Assignment 9- Reflection

It’s hard to put my experience studying abroad in words. It was definitely one of the greatest experiences I’ve had in my life, and am very glad I took the opportunity to study abroad. I have proven to myself that I am able to live in a big city without knowing anybody, as I came without having any friends on the program, and will leave with good friends I never would have met without studying in London. I have also surprisingly been able to cook at least a little bit and been able to survive off of it, which was in question to start. I was also able to convince myself that I am able to adapt and change to the environment I am put into by coming from a small town and always being in small towns, but being in a large city, I was able to survive and get around by public transportation and not just driving around by myself everywhere. The main skill I have developed is my cooking skills, as it was at nothing before I came and now it has at least improved a little bit and if I absolutely had to cook for myself for the rest of my life I wouldn’t die of starvation. I was also able to improve my skills in an office as I was working in an office eight hours a day, two days a week. I learned how to clean up excel spreadsheets and make them easily understood for people who would have no idea what was going on in the spreadsheet.

I want to be able to share how different London is from any place in the United States for those who have not had the opportunity to go abroad. The diversity of London is something that cannot be matched in small town Iowa, or any part of Iowa for that matter. Another thing that would be nice to be able to tell people about is the buildings and how old they are, but there is no way that you can understand what London or the UK is like without actually being there and seeing the buildings that have been there for hundreds of years, longer than the United States has been a country. The fact that they have such old buildings is one of the things that first amazed me when I got here, and is still one of the things I can’t get over when I see the buildings that have been around for so long.

Advice I would give future London study abroad students is to go out and walk around instead of taking the tube everywhere. Going out and walking you can see so much more of the city and you will actually get to know your way around instead of just being underground and not seeing anything other than darkness. I would also suggest setting up travel plans right away and booking flights and trains right away and not waiting till halfway through the semester to start traveling so you will be able to see and do more things throughout.