By Claire McCleskeyAs the end of my senior year began to approach, I knew two things: I wanted to go to Florida State, and I wanted to study abroad at some point in my college career. I had heard of FSU’s First Year Abroad program on my very first visit to the school but I never imagined I’d be able to spend my entire first year away from home in a foreign country. I’ll never forget the day I received one of the International Programs brochures in the mail. As soon as I started to look through it, both my parents and I knew there was no way I would be able to say no to the FYA program. A few months later, I packed my bags and headed to London.
London is a great city because it
has something to offer any time, any day, for any interest. The Study Centre is
located close to many theatres on the West End (London’s Broadway) and we
learned early on that you can get discounted tickets to shows if you go the day
of, so many students took advantage of that. I took Intro to Theatre during my
first semester, which had us going to at least one play a week for class, but
many of us expanded our theatrical horizons beyond the class. One of my
favorite shows was The Woman in Black,
which I saw four times in London, and attended a screening of the film
introduced by none other than Daniel Radcliffe himself. Because London is such a central part of the
European entertainment industry, many movie premieres are held there. In fact,
most of them take place in Leicester Square, which is about a five-minute walk
from the Study Centre. One of the coolest events to ever happen there was the
red carpet premiere for The Dark Knight Rises. My friends and I camped out to
get spots along the carpet and managed to see all the stars, and even get Anne
Hathaway and Tom Hardy’s autograph! But it wasn’t just movies and theatre surrounding
our home in the world-renowned Bloomsbury District—a million things would be
happening every day in every field imaginable. One weekend could be a relaxing
one spent picnicking in St. James’ or Hyde Park, the next could be the Queen’s
Diamond Jubilee where one day you watch the Queen and company float down the
Thames and the next you see Paul McCartney singing Let It Be in front of her
Buckingham Palace home. Another week might be London’s Fashion Week, which I
took advantage of in the fall and spring, and the week after you might head to
Stonehenge and Bath. 
There were countless opportunities in London,
but the most unique one I had was the chance to be in the Opening and Closing
Ceremonies of the Olympics. My friend and I heard about the auditions and
signed up immediately. Much to our surprise, we both received a callback. Even
more to our surprise, we were both asked to be in the Ceremonies. I wasn’t able
to do it because there would have been too many scheduling conflicts with the
classes I was taking, but my friend did participate. While I wish I could have
been in it too, it’s cool to say I had the opportunity to be in them. Watching
the Olympics--which happened just days after I returned from London--made me
homesick, but I was swelling with pride knowing that my friend was a part of
the ceremonies.
While in London, I actually
completed all of my gen ed requirements except for one science class, and I
ended up having as many credit hours as a junior by the end of my freshman
year. The Broad Curriculum classes abroad are great, because they give you a
really different experience than what you would get in Tallahassee. For
example, if I hadn’t studied abroad, I probably would have taken a biology
class with 300 kids as my lab science. Instead, I took an archeology class with
20 other students (my largest class by far) where we spent half the class at a
museum or digging up the shore of the Thames. During one of the summer
sessions, I decided to branch out from the typical Broad Curriculum courses
usually taken by First Year Abroad students. I applied to participate in a
program focused on documentary filmmaking in Britain, and the two courses I
took as part of that program are the most interesting classes I’ve ever taken.
Before the class started, I’d never so much as touched a real camera. By the
end of the course I had made two commercial parodies and documentary about
Abbey Road, filmed on location. That’s one of the greatest advantages to
studying abroad—the city becomes your textbook.
When you study abroad, you form a
unique bond with your classmates. No one will ever fully understand the
experience you had together unless they were there. I made so many great
friends studying abroad, but those of us who were together for a full year will
always have an inseparable bond. It’s nice to look back at photos of us in
London watching an FSU football game huddled around one tiny computer screen,
and compare it to pictures of us at our first football game together in
Tallahassee, or to see pictures of us on the London Eye at the start of our
time in London and see that we took almost the exact same picture on our last
day in the city together. Pictures like that make me really appreciate my friends
from London because they show just how much we’ve been through together.
While I loved every minute I spent
in London, it was also great to get out of the city and see the rest of the
world! The Study Centre organized a number of day trips and weekend trips to
places like the Highlands in Scotland, Liverpool, Bath, Stonehenge, and Wales.
We also took advantage of how easy (and relatively cheap!) it is to fly from
London to other parts of Europe. During my time there, I traveled to Venice
(twice), Barcelona, Nice, Marseilles, Cannes, Paris, Amsterdam, Bruges, and
more. And I got to do it with my closest friends. If there’s anything better
than travelling the world, it’s travelling the world with your best friends.
