Leadership Junior Belle Plateroti in London, England! – Monthly Update Part 1
By: Belle R. Plateroti
Hi All,
I arrived in London on September 14th, after a 6.5 hour journey where I was lucky enough to have three seats to myself on the plane! For those of you who travel, you know that almost never happens! I landed at Heathrow, grabbed my bags, and was met by The Meet & Greet team from University of Westminster. After dropping other students off at their apartments and the driver getting lost a few times I finally arrived to my flat. To which I was walking to on cobble stone streets with two huge suitcases behind me! The light at the end of the tunnel was that Brooks Mencke, another LDHP student and my best friend, had been assigned to the same flat as me! Thankfully she was able to help me with my bags because to my surprise there is no lift in our building….imagine my excitement. After getting settled in, Brooks and I explored Shoreditch for a bit and then went to a nearby pub for dinner with other exchange students. This includes 3 more SHU students which is great!
The next day we had orientation for exchange students followed by registration and enrollment into Westminster Business School on Thursday. As we all know from SHU, registration is never fun and I came to learn it’s not much better here! It took a few days, but I finally received a finalized schedule. Since we had a few days before class started we spent it exploring London (Big Ben, Tower Bridge, Tower of London, the London Eye, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Camden Markets, Abbey Road, and Buckingham Palace.) as well as other parts of England. We took a day trip to Greenwich, England and stood on the Prime Meridian. Nerdy, I know, but how many people can say they stood in two hemisphere at once? Exactly.
The first couple weeks of class have now gone by. Uni in England is extremely different than America in many ways. What I’ve noticed to be the biggest difference is that in most of your modules (courses) you will have one or two pieces of coursework throughout the semester and then an exam in May. For us however, we are given an alternative exam in December. There is also a lot more group-work than I have been exposed to in America. This being said, it leaves much of the responsibility to prepare for lectures and seminar to the student, but it also leaves a lot of time for travel! With this, Brooks and I decided that it was time to travel around Europe a bit. First stop: Amsterdam.
After a 12 hour bus ride we finally arrived in Amsterdam. It is such an amazing city with so much to do. We of course went to the Anne Frank house, which is something you absolutely have to do if in Amsterdam. It was surreal to be standing there after having read her diary in school. After leaving the house we then went and toured around the city seeing all the canals, almost getting run over by the hundreds of bike riders, and of course stopping by the “I amsterdam” sign. I’ve added some pictures of our trips in England and outside to give a better understanding of what we’ve been up to! Stay tuned for more updates!
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