This past fall, I was the first Dartmouth student to study abroad, and now I’m hoping to be the first Mirror writer to write about it. During my three months away, I joined 19 other students on the English and Creative Writing foreign study program in London, which is offered every two years. While on my program, we toured different parts of London, along with the neighboring cities of Bath and Canterbury. Our classwork revolved around the ways that different authors interact with the cityscape of London.
I learned a great deal during my time in London, though most of the learning happened outside my Art History and Children’s Literature courses. I grew accustomed to traveling to classrooms that were miles from my apartment instead of minutes from my dorm, and I met people in the city who made me reassess the drinking abilities of friends at Dartmouth. I was forced to go grocery shopping after I learned that there was no light side or dark side to separate the STEM majors from the Humanities, and when I started to cook, I realized that the seven other students I lived with had no respect for fridge space.
On my program, I was surrounded by people that I had walked by every day for the past two years on campus, yet never actually talked to. Soon, highlights of my experience abroad was spent in pubs, coffee shops and on The Tube with those former strangers, whose experiences at Dartmouth are so different from my own. It’s crazy how easy it is to fall into a routine at a small college like Dartmouth, and how easily that routine narrows the circle of people you spend time with. While abroad, branching out becomes unavoidable. From what my friends in Hanover have told me, they felt the same pressure to do so, since so many of their friends were away, too.
It became easy to get to know the other students on my program through the excursions we did as a group, ranging from plays, musicals and operas to some other, non-theater related activities that I’m sure I’m forgetting. On our final night all together in London, our faculty director organized for us all to go to a Greek restaurant together. That was one of my favorite moments of the trip, and it wasn’t just because we were depleting the last of the program budget on endless wine and kebabs. It was a blast to spend my last few hours in London surrounded by all of the vaguely familiar faces who had changed into close friends, reminiscing on all the experiences that had contributed to that change. It was also bittersweet. Some members of our group were seniors, and with others off either in the coming winter or spring terms, we may never all be together in the same place again.
Even in a country with Five Guys and English-speakers, living abroad sometimes became difficult. It was hard to balance the limited moments of quiet, which seemed to bring intense feelings of loneliness, with the frequent moments of being surrounded by never-ending crowds of people, which could feel overwhelming. It was also the longest amount of time that I had ever spent away from home, which began to weigh on me a bit. Surprisingly, understanding English people was also sometimes difficult, although my British Slang Dictionary (Travel Size) made everything “hunky-dory,” as they say.
While abroad, I usually felt very removed from Dartmouth. I was glad to take a step away from some things — like frat-politics and maintaining a GPA of slightly-below median — but sometimes I would hear reports back from Hanover: “Chi gam party shut down after SNS finds no girls. Officer quoted saying, ‘It was a sausage-fest.’” “Six Cornell students arrive in Hanover seeking asylum, and are sent back to Ithaca.”
Other times I would be reminded of Hanover by things in London; each day, I walked by an encampment from students protesting for Palestine, I was occasionally forced to do homework and I lived in a building with 60 other Dartmouth students. Slowly, I began to miss the comfort of Dartmouth’s small campus and steady routine. I also missed my friends, despite making so many new ones. When I left campus after sophomore summer, I was grateful for the time away. Now, I’m bummed that I won’t return until the spring.
I found my experience abroad incredibly valuable, and I would encourage anyone else to try it out. Of course, time at Dartmouth is limited, and it can be difficult to justify spending any of it away from campus. However, I found the time away made me appreciate Hanover even more, and I imagine I will be better for it when I eventually return. It will definitely be strange to see everyone again in frat basements and dark-side when we have our English FSP reunions.
