Dear former students of Izmir College ,

It’s a small world as they say but had it not been for a chance meeting with
Aziz Sipahi a few years ago in Bremen, it is most unlikely that I would have re-established contact with Izmir College and that I would be writing to you now.

For almost seven years ending in August 2006, I was running a naval systems company called ATLAS ELEKTRONIK headquartered in Bremen and Aziz was the General Manager of a Turkish defence company. Our two companies had recently started exploring the idea of working together on a future Turkish Navy submarine project and as heads of our respective companies, this was a first opportunity to confirm senior executive support for the initiative.

After some 35 years or so, neither Aziz nor I recognised each other when we were introduced - which was, perhaps, not surprising - but early ice-breaking small talk soon established that we had Izmir College in common. Aziz and I have maintained contact since and through this connection, I now have the chance of sending my greetings to you.

Izmir College was a long time ago and for me it was a short association – just one school year. Yet memories of the college, Bornova, Izmir and for me remain surprisingly strong and vivid.

At the age of 21 life is very much about new experiences and we tend to take on board all that we can get our hands on. This was no different for me as I headed for around August/September 1970. By then I had developed a strong interest in travel and meeting people from different countries and the chance of a year in was an opportunity I looked forward to.

I cannot remember whether I had any particular expectations – I certainly don’t recall having any – but I don’t think that I was particularly well prepared either! Everything was new of course; I was not travelling with anyone and consequently had no immediate friends or contacts; moreover, it seemed that I might have been “surplus to requirements”. I recall life being somewhat lonely and strange for some while; living in the school in a room nearby the boy’s dormitory, eating in the school, working there and generally feeling a long way from civilization – even Bornova - being some 2km away up a long, wind-swept, tree-line road.

I very often reflected on those early days at Izmir College ; the time was very much “character-forming” – although that was not how I would have seen it at the time. It was to some extent a case of “sink or swim”. Over time, I met a lot of people, found an apartment in Bornova, learnt Turkish (to a degree) travelled a great deal - locally and around the whole of the country - and by the end of my year I looked back on my time at Izmir College in a very positive light and felt that I had achieved all that I had wanted from the year away. I returned to the at the end of the summer and went back to university to study for my Masters and felt much richer for the experience. So, thank you Izmir College and I hope to see some of you again someday, somewhere.

John M. Young

1 November 2009

Bu yazı için Mr.Young ile temas kurup onu yazmaya ikna eden İlker Gelişen'71 e teşekkürlerimizle....