Becca Keyes

Tomorrow morning, the GLS class of 2013 will take their final test of the semester. It is absolutely insane how fast the time has flown here. Yesterday, one of the girls asked what the date was. Upon hearing February 20, we were all shocked. Have we really already been here for almost two months?
 








We sure have! The experiences we have gotten to have and relationships we have been able to build have made it an amazing two months at that. Just last weekend, we had some ladies hiking in Norway, a group indulging in the Irish countryside, and some exploring the great city we live in! I, however, along with my lovely flatmates (plus Daniel!), were off to the city of love and lights, Paris.




Did we encounter some language barriers? Yes. Did it rain and have a biting wind chill during our bike tour? Sure thing! Did we have the time of our lives and share some laughter? No doubt about it. Paris is definitely a place I would love to go back to and spend extended time there. From the cobblestone roads to dinner atop the Eiffel Tower, it was an incredible weekend trip. The weekend trips have been such a treat here in Europe. During internships, we will be able to explore more of the local London culture, but until then, we are loving the intense culture shock every weekend and the stories everyone comes back with. We are also pros at airports now and the whole custom procedure. We are learning more than expected here!

The best part about this trip is the people. I may get sappy for a minute here. We have gone from being academic acquaintances who may study supply and demand together to great friends who are doing life together. We are learning not only about Statistics, the Functions of Business, and Cultures from all across the continent, but about each other and how to love each other well when home is far away. I am so thankful for each person here. It's a diverse group, and we like it that way.

Robert Mee

This post is mainly for the parents of GLS students who, after reading their amazing travelogue, are surely wondering whether there is any substantive studying happening in London.  My wife and I were privileged to be there for one month with these 27 students and I can confirm that they did indeed study.  

Between January 10 and February 3, each (4-hour) class day was like a week for a usual semester, so each week was equivalent to a month of school.  By Jan. 21 we had reached “Spring break” and celebrated by going to Oxford together.  Oxford is an hour-long train ride west of London and home of the oldest university in England.  My interest in Oxford is due to C.S. Lewis having been a student and professor there.  However, the most popular attraction in town was undoubtedly Christ Church College, due to its connection to Harry Potter.  So we visited Magdalen College, St. Mary the Virgin Church, the Eagle and Child pub, and the Christ Church College hall.  How typical of our experience in England – a mix of real history and fun!

 

 

It is a great privilege to teach GLS students in London – one I am eager to repeat.  My wife and I enjoyed all our trips and discussions with the students.  And when my dad and stepmom came for a visit, the students were so thoughtful and polite with them.  As parents, you would have been most proud of your sons and daughters.

Not only was teaching in London a first for me, so was going an entire semester with no student absences!  That had never happened in my 30 years of teaching undergraduates.

And now to the students.  As the sun came up on Feb. 4, we sped away from London on Eurostar, going under the channel and arriving in Antwerp, Belgium before noon.  If anyone goes to Antwerp, you must visit the Plantin-Moretus museum, which houses the history and collections of a family-run printing operation that was in business from the 1550s to the 1870s.  They have the oldest two remaining printing presses in the world, they printed the first atlas, they published books in more than a dozen languages, ...  From the T/F quiz about my family, you know that Cherol loves books – so this was the perfect site for us.  

 

We definitely enjoyed Belgian chocolate in Antwerp and we began to learn some Flemish/Dutch.  It was a relaxing time after our compressed semester and conversations with my Statistics colleagues were most enjoyable.  My only regret was turning down the opportunity to have kangaroo for dinner our first night there.

Kathryn Hamlin

Hello from London,

Although that greeting sounds right, I think we can all agree that we have spent almost as much time around London as we have outside of it. Because of our rigorous schedule inside of the classroom, I have found that the best way to spend your time (and money) is travelling to all of the amazing countries surrounding England. Just this last weekend we had groups in Germany, Spain and Sweden. I know that my schedule has completely piled up with trips planned from Dublin to Florence to Wales.

Right before changing of the guards in front of Buckingham Palace

I was in a group of 4 who visited Stockholm, Sweden this past weekend. There were a couple glitches in getting there: the multiple feet of snow surrounding us everywhere, the fact that none of us had packed correctly, and best of all, our bus was unable to make it all the way to the central station due to icy conditions; however, once we woke up the next morning and walked to the old city, we were able to see how beautiful the city was. The city is so unique because it is an archipelago, and the architecture that accompanied that was breathtaking. I know that we would have never imagined visiting Stockholm before this trip, but it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been and I hope that I’m able to go again, but maybe after the weather warms up a little.

One of the beautiful sights in Stockholm, Sweden

Back in London, we have all experienced so much through our Business Administration class. There is only so much that you can learn while sitting in a classroom, so Dr. Morris has been able to open up the class to a study of business markets in and around London, which allows us to ask questions and get feedback from different types of organizations. Not only does this put the context into practice but it gives us all a chance to see a different side of London and International Business strategies and organizations.

The GLS class of 2013

We all have so much coming towards us within the next couple weeks, and I can only imagine that it will continue to get better and better.

Cheerio!

Emily Griggs

Greetings from London!

Well, we made it through our first week of Business Administration 207, with Dr. Morris. We have sped through eight chapters in four days and according to Dr. Morris we are four ninths of the way done with our course. We meet six hours a day for BA 207, which is rather daunting, so Dr. Morris has come up with a solution. We meet in the morning for three hours where we cover two chapters from the text book and in the afternoon we apply what we have learned.

Thus far we have visited Camden Market and Harrods to apply our knowledge; both outings were exciting experiences. Our class divided into groups according to our major and created questions to ask the vendors, sales people, and proprietors of Camden Market and Harrods based on the material we had learned that day.

 For Camden Market we compiled questions such as, where do your products come from? How do you set yourself apart from your competitors? How often to you order products? Do you have any employees? 

Our questions for Harrods were slightly different, common questions included: how do you motivate your employees? Are you satisfied as an employee? Do you have autonomy over your area of the store? How do you set your products apart from competitors?

We have greatly enjoyed our first two outings and look forward to the upcoming week. We do not have much more time until spring break and our internships begin and I know that we are all excited about both. Living in London truly is an incredible experience which we all will treasure. 

Robert Davis

"Are you drinking much?" "No"
"Met any interesting people?" "A few"
"Really? Are you sure you aren't spending every night out on the town?" "I'm sure."
"Have you found anything fun to do near your flat?" "Yes, there's loads of stuff to do around here."
"You do realize the legal drinking age is 18, right?" "Yes, and, no, I haven't taken advantage of that."
(Sadly, questions 1, 3, and 5 are all compliments of my parents who are understandably, if unnecessarily, worried about my self-discipline.)

I've been asked so many questions by my friends and family back home that it's sometimes hard to muster up more than a one or two word answer to a question which I could spend an entire hour answering . The hardest question to answer, however, is "Where do you plan on going?" I honestly thought at the outset that I would spend my weekends off touring the rest of Europe. In my head I'd planned out trips to Spain and Italy and Austria and Greece. Little did I know the allure of London would keep me home most weekends.

To date, I have gone on exactly 1 trip (an extended weekend in Bath with my flatmates). Every other weekend I have simply wandered about London until I saw something that piqued my interest. The first time I pulled on my hiking boots and went out for a stroll I stumbled upon the Camden Market district. After spending an hour in the stalls and more money than I care to admit to, I emerged quite a few pounds lighter but with a couple new leather notebooks and a wonderful cup of apple cider. The subsequent weekend I walked out to Shoreditch to hear if the bells really say "When I grow rich". On the way I found myself in Islington so I decided to search for the flat corresponding to the phone number 2^2079460347. To my disappointment I didn't find the flat, much less a man with two heads and three arms or even one Ford Prefect. Fortunately I happened across a lunchtime food market between Shoreditch and Islington which greatly improved my mood.

Obviously I could pile example upon example and story upon story of all the various markets, shops, and curiosities I have found in London, but that would almost certainly be as stultifyingly dull as your average tri-d. I will say only one thing more.  If you find yourself in London and you're feeling overwhelmed by all your weekend options, there is only one truly pertinent piece of advice:

Don't Panic.

Astrid Emkes

So far London has been a blur of fascinating experiences, as my fellow GLSers have so awesomely described.  To pick up where they left off, we are now completely done with statistics.  A semester’s worth of stat in four weeks, intense to say the least, but also definitely worth it.  We all miss Dr. Mee and his wife already, but are extremely excited to start new adventures with Lane.

Lane arrived to London on Friday, and on Saturday a group of us, including Lane, went to The Monument and Borough Market.  The Monument was built between 1671 and 1677 to commemorate the Great Fire of London.  The structure is 202 feet high, which is the exact distance between it and where the fire started.  One can climb the 311 steps of the tower and see its panoramic views from the top, which is exactly what we did. 

After The Monument we all went to Borough Market to kill some time before a group dinner in Chinatown to celebrate both Chinese New Year’s and Lane’s arrival.  The market was awesome, and is somewhere I’m definitely going to go back to.  Dinner was also amazing, mostly because of the company, although the food was good too.  We have all been having a great time, and will certainly continue to have a great time for the rest of our time here.

Tune in to see what we’ll do next! 

William Coulter

Greetings from the Queen!

Last week the Arsenal Gunners took on the Ipswich Town Blues.  It was a heated match at Emirates Stadium under a full moon.  There were 12 of us that went, and we posed as Arsenal fans.  We all went so far as to buy scarves and jerseys in support of our new team, the Gunners.  Some highlights include sitting in club level seats, chanting “We love Cesc Fabergas” on the tube with soccer maniacs, and watching our team pull away a 3-0 win.  Being at Emirates Stadium with 60 thousand of my closest fellow Gunners (not to mention my GLS buds) reminded me of good ole Neyland Stadium on a brisk autumn day.  For anyone going to London, look for tickets early because they can get expensive. We are die-hard Arsenal fans now.

London has become a bonding experience between us “Global Leadership Scholars”.  There is no better way to have a group of 27 ‘smarty pants’ business students bond than having them live together in London, learn a month worth of stats in a week, and take weekend trips all over Europe.  We might have ‘met’ each other in Accounting and Economics class.  We even thought that we were getting to be really good friends when we started studying together (after a pep talk about performance with Fred and Lane).  We started to truly understand each other once we hopped across the big pond.  

Packing for our semester abroad brought about images of business attire, long nights of studying, and much time spent on Skype.  I only know of two people who brought games to play.  James brought Banana-grams, a knockoff Scrabble game, and I brought a deck of cards.  So far we have played banana-grams so much it has affected our stats grade.  The deck of cards has been through so many games of go fish, spades, hearts, Euchre, o hell, President, war, BS, and solitaire that I went to Covent Market to buy a new deck already.  For all those GLS 2014 wannabes, don’t think that this program is for pocket protector nerds.  Being in London has made me and hopefully everyone else realize that we are not the average Steve Urkels.  This is one of the most fulfilling college experiences anyone can experience.  I am proud to be considered part of the GLS family.

Mind the Gap

-Will Coulter