsenault, and Tau Kappa Epsilon’s Ethan O’Rourke. Willard Swift from Theta Chi, a true showman, indulged the crowd by singing a Frank Sinatra medley.

Craggy came in hard with some slam poetry, reenacting Jonah Hill’s monologue from “22 Jump Street” and igniting the crowd. Andrew Petherick from Lambda Chi Alpha did a front flip while donning a male romper, and Sanders showed off his leg speed by dancing for the crowd while demonstrating his patriotism with various props.

“I think I did alright,” Craggy said. “The crowd seemed to have fun which is all that really matters.”

“I completely forgot a part that would have been funny,” Sanders said. “I did it for ‘Murica.”

After the question portion, which consisted of questions about everything from competitor’s perfect date to their most embarrassing moment, the scores were in. Through a scoring method combining the judges’ scores with the amount of money each fraternity made for arthritis, Sigma Chi took third, Theta Chi took came in second and Delta Tau Delta’s Crockett was crowned UMaine’s 2018 Mr. Fraternity.

“The crowd was getting behind the contestants, which was nice to see,” Sigma Chi’s Ryan McGinty said. “Overall a successful event that raised lots of money for a great cause.”

The event raised $3,000 this year for the Arthritis Foundation.

While most car washes are closed on Monday nights at 8 o’clock, the College Avenue Car Wash keeps its lights on. Teagan Prince, the president of the University of Maine Car Club, used to host meetings in parking lots around campus until his girlfriend’s family was nice enough to let him use their car wash for the weekly meetings.

“We started off with just a bunch of guys in parking lots crawling under cars with flashlights,” Jack Houtz, a member of the car club since 2016, said. “Now we’ve got this place on Monday nights, which we’re very appreciative of.”

Prince started the club four years ago, when he arrived at UMaine as a freshman. Like many incoming first years, he didn’t know many people on campus and wanted to find a club where he could meet friends with similar interests. When he found out there wasn’t an existing car club, he decided to make one and it soon garnered a lot of interest.

“It was me and two other guys sitting and doing homework one night my freshman year, procrastinating of course,” Prince said with a laugh. “We said ‘we should join a club. What club?’ There were none we were super interested in. I’m not really athletic, but we were all into cars so we said ‘well let’s make our own club, you only need five people.’”

In four years, the club has gone from Prince and a couple of his friends to a close-knit group of car lovers. While attendance at meetings can vary due to weather and school commitments, the group has over 200 members on its Facebook page and the overall turnout at meetings continues to increase.

“We’re a bunch of people who are into cars or who want to get into cars but don’t have a lot of background in it,” Prince said. “It’s a very ‘you teach me and I’ll teach you’ type of thing. Everything from how to change a tire to how to repair your engine.”

The club goes far beyond cars. In addition to working on cars and learning the skill from others, there’s plenty of time to talk, laugh and hangout. This has bred some invaluable friendships along the way.

“When I came here, living eight hours away, it’s always daunting coming into a whole new world. By sophomore year I was getting my feet down and through this club I’ve met friends who have saved my butt when I really needed help,” Houtz said. “One time my car broke down way out on a logging road and some of my good buddies who I met through car club came out with a trailer and picked me up, brought me home, and we all fixed my car that day.”

“It’s fun, it’s social, it’s making new friends. I didn’t know any of these guys before the club,” Prince said. “I’d say half my friends at UMaine I met here at one point. And it’s a learning experience. You can’t get this stuff in any class that I know of at UMaine.”

The group welcomes and even encourages people who may not know much about cars but who have an active interest in them to join. Even stronger than many members’ love for cars is their love for teaching. Corbin Study, a third-year electrical engineering student, has a shop in southern Maine. When he’s in Orono, he likes to impart his knowledge on members of the car club.

“I like teaching people like ‘hey, here’s how this works. Here’s what you gotta fix, if you need help with anything I’ll show you how to do it,’” Study said.

“This is for people who know nothing about cars and just want to learn. Even if it’s as simple as learning how to jump-start a car, we’ve got 30 guys around who can tell you how to do it,” Prince said. “If you want to get into it, this is the way to do it.”

When asked if he wants to make cars his career, Study was hesitant to say yes.

“I was thinking along those lines,” Study said. “But then I thought ‘do I want to make my hobby my life?’ It’s one of those things, like if you’re a chef and you cook all the time do you want to go home and cook again?”

Regardless of whether they want to make cars their career, members agree that the knowledge they’ve gained through car club will be beneficial forever.

“My sister’s car just broke a valve cover gasket the other day and between the part and the oil and getting it to the shop and all the labor, it probably would’ve been a couple hundred dollar job,” Houtz said. “Her and I went to Bangor, bought the parts, came back to my place where she parked her car, and we did it in my driveway in the evening. In the dark and cold, which sucks, but for $22 we were able to do a $300 job.”

Charles McKee is a 38-year-old electrical engineering technology student at the University of Maine who lives on French Island with his wife and two kids. He has previously been a Staff Sergeant in the Air Force and has small business aspirations upon graduation. On Fridays from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., however, he becomes the Worldmaster of Daggerford, a fictional town in Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), a role-playing game that McKee has played for years and has now turned into a club at UMaine.

McKee describes D&D, a role-playing game based on a series of books, as “collaborative storytelling.” The game is traditionally played like a board game; people sit around a table and roll dice. But McKee doesn’t like to put the game in a box. He says that there are many different versions, but all you really need in order to play is an active imagination.

“We call playing with purely your imagination ‘theatre of the mind.’ You can actually play without character sheets, without any of the books, nothing,” McKee said. “Just purely your imagination.”

Although his group plays a more organized version of the game than ‘theatre of the mind,’ he likes that the game can be played anywhere without needing any equipment.

“It is possible to play without ever having seen the books and just make everything up on the fly,” McKee said. “As long as you have a referee in place, it works.”

UMaine D&D plays a version of the fifth edition of D&D, which is the most recent edition of the game to come out. McKee’s Worldmaster duties primarily consist of “governing the world and making sure that everything stays consistent between adventurers and dungeon masters.” It’s a role McKee relishes in, and his love for the game is visible. He dons an “Ask me about Dungeons and Dragons at UMaine” pin, one of the many ways he gets the word out about the club he started at the beginning of last semester. Recruitment is one of his top priorities and after only five months, McKee says he averages 20-60 people each Friday, some of whom may be visiting from other places.

D&D is usually played with a maximum of eight people, but McKee has had to alter the rules of the game to accommodate the group’s size. In the version McKee’s group plays, characters can come in and out of the adventure, so absences and overcrowding aren’t as much of an issue. This has opened the game up to visitors.

“D&D is a community,” McKee said. “So we’ve had people who are just passing through or only visiting the area come to our meetings because they play and they heard about us. We play a version that’s more flexible in terms of the amount of people who can play.”

The group meets every Friday in Neville 100, and while the meetings start at 4 p.m., the first hour is usually just for socializing and hanging out. At around 5 p.m., McKee, the Worldmaster of the game, starts addressing his constituents. The smattering of conversation that’s going on in Neville 100 starts to slowly die down and the members direct their attention toward the front of the room, where their Worldmaster stands. But instead of just running down a list of club information and upcoming events before getting to the game, as would be typical for a club meeting, McKee takes on a serious topic. He uses the time to teach the club’s members about how to address the reputation and stigma that D&D is often saddled with.

As McKee says, sure there’s the “dungeons and dragons is just a bunch of white guys in their basements prancing around and eating nachos,” a stigma which he quickly refutes by acknowledging the diverse set of members the group boasts. But it goes further than that. McKee proceeds to enlighten the group with more serious examples of people misunderstanding D&D and the people who play it.

“I’ve heard of pamphlets being spread around talking about how (D&D) taught children to learn how to worship demons,” McKee told the club. “There were stories about kids in college who were running around sewers and committing suicide because they thought the game was real or bulls—t like that, which isn’t the case at all. They committed suicide because they were depressed and D&D was one of their few outlets to be social.”

“That’s one of the many uphill battles we’ve been fighting the last 25 years in getting the game out there to people,” McKee said to the group. “When you go out there and someone looks at your button and goes ‘oh hell no’ and walks away, that’s why.”

McKee’s love for D&D goes beyond the University of Maine campus to French Island in Old Town. McKee donates as much time and materials as he can to teaching younger generations about the game he loves, something he says is important for the game’s longevity.

“If you don’t keep the thing going, we’re the last ones,” McKee said. “It’s always that way.”

Still, McKee encounters obstacles because of the way the game can be perceived by the public.

“In just this last year I had a mother ask if I was going to teach her kid how to summon the demons,” McKee said. “I said ‘just an imaginary one. It’s not like anything is going to actually show up because they don’t exist. If you think they’re real there’s something wrong with you.’ She got really mad at me because she obviously thinks they’re real.”

The club is not solely confined to UMaine students. While many members do go to UMaine, others are not in college or they go to other schools in the greater Bangor area. Alex Bickford, a member of the club and a student at Eastern Maine Community College, says the club is a social group at its core.

“A lot of times, people who play D&D and are attracted to it kind of have a niche interest in science fiction things,” Bickford said. “When you’re in a room with 40 people who are all playing it, you have this feeling like ‘well everyone in here is probably into some of the same stuff as I am.’”

Amy Segee, a UMaine graduate student in marine science, also noted the social aspect of the game and describes it as “an excuse to start socializing.”

“It’s a very good opportunity for people who are kind of anti-social simply because if you are a person who has difficulty figuring out social cues or something like that, it’s easier to disassociate yourself just a little bit because you’re playing a character,” Segee said. “Sometimes it’s easier to figure out how a character would react in a situation than it is to say ‘how should I react to this situation?’”

Victoria Sikorski, a first-year engineering physics student, just started playing D&D. She says it has provided a welcoming social group in her first year of college.

“Knowing the D&D world was somewhere that I could be a character and I could pretend to be someone else was very welcoming,” Sikorski said. “It’s very accepting and that’s why I wanted to get into it.”

Beyond the social aspect of the game, McKee points out how valuable he believes the experience will be when he is seeking jobs.

“It is a bullet point on my resume,” McKee said. “It meets two to four times monthly for collaborative team building exercises. What’s more to say?”

McKee has tried to create a culture that is accepting of everyone, and his views are clearly shared by the club’s members. The group has diverse, male and female members, and people from all different walks of life. When it comes down to it, UMaine D&D is just like a sports team or any other type of club. It’s a group of people with a passion for the same thing who get together and do the thing they’re passionate about. That excitement is evident in McKee’s eyes when he talks about his first D&D character.

“I started playing when I was seven? Eight? My first character was a wizard. Actually, no, they didn’t call them wizards then. They called them mages,” McKee said with a nostalgic grin. “I multi-classed him into a fighter mage.”

The Google Arts and Culture App has a new feature: matching people’s selfies with the closest thing to a look-alike face of someone in a historical painting. For the past week or so, everyone from Jake Tapper to Kate Hudson to your Uncle Brian to your cousin Alyssa has been posting their Google Arts and Culture selfies on social media, and some of them are shockingly accurate. I decided to use the app with my two roommates, Nick and Nate, to try and find out just how accurate the app is.

Nick:

It would be very remiss of me not to first acknowledge the nine-pound breathing apparatus in the room: the nose. Upon first reaction, Nick could only muster a hearty laugh, followed by a deep sigh, and then the quiet muttering of,

“That’s messed up. That’s accurate. But hurtful.”

Nick’s clearly being modest by saying his results are accurate. Perhaps if his schnoz was stung by a swarm of bees it would have a chance at being accurate, but otherwise the nose in the painting is Hagrid and Nick’s nose is Harry.

Me:

The wispy mustache donned by my match moves with the wind. His eyes are full of drive and ambition. The young Saint stands gallantly, his heart yearning for the greater good. He has barely slept in days, coffeeless and yet wide awake. He has yet to hurt – he knows not pain. And yet he can feel. He can hope. He can change.

The man on the left threw on a hoodie and was late to his 8 a.m. because he had to stop and get coffee.

Nate:

Let’s not beat around the bush and just recognize that this is practically a perfect match. Although the man in the painting’s face may be a bit more pug-like while Nate’s facial structure is more similar to that of a dachshund, these are just minor details. Nate, perhaps disturbed by the bulging forehead of his so-called “doppelganger,” decided to have another crack at it, this time with the duck face (Duck face (noun): a way of manipulating one’s face so as to look like one has a duck-like bill instead of a human mouth. This practice was popularized by teenage girls circa 2010 to avoid showing their true faces on social media), probably hoping to be matched with a handsome 15th century Scottish prince. The results of round two, however, proved to only assure that Google’s 65 percent rating for the match might as well be a 100 percent.

Then, perhaps out of pure disgust, Nate changed the lighting and threw a last second Hail Mary in an attempt to get any match BUT this mystery man. Efforts proved futile.

“Wow, that’s disturbingly accurate,” Nate said. “I can hardly tell which one is me. I’m sure that man was a great man.”

When asked about his roommate’s shockingly consistent results, Nick didn’t hold back: “It really just makes me feel queasy.”

Needless to say, the Google Arts and Culture app is a great way to stir up some trouble amongst roommates. You might just find some unlikely doppelgangers along the way.

After applying for the George J. Mitchell Scholarship to study in Ireland and not getting it, I felt relatively behind in the study abroad process. Aberdeen, Scotland, more or less, was really the only remaining option, outside of a few landlocked cities in England (oh Birmingham, what could have been. The Paris of England. Oh sorry, did I say Paris? I meant Pittsburgh), where I could take political science classes taught in English.

I had never heard of Aberdeen. The fact that it was on the coast seemed appealing.  Scottish people seemed funny. Beer is an interest of mine. Whiskey too. Bagpipes are lovely. Kilts are freeing. Soccer’s great. Groundskeeper Willie’s a gem. Susan Boyle melted my heart back in 2009. “Braveheart” is a classic. Haggis seemed mysteriously sexy. What’s not to love?

As it turns out, they almost never wear kilts here, barring formal occasions, and I think I might have heard bagpipes only once or twice. Susan Boyle was nowhere to be found, probably dining on wine, cheese and fresh fruit in Saint Tropez, and Groundskeeper Willie was of course busy tending to his drunken duties at Springfield Elementary. Haggis is a taste I’ve yet to acquire, its lack of sexiness no longer a mystery to my pampered American palate, and “Braveheart” is somewhat tainted by the fact that the “William Wallace” Mel Gibson has rightfully become the Mel Gibson who has hit such a rock bottom that he is starring in “Daddy’s Home 2.” The beer, whiskey and soccer, however, did live up to the hype.

So what, then, makes Scotland special? Why has it been nothing short of an absolute pleasure to spend three and a half months here?

The people. It’s as simple as that. And it’s not just the Scottish people; it’s also the variety of Europeans I’ve met. Coming here I naively thought that it would be pretty much all Scottish teachers and students. I didn’t factor in the fact that there are teachers and students from all over the world and particularly Europe, and a lot of them. It allows for a variety of perspectives that the United States seems to lack in a lot of areas, and allowed me to discover and learn a lot about how other parts of the world operate.

It takes a special quality of person to invest in a friendship with a person they know will only be around for three months and who, because of geographical constraints, they may not see for a significant period of time. I was lucky enough to have a solid group of funny and sincere friends, who made me feel welcome and excited about my time in Aberdeen. I’ve discovered while working at beautiful ranches in Wyoming surrounded by stunning scenery, and now again here in Aberdeen, that the scenery and beauty of the location become commonplace while the friendships and daily laughs are, in the end, what is really tough to say goodbye to.

That being said, they’re a bunch of goons who can nae pot a pool ball to save their lives, so I must dearly thank them for the victory pints I’ve won along the way. You’re keeping Tennent’s in business, lads!

The taxi to the airport beckons, and so does a dram of Royal Lochnagar, raised to all the readers. Until next time, Black Bears.

The opportunity to show some foreigners around Aberdeen (often referred to by me, myself, and I as the Paris of Scotland) finally presented itself when my family came to visit for the entirety of Thanksgiving week. From Saturday to Wednesday they got the full Scottish breakfast and then from Wednesday to Sunday we toured around Rome, Italy.

Saturday afternoon required, of course, a trip to Pittodrie Stadium to see the beloved and unbelievably frustrating Dons lose to Motherwell, 2-0, in frigid temperatures. The game was capped off by a postgame trip to the bathroom trough, where, before urinating, a mid-70s Aberdonian chose my (already urinating) dad to get very close to and to be the recipient of his postgame rant about how he “could pass better than that” and how he’s “quicker than those lazy bastards.” Death, taxes and uncomfortable levels of intimacy at the trough.

The next day we went to nearby Stonehaven, a lovely little coastal town that is only a 20-minute drive from Aberdeen. The town is home to Dunnottar Castle, which was built in the middle ages and was once captured by William Wallace. My favorite feature of the castle was the den where the Earl Marischal once kept his pet lion, which he of course had to get rid of due to the fact that its roaring was keeping the Countess awake — classic 14th century relationship problems.

We then continued to the Glenfiddich and Royal Lochnagar distilleries, which are increasingly toward the north of Scotland. The drive was scenic, at times mountainous, and rewarded by a few drams of Scotland’s finest. The poorly produced whiskey podcasts my dad was playing (and somehow found? I can’t imagine the whiskey podcasting industry is particularly active or sought after) during the car rides were a bit easier to take in with a few drams sitting in my tummy.

While Thanksgiving in Rome meant tortellini instead of turkey, and cannolis instead of cranberry sauce, the family dysfunction found a way to make the trip. Nevertheless, we saw a lot in three days — the Pantheon, the Coliseum and the Vatican, to name a few. You learn a little bit about Roman history in school, but being there and seeing the size and magnitude of the buildings, as you’re listening to a tour guide list unbelievable dates of when they were built, really puts it in perspective.

Although there are too many differences to count, one of the biggest differences we noticed between Scotland and Rome were the cab drivers. In Rome they just want to get you where you need to go. No questions asked, and they seem startled if you want to engage them. In Scotland, they’ll quiz you about everything from your middle name to your secret shame. Perhaps there is a bit of a language barrier, but the Roman cab drivers seemed to be all business whereas the Scots are quite the opposite.

Final exam preparation beckons, and so does a box of your finest wine — ahhhh the effects that Rome has on one’s sophistication levels. Until next time, Black Bears.

Scottish lectures and seminars are extraordinarily similar to their counterparts in the United States: students sit in silence with their noses buried in their phones until the exact moment the clock strikes the hour and the lecture begins; the same kids raise their hands and bicker with one another every class; and there’s always that one dude who furiously pounds on his keyboard while taking notes like he’s Jack Torrance in “The Shining” (loud typing and no mindfulness of those around you).  That being said, lectures in Aberdeen will always have one element that those in the U.S. simply don’t: the Scottish Element.

The Scottish Element is an element that makes everything funnier and seemingly less serious. A Scottish judge could be giving me a life sentence and I might still giggle. However, it seems to be only foreigners who are prone to the Scottish Element. It’s all the Scots have ever known and thus only an episode of Still Game (as much of a Netflix must-watch as the “Scottish Banter” page on Facebook is a must-like) will get them to snicker at themselves.

If every teacher in the U.S. were Scottish, test scores would skyrocket. A Scottish lecturer gives you no choice but to pay attention, simply out of fear that you might miss a hilarious one-liner or even more so because you have to absorb every bit of every word just to understand what he’s getting at. So far this semester, my “Politics and Policy in Scotland” teacher has used the analogy “the ketchup on top of yer fish n’ chips” in place of “the cherry on top,” equated losing an election because of a cheap or unpreventable reason to losing a football match on a 30-yard bicycle kick, and proposed a political theory that started with, “A few years back I was drinkin’ with my buddy down in Glasgow, a real class bloke, and he came up with the idea of…”

Then there was the first day of class, when we had, nay, GOT to do every student’s favorite first-day exercise: going around the room and, with the utmost enthusiasm, saying our name, where we’re from and a fun fact about ourselves. Pretty much every place people were from got a “Oh…nice…so you’re a *insert town name here* fan then?” out of the teacher. But then when they’d say, “Eh, not really, I don’t much care for football,” a part of his soul would visibly leave his body as he mustered a feeble “Aye alright then.” And if they did name a team, it usually turned into a roast of the team’s manager and a few jabs at their standing in the league table.

Not to be outdone, the Scottish students’ PowerPoint presentations in class always throw me for a loop. After every presentation, the teacher asks, “Any thoughts? Questions?” Um, yeah, can I get a transcript? That was like reading a Dr. Seuss novel at the age of 5: He definitely made up some words and all I understood was the pictures.

Well, a Scottish lecture beckons, and so does a pint of learning! And by learning I mean a dram or two of Bell’s Blended Scotch Whiskey, after an hour of laughing and deciphering. Until next time, Black Bears.