First Week in London

Sorry it's taken me so long to update! I am in London now and have been for just over a week now.

First, a brief explanation of what I'm up to here. I'll be studying for the next nine months at theLondon School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) as a part of their General Course (GC) program. The GC is made up entirely of students from outside the UK who come to LSE. Normal LSE undergraduates spend three years completing their degree and are kept on a very rigid track where most of the courses they take are set in stone. In contrast, GC students can take whatever courses they want (assuming they have the prereqs) from any department. At the end of this, we receive a GC diploma and are considered LSE alumni.

Of course, this past week hasn't been about all that academic stuff but rather getting to know people during the British equivalent of orientation, known as "Fresher's Week". I got myself settled into my dorm at High Holborn, a pretty lucky spot as it's less than a ten minute walk from the school.

The school did a good job providing plenty of opportunities to meet new people. Every night there were free drinks in the basement of the dorm and the school sponsored trips to specific clubs around the city every night. The clubs seemed to attract more of the Freshers crowd, but the drinks were a great for socializing and making plans for the night.

On Tuesday we had a GC boat crews down the Thames that went by the financial district. This sounds very cool in theory, and it was pretty fun, but the execution of the event could have been better. We were told after a 5:30 meeting to make it to the cruise by 6:00. This was in the middle of London rush hour, and the result was that many (myself included) didn't make it there until 7:00. Fortunately the boat left late, but there was still another problem: no one had eaten dinner. Although the boat provided some "nibbles", these soon ran out. Luckily, we all had two free drink tokens! The cruise ended up lasting 4 hours, and when we got off we discovered that just about everything closes in London at 11:00. We barely managed to find a Turkish place where we enjoyed some delicious kebabs. So, all's well that ends well.

I've been meeting a wide variety of interesting people. About 2/3 of GC students come from a US university, but of those students many come from abroad originally. I've met people from Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, China, Canada, India, Singapore, Mexico, and across the US. I'm surprised by how many people come from the coasts, especially schools in DC. I'm also surprised by how many people are interested in finance. I've met lots of other people studying math and economics who are planning on going into consulting or finance, but so far no others interested in pursuing a phd.

I've got more updates to come on my trip to Cumberland Lodge over the weekend as well as the start of my courses this week. Hopefully I'll be updating more regularly from here on out! Check out my facebook for photos.