Living in a new country can be really hard, but it also has helped me develop a lot of new skills and confidence in them. Some “soft” skills that I have developed throughout my time in London have been communication, time management, and adaptability. Communication is super important because I’m living with a lot of roommates, and I’d never met any of them before moving in. It’s really important to speak up so issues are settled maturely instead of letting them sit and fester. It’s much better to advocate for yourself calmly, which makes communication key. I feel this applies to a lot of future situations, and communication is of course a transferable skill. My time management skills have also become better. Though I don’t have quite as much coursework as I do at Pitt, balancing coursework with travel and exploring London has led me to need better, more efficient scheduling of my time. Finally, my ability to adapt to new situations has grown immensely. At home, my routine is very established, but here, no day is the same. The past couple of weeks, there have been a bunch of train and underground strikes, so adapting to that and figuring out a new commute has definitely helped me grow. 

Though I’m not participating in an internship, I do think I have gained some academic-related technical skills throughout my time in London. For one, I have a lot more long-length written assignments like essays and short stories than I typically do in my classes at home. Two of my four classes are W-courses or writing-intensive courses, and the third has a lot of assigned essays as well. I have gotten more comfortable with and better at writing essays quickly and also with creative writing forms that are new to me. 

I do feel more like a Londoner than I did, even a month ago. I don’t need to stare at my phone to get somewhere anymore, and I just feel more comfortable navigating places and living in here in general. In that way, I do think my identity has changed some. I can’t believe the program ends in a month, but I’m looking forward to the rest of my time here!