On a brisk September evening, I found myself inside a four-story, historic building housing dozens of Dartmouth students. My friends and I stood around a communal kitchen, complaining about the course selection process and making plans for a night out. The air buzzed with talk of “tails” and “flitzing.” From the sound of it, this could have been any number of buildings on campus. Yet there was something that set it apart: Streaming in through the cracked window was the sound of cars, ambulances, seagulls and horns. The sound of the hustle and bustle.
This wasn’t Hanover — this was London.
I’m currently abroad as a part of the Dickey Center’s Build-Your-Own International Internship program, which is supporting my internship at an independent children’s publisher. I’m lucky enough to have friends on Foreign Study Programs in London this term who invited me over for dinner, where I got to see the apartment building in Bloomsbury that houses all of the students on the English, Government and History FSPs. They live in suites, sharing kitchens, bathrooms and sometimes bedrooms with each other — the whole set-up sounds a lot like that of campus life. As I walked around the building for the first time, I couldn’t help but feel how strange it was to find a little pocket of Dartmouth halfway across the globe.
For Will Nelson ’27, this extension of the Dartmouth community was one of the biggest attractions of the Government FSP for him.
“I think in my application for the FSP I wrote [something] like, ‘I want to take a small piece of the college we all love across the Atlantic,’” he said.
Nelson lives in a suite with nine other Dartmouth students, and much of his social life centers around their shared meals. Indeed, he was baking a tray of sugar cookies to share with his flatmates while we spoke. For many students, this program is their first time cooking all of their meals; Nelson’s flat decided to approach this feat communally, sharing the cooking, cleaning and mealtimes with each other.
Although this can be a big adjustment from Foco, Nelson observed that, at its core, this habit is just a variation on a familiar theme.
“Our days at Dartmouth are very much built around our meal culture,” he said. “‘Who am I having lunch with? Who am I having dinner with? Where are we sitting at Foco?’ And I would say there’s somewhat of an aspect of that here, where it’s a communal thing. But it has to be much more planned in a different way than what we traditionally do at Dartmouth.”
Others have seen this challenge as an opportunity to explore. JJ Kim ’27, a student on the English FSP, is “on a mission to try all the foods.” To her, British cuisine has been pretty hit-or-miss; while she has decided that she’s “built for fish and chips,” she was disappointed by the Full English.
“This could use so much hot sauce,” she said.
Despite the excitement of the London culinary scene, Kim confessed that she still misses Foco.
“On a superficial level, I miss the dependability of food sources,” she said. Although handling your own meals is a huge change from life at Dartmouth, Kim has still found some familiarity in British cuisine: She described its lack of spices as “very Foco-core.”
As it turns out, London is full of these familiar-yet-foreign traits — including the city’s drinking culture. Much like at home, a lot of the socialization takes place over a beer. But unlike at home, it happens outside for everyone to see: on the streets, at a university-owned pub and often at the abominably early hour of 5 p.m.
History FSP participant Mackenzie Wilson ’27 has dipped her toes into London’s pub culture through trivia — pub quizzes. Despite the questions being tailored to “old British” people, Wilson still recalled having a great time.
“It was honestly one of my favorite things I’ve done in London so far,” she said.
British universities have also provided an opportunity for students to engage with locals. Each FSP includes a mix of classes, some taught by Dartmouth professors and others at universities around London. In addition to the English program’s required class on “London through Literature,” Kim is also taking two classes at Queen Mary University, including “Walking the City” and “Victorian Sensation Fiction.”
“I think I’ve gotten to know a fair amount of people through my classes,” Kim told me.
The one problem? Most of these classes only meet once a week. Despite it being week four of the term when we spoke, Wilson said that her class at University College London had only met twice. Instead, she was looking forward to meeting new people through extracurricular activities because “a lot of the clubs are really robust” at UCL. Every club at UCL is open to all students — no tryout necessary — leading to membership numbers that are unimaginable at Dartmouth, according to Wilson. The club tennis team, for instance, boasts a whopping 800 members, she said.
Wilson expressed appreciation that this model “encourages people to try new things,” as opposed to Dartmouth’s more competitive club culture.
But why is the culture so different? According to Wilson, it is mostly due to the clubs’ differing funding structures. While clubs at UCL charge a membership fee, which allows them to secure the resources to support such large numbers, Dartmouth’s clubs are dependent on COSO for funding. Wilson, who is an active member of the Dartmouth Parliamentary Debate team, explained that lack of funding limits the size of the club.
“If we had a hundred people, we couldn’t send all [of them] to tournaments, because COSO would not give us sufficient funds,” she said.
However, there are still perks to Dartmouth’s small club sizes, according to Wilson.
“We want to make sure that we have a close team and everyone feels involved and supported,” she said. “That means that sometimes we have to take fewer people.”
In the coming weeks, she plans to continue pursuing her interest in debate by joining the UCL Debating Society while also taking advantage of the chance to try out a few new clubs, including the yoga club, hiking club and salsa dancing club.
To balance out the unfamiliar, some students have even brought a little slice of Dartmouth across the pond with them. According to Wilson, on most Wednesday nights you can find a group of students hosting FSP “meetings,” their pastiche of the weekly get-togethers held by Greek organizations on campus.
Surrounded by all these reminders of Dartmouth life, Nelson shared that he sometimes feels that he has “been more in the Dartmouth bubble than [he] initially thought [he] would be.”
“But I also kind of enjoy that,” he added.
I can see where he’s coming from. Compared to other study abroad destinations, London can feel a bit less … abroad. But whenever I start to feel too comfortable, I look the wrong direction at a crosswalk, get denied an iced coffee at a Prêt or can’t find the eggs at the grocery store. And the biggest culture shock I’ve faced here? Even at a miniature Dartmouth, I can’t indulge in perhaps the biggest Dartmouth tradition of all — a good old-fashioned game of pong.
