After the Spring semester came to an end, on May 14 I took off in a jet plane heading east. My final destination: London, England. In short it was a once and a lifetime opportunity, and Seton Hill University (SHU) helped get me there.
By Bethany Merryman
A&E Editor
After the Spring semester came to an end, on May 14 I took off in a jet plane heading east. My final destination: London, England. In short it was a once and a lifetime opportunity, and Seton Hill University (SHU) helped get me there.
Not only does SHU offer all freshman students a chance to get a passport at a great price, but they offer planned study abroad trips every January-term and May-term (J-term and M-term). Professors pair up the trip with an educational course or courses that fulfill almost every students liberal arts curriculum requirements.
My London trip was paired with an experiencing theatre course and that is generally what we did: experienced theatre. Specifically, we studied the effects of architecture on the way audiences experience theatre.
We spent eight days in London, a short trip to Stratford-upon-Avon and traveled to four theatres. During the trip we had journal assignments to log our educational growth and had online class for two weeks while we were back in America.
Although it is a class and grades are a part of SHU’s set up, the experience is also individualized through free time. For me, a lot of my free time was spent at the art museums in the city and seeing the obvious tourist attractions. I had a chance to see Big Ben, Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, Tate Modern, National Museum and so many more.
Students have the opportunity to not only site see, but to experience a new culture and in some cases learn and strengthen a language. This M-term, students traveled to both Spain and France.
While I figured language wouldn’t be a barrier for our group in London, the British speaking English and all, I was shocked by how many words and phrases we were unfamiliar with. Not to mention their cultural differences—turns out it’s true that Americans are loud in comparison to the Europeans.
Even the experiences in the theatre were different. While we are used to sitting through two or two and a half hour shows, we went to multiple shows that lasted three hours. We had to adapt to the culture, and I think that this was one of the most rewarding aspects of the trip. One of my trip’s highlights was when an Englishmen mistook me for a local Londoner, asking me for directions! I shocked him when I turned out to be an American and knew how to get him to the closest tube station!
Students interested in studying abroad should most definitely check out the opportunities that SHU offers. It was a blast and I will never forget the memories, friends, and knowledge I learned by going to London.