Tag: University College London

By austineliasdejesus

I took a solo trip to Spain last week. It was the most affirming, anxiety-inducing, and wonderful thing I've done since I came to Europe. And, traveling alone is something you should all do if you plan to study abroad.

The trip started out as one that I was supposed to take with a friend of mine, but her visa wasn't processed in time, so I was forced to take the trip alone. I was admittedly nervous before going, which was weird for me. I pride myself on not being scared of travel or city life. I've done some pretty unsafe and questionable things since I was a little kid, whether it's walking around Times Square by myself, taking flights alone, or getting lost in the middle of Maryland by myself my freshman year at GW. I'd never felt that scared doing all those things, but traveling to Spain alone was something that genuinely worried me. I took Spanish for four years but my proficiency is still incredibly poor. I didn't have enough time to plan out the places I was going to because of finals so, in turn, I hardly knew anything about the three cities--Seville, Madrid, Barcelona--I would be going to.

The week leading up to my trip was a difficult one--I had three papers to write and one project to finish all while packing for this trip and taking care of some . . . let's call them "mishaps" that happened in regards to my booking details for this trip. I was feeling pretty hopeless on the Thursday night before my flight. I had to calm myself down repeatedly and tell myself that it would all be okay. And, of course, it was.

...continue reading "Everyday counts like crazy"

I've been in London for about three months now and I have been to the Tate Modern about 25 times. I don't know how. I somehow always end up going. If not going inside to look at some of the pieces, I go just to sit at the outside patio area. Staring at the massive museum. The Tate Modern looks odd from the outside. It's big and dark brown. A huge pillar rises into the sky that's noticeable from the other side of the Thames. I didn't like it at first. But if I've learned one thing here studying abroad, it's to think more critically about the ways in which we utilize the past to tell stories about the present and the future.

The building that is now the Tate Modern used to be the Bankside Power Station. It opened in 1891 and, if we know anything about the history of London, the city was pretty dirty then. I can imagine this building then. It's brown-ness probably bled right into the pollution that undoubtedly surrounded it. Smoke would billow from the power station's chimney to the point where citizens would complain about it.

And, throughout the building history as the Bankside Power Station, the grit and grime it caused was a source of controversy. After some evolutions and attempts to clean up the station and the area around it, the building was officially shut down right before the 80s. In '94, it was announced that the building would be recycled to be the new home for Tate Modern, and the rest is history.

...continue reading "Tate Modern"

There's a fantasy that grows within every hipster once they hit their twenties. That fantasy is bumming it around Europe. So, for reading week, being the good, muted color-wearing, LCD Soundystem-listening, New Yorker-reading, caricature of a person that I am, I bummed it around Europe for a week. Of course, it was only five days, but I managed to hit three cities--Prague, Berlin, and Amsterdam--in that time.

I took the trip with a friend, whose criteria for a week-long European excursion were the same as mine, which were the trip had to be cheap and low-maintenance. And, on the other side of that week, I think we were somewhat successful.

I have never been particularly drawn to Europe. I've thought very little about actually exploring Europe prior to this semester. As an Asian American, my roots have always been in Asia, and most of my foreign trips have involved going to Asia to see family members. This general apathy towards Europe led to a somewhat profound ignorance of the general vibe of Europe. For example, before I arrived in London, I genuinely had no idea how much of the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe still bears the scars of the second world war. This was probably an obvious characteristic of Europe to others, but it was a genuine culture shock to me. And, traveling through all three of those cities last week, you could hardly go anywhere without seeing some sort of WWII landmark. The evident scars of war have never occurred to me as a characteristic of a city or a country--I guess that's the benefit of living in a nation in which an international war has never been fought within its borders.

...continue reading "An American Down and Out and Cold in Europe"

By austineliasdejesus

This week marked UCL's first week of classes, and I learned two things:

1. I'd sooner attempt to swallow a minivan than draw attention to myself/be a disturbance to a group of people.
2. I've never questioned why a world map looks the way it does.

In regards to Lesson #1: I've always hated bothering people, even if only for a second. That's been a theme throughout my life. But I've never known just how much I hated bothering people until this week. I had to go to my Art History class on Wednesday, and I got terribly lost trying to find the lecture room because a construction site obscured the normal entrance to the building. By the time I found the building that housed my destination, I was seven minutes late for class. Once I got inside, I still couldn't find the correct room. The room I was supposed to be in was 104, but the only room I could find was 104. I thought I would take a gamble and see if 103 was some weird room connected to the inside of room 104, because that's the kind of thing that I tell myself is logical when I'm desperate and sweaty and fed up with being lost. I went into 104 to find a class was in session.

The professor whose class I'd disturbed kindly told me to take a seat, which I did. It took me about three minutes to realize that I wasn't, in fact, in the room for 19th and 20th Century Art and Architecture in London. I was in some class about Modern Art. And, obviously, there was no "connecting room" inside this room. So I was just in the completely wrong room. The way I saw it, I had two options: 1.) I could face my fears and just get up, disturb this lecture for the second time, and look for the correct room and, in turn, disturb that lecture, too; or 2.) I could just sit in on this lecture, suffer in silence, and not disturb anyone.

...continue reading "Britishness, Americanness, Questions…ness"

This week, people at GW began to brace for mid-terms while UCL students tried to figure out how to spend this week of nothing before classes start on Monday.

I really had no idea that UCL classes didn’t begin until the first week of October when I applied to the university last spring. I’m not complaining about it. If I were doing anything close to that, I’m sure everyone back at GW would remove their world’s smallest violins from their tiny cases and play a concerto just for me.  I’m grateful for the free time; it makes me feel like summer is breathing its last breath. But deciding what to do with free time is a challenge, and one that I’m sure a lot of American college students can sympathize with. Like a lot of American college students, a dogged pursuit of learning about who you are has led to me being very busy since I was probably 12 years old.

This is really the first time in my life where I don’t have some kind of club, activity, practice, class, internship or job I have to go to every day. It’s jarring to be taken out of that as abruptly as I have. While a lot of college students quickly stumble into adulthood, we build up a culture among young people where one’s busy-ness and even lack of self-care is a telltale sign that you are a Very Serious and Very Motivated young person. So to have a week in London as a study abroad student where I don’t have any responsibilities would surely make anyone in my situation feel anxious, and even a bit guilty.

So what do you do with all this free time? How do you spend it at least somewhat productively? Well, you try to learn in other ways. You learn about the people around you who are from different nations and cultures. You learn how you can form a daily routine here. You also learn how to save money because it’s finally hit that you shouldn’t be spending money like how you would if you were vacationing in London, but rather like you would when you’re actually living in London.

...continue reading "Much ado about doing nothing"