By maxikaplan
With no time left to travel in this month long study period of mine, I’ve had to re-explore parts of my own neighborhood to keep myself entertained. Fortunately, it turns out that London is quite a big city, and that after 8 months of living here there remain parts of the city only a few blocks from me that I didn’t know existed. What is unfortunate, however, is the good weather that’s come to London just as I’m beginning to stay inside week after week to study. It’s as though my last eight months of fun were all at the expense of this study period, but as I’ve said before, if somebody would have told me this would be the case I would have come to London for the year regardless of study time. Whereas before the study period I had decided to take a few days a week off to explore, now I cherish my Saturday’s as my one vacation day, and so far they’ve been incredible. This past weekend there was a food festival of sorts in central London along the Thames, and since I’d never miss a food festival, I quickly made my way down there with my friends. These day breaks are proving to be the best way to re-energize for the week ahead of studying—one day of fooling around helps to keep me focused for 6 days it seems like.
With an exam on May 30th and my flight back to New Jersey booked for the 31st, my friends and I are beginning to realize that this year won’t be ending with much of a blast. Most students in the General Course here who are American would of course be used to the semester ending in excitement, but this program has flipped this idea on its head, and I’m not too happy about it. Surprisingly complaining won’t make it any better so I will stop here, but after 4 semesters at GW ending with partying, it will be interesting to see what it feels like to just take an exam and leave. In a sense it feels like I’ll be leaving London without a proper goodbye, but oh well—I will be back one day I am sure.
Now that I’ve painted this picture of all the fun being over and life going back to a regular schedule, I should say that I’m still having fun—just not as much fun that I was used to having over the past few months. That level of entertainment and freedom is very hard to beat, but once everyone makes it through these exams I am sure life will be good again. Until then, I’ll remain studying.