Hi! My name is Ben Wallis and I’m a third-year Molecular Biology major on the London Pre-Health Internships program. I will be interning at King’s College Hospital for the next two months in the Culture and Organizational Development department.

I chose this program because of the unique opportunity it held: getting to experience and learn about a different type of healthcare system from the inside. Add on getting to live and spend time in the heart of London, and it was a perfect program to apply for. I spent my first few days here as a tourist with the rest of my family, but am now officially on my own and ready to start working!

Originally being from Austin, Texas, exploring Oakland and getting to know Pittsburgh was really rewarding as a first-year student. Getting the opportunity to get to know a new place in another continent is similarly exciting and a little overwhelming. One thing that I am looking forward to is experiencing the early morning rush on the Tube, with hundreds of thousands of locals commuting alongside me.

So far I’ve gotten to see the famous sites like Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey (including the burial sites of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin!), and Big Ben. I’m also looking forward to getting to visit some of the other museums, palaces, and galleries in and around London. The expectation that the city is always a bustling place of activity is already being proven wrong, and I think I will come to enjoy seeing the more intimate areas in addition to the craziness that London is known for. I hope that by the time I’m writing my farewell post to my flat, I will have explored and gotten to know the city, become more confident in an office environment, and have begun to blend in as a local!