KELS · 20.15 · Elsewhere · essay · September 24, 2026

Mum

Five letters home from Lancaster, 1986 to 1987, and one word that changed and changed back.

The first letter is dated September 22, 1986, and it opens Dear Mom and Dad. I had been in England four days. The second is dated December 7 and opens Dear Mum and Dad. So do the third and the fourth. The fifth, dated June 13, 1987, a few days before I flew home, goes back to Mom. The letters were in a photo album with my college papers, and when they were scanned this month the five salutations lined up on one page and told a story I had not known I was telling.

The orange room

I got to London a day early and wandered it, then took the train north with the other Americans. We were shown to our rooms and told there would be a free beer do at eight. I had time to throw my bags down and shower. The English students kept coming up to ask why anyone would want to come to Lancaster, since most of them wanted to go to the States.

The room was small and it was orange. I wrote home asking whether I could paint it. It had a huge window, and one of the two kitchens on the hall was directly across from my door, which I counted as luck. The university was split into eight colleges, each with its own bar, and I was in Cartmel. On the Thursday there was a Societies Bazaar, and I joined six of them: the Philosophical Society, the Photography Society, the Film Society, the Martial Arts Club, the Ski Club, and the Rugby Union Club. I told my parents this was a good way to meet English students with interests similar to mine. It was also someone from Minnesota saying yes to everything.

What the courses were like

There were no tests. That was the thing I kept trying to explain in the December letter. Computer Graphics, Artificial Intelligence, Data Structures, and none of them had a midterm or a final, only a minimum of assignments and lectures dense enough that I took more notes than I ever had at Minnesota. The English students would sit exams the following summer. Since I would be gone, I worked out special assignments with each professor instead. The AI course covered a broad area and got me interested in machine learning, so I arranged an independent study with the professor to pursue it.

By February I was in Cognitive Psychology, Comparative Languages, and Database Systems. The database lecturer handed out a complete set of notes before every lecture. The psychology lecturer cited references a mile a minute and left the reading to us, which I told my parents was probably what the non-technical courses were like in general. I was playing rugby all term and traveling to a different town most weekends.

The letters do not say much about the third term, which Lancaster calls the Summer Term. Two independent studies, one a long philosophical essay and one a computer program, both due at the end. No socials allowed until the English students finished their exams, then one week of very major parties. The essay was on whether a machine could be conscious. I worked on it in a philosophy professor's office, twice a week, at a table that seated six, after he made the coffee. The program was in Lisp. You gave it a few mathematical axioms and it went looking for new ones. The essay is on another station now, rebuilt from memory, and this letter is the only record I have of the term it was written in.

Elsewhere, first pass

The travel is in the margins, the way it is when you are that age and the travel is the point. Scotland by train for a weekend. A ride to London with an English student going home, and a ride back. Liverpool and Manchester with the rugby club. An Interail card for the four-week Christmas holiday, unlimited travel on most of the trains in Europe, and a sentence saying I planned to see many countries and cities, which is all the December letter has room for. The spring holiday gets a full inventory: a week skiing in the French Alps with the Ski Club, a week in London, a week at a friend's house in Yorkshire, and a week on an island off the coast of Spain lying in the sun. I told my parents I could do with another week or two.

I made one mistake I felt strongly enough to report. I had joined the inboard dining scheme, which served dinner from five to a quarter past six. With rugby training and yoga and the clubs, I kept missing it, and I ended up cooking two or three nights a week with the other guys on the hall anyway, which turned out to be the better deal. Next term I would not bother. That is the whole of my advice to future exchange students, and it is still good.

In an instant

The last letter says I would do it again in an instant. I like the way the courses are run here, it says. Responsibility is left to the student. I learned more having time to look into the areas I found most interesting. I wrote more essays per term than I ever had at home. Of course I will be sad to leave, and I am looking forward to getting back to the States.

Twenty-eight years later I did do it again, for two years, around the world. That is what this station is for. The year in England was the first pass. I did not decide to write Mum. It showed up in December on its own, and it left in June on its own, a few days before the flight home. That is what a place does when it gets in. It changes the small words first, and you find out later, reading the letters.