Story by Christina Kempster
Nestled in the southern corner of the United States, Georgia can be found. Known to many for their peaches, endless supply of sweet tea, Chick-Fil-A on every corner, and home to Paula Deen, it is a wonder that everyone doesn’t have Georgia on their mind.
This fall term I decided to exchange lifestyles. I have tucked away my flannel shirts, folded all my skinny jeans, taken out my red hair feathers, and closeted my Keds.
My normal attire has been adjusted to fit a different weather pattern and tradition. After sitting inside through the rainiest spring Oregon has seen in 117 years, I have brought out all my cotton sun dresses, found my mom’s old pearl strand, bought an extremely fitted pair of Spanx, and purchased my first hair dryer in twenty years.
This effort to have a new life experience has been brought on by my participation in the National Student Exchange program through the University of Oregon. I have traveled 2,655 miles from Oregon to Athens, Georgia to attend the University of Georgia Athens for a semester.
I am often asked why I set my sights on Athens, Georgia out of nearly 200 colleges and universities that participate in the National Student Exchange. Traveling to the South offered me a unique opportunity. I can speak my native language and use dollars with out the hassle of exchanging currency, but I can still witness an entirely different life style other than the one I am so familiar with in the Northwest. The big three criteria that UGA hit for me were: Journalism, Sorority and Football. When I found UGA in a Google search everything aligned after I did a little research.
The University of Georgia became the first state funded university in the country when it was established in 1785. The campus is a proud member of the South Eastern Conference and home to the beloved Bulldawgs. It is also infamously known as the number two party school in the nation according to the Princeton Review, but also places a high emphasis on academia.  The state of Georgia offers a merit-based scholarship called HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally) to eligible Georgia residence who maintained above a 3.0 in high school, which basically ensures the recipient a loan-less college education, because of this I do not think I have met a single person that is from west of the Mississippi.
I am one in over 30,000 students here on campus. I was fortunate to build a community around my sorority that is allowing me to affiliate as a member of their Chapter here in Georgia. With out them I would be pretty much lost. The campus is 320 acres larger than University of Oregon. Gone are the days when it took me seven minutes to walk from my house to Allen Hall for my journalism classes. Now each day I take a fifteen to twenty minute bus ride from Greek Row to North Campus, where most of my classes are located. The campus is so big that it is divided into quadrants, fifteen minutes is allowed between classes so that students can get to their destination on time. Even when students schedule classes the Registrar will lock a student out of a class if it is too far of a walk or bus ride to physically get to class on time.
This week I began my first week of classes. I am currently taking twelve credit hours that total four classes: Classical Mythology, Literature of the Self, Health and Wellness, and Multicultural Woman in the United States. I am happy to report that I only accidently opened one fire escape door in the Student Learning Center. Although it was quite humiliating when the alarm did sound, thankfully we all did not have to evacuate the building.
Having an easier course load has allowed me to adopt the leisurely Southern pace. Which I realized is quite necessary if you plan to not sweat through your shirt during the day. It is not uncommon for the temperature to reach 90 degrees by 10 a.m. here.
In my life exchange I plan to learn as much as I can about Southern living, but I also hope that the people I meet and experience can learn from me as well. I promise to represent my Oregonian pride, teach people that the Mighty Ducks hockey team does not play at the University of Oregon, and share my “forward” attitude (according to my current room mates) toward life with my new Georgian friends.
 

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Andrew Davis Tucker

(Not So) Southern Belle