Here it is…my last blog post to wrap up my time in London. The past six weeks were some of the most memorable moments of my entire life. It was an experience like no other. This came as a surprise to me because I’ve been abroad multiple times and never felt this way. Just last year, I studied abroad in the Netherlands for two weeks. There, I felt like I was on someone else’s itinerary, experiencing only what that someone intended me to. This time, it was more like a slice of life. I got to experience what it was like to live abroad and that was a completely different feeling.

For six weeks, I was living like a Londoner: eating the diverse foods that represent the internationality of the city, shopping at local grocery stores, seeing live theater shows, taking the tube everywhere, commuting to work, working with people from all over the world, and finding a better work-life balance. I was busy and admittedly overwhelmed with this new life at first, but pretty quickly, I settled into a comfortable routine. At some point, this routine felt normal and it seemed to me as if I had been living this life all along. 

The weekdays were mostly mundane; I kept to my newly crafted routine pretty well. That is not to say that I didn’t do my share of the “touristy” things though. The weekends were reserved for sightseeing and trying new things. During my second weekend in London, I took a day trip to Bath and Stonehenge. I started at the ancient city of Bath, which features the well preserved Roman Baths. Then, I headed over to Stonehenge, where I got to see the famous prehistoric stone structures. 

Other weekends saw me at Kensington Palace, where I learned all about Queen Victoria’s life, walking by the London Eye, Tower Bridge, and the Elizabeth Tower known as Big Ben (by the way, Big Ben is the bell inside the clock tower). I visited several markets: Greenwich Market, Camden Market, Portobello Market, and Borough Market. If you couldn’t tell, the markets were definitely the highlight of my trip in London. The foodie and shopper in me were in absolute bliss.

In London, I was living a different version of my life. I realized that the adjustments I had to make to my daily routine had some aspects I wanted to take with me to my life back at Pitt. When the normal academic year is in session, things are hectic. I’m incredibly ambitious, so when new opportunities arise, I jump at them and they add onto my existing commitments and responsibilities. I’m also extremely stubborn, so when things pile up and get overwhelming, I refuse to give anything up and force myself to push through. As you could probably imagine, there’s only so much of this a person can do before it starts to impact their life negatively. For me, it always ends in burnout and declining health. 

In London, however, things were different. Maybe it was the influence of the British who really prioritize their work-life balance, because I was only handling a select few responsibilities, because I was really focusing on the present or all of the above, but I found myself feeling less overwhelmed and able to really enjoy my time in London without worrying about the next thing I needed to be doing. I even found myself making time for fun activities rather than focusing solely on work and school. It made me realize that even while managing a busy life of work and school, I can pace myself. This pace of life helped me truly enjoy my experience, even when they got challenging. Classes became much more engaging because I wasn’t just thinking about memorizing information to get a good grade on an exam; I was slowing down to actually learn the material, which made the studying much more interesting. I think this will be a lesson to take back to how I go about life at home and in my future career. I could be more productive in the long term and get more out of experiences if I’m not burned out and simply going through the motions of life, but taking the time to slow down and actually enjoy it.

Being in London has taught me a lot: technical skills that will be useful in my future career, how to understand different work culture and way of life and adapt to it, a different perspective of the world, things I really value in a workplace, and a little more of who I might become. I proved to myself that I could do more than I thought I was capable of and I hope to take this new confidence with me to all of my future endeavors, at Pitt and beyond.