Living and studying in London as a student is definitely a positive change from the traditional American college experience. For one, I’m studying in a huge city with endless opportunities and people which is already different than studying in the small city of Pittsburgh and being surrounded by pretty much only college students. Although I am not exactly studying in a traditional London university as I am here through a program and the classes are strictly with the people in the program, it is still a new experience. Here my class is a popular culture literature class in which we meet twice a week with one of those days being dedicated to the lecture while the second day is dedicated to the field study in which our professor leads us on a tour of something related to what we are studying in class. For instance, one week we discussed the Beatles and for our field study we visited the Abbey Road crosswalk where they shot their famous album cover. It was incredibly helpful and interesting to come to the spot with background knowledge of what we were looking at rather than just going blindly on our own. Through this class, I get to experience niche areas and sights that I would probably not do on my own since they may not be the most mainstream tourist items on the list. A big difference that I notice between the classes here versus at Pitt is that they are much more experential here than they are at Pitt. Even within the classroom, the exercises ar emore hands on and participatory rather than just lecture oriented. This definitely makes the classwork and experience more engaging.

Now when it comes to living in London, we have it good. Our location is amazing as we are right in central London and a tube ride away from anything we want to see. I’m living with four other girls, one who is my roommate back in school, and the other two are are girls that I have met here. We all live in a flat and have a great dynamic going with the four of us. A challenge I’m facing is getting used to a smaller room as there are two bedrooms so we all have one roommate. I’m definitely used to having my own space and not living with as many people, so I’m slowly adjusting to that but I am enjoying it.