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Roehampton Diary Studying Abroad
By Rebecca Atkinson ‘11

I thought that starting off college in a completely different country was going to be an extremely difficult and nearly an impossible task. The way that people in America talked in England made it seem scary. “You only have two assignments through the term,” and “The finals are all essays and those are your only grades” is what I used to hear all the time back home, but when I got here and actually went to school I saw just how wrong they were.

Me outside of the library...

School in Roehampton is completely different in a sense that they test people on their understanding of the subject while in America they test you on the book’s content. This was the most drastic difference for me because in school I was never really asked, ‘What do YOU think of this?’ but rather I was asked what did Harry mean by this saying on this page of this particular book. I personally believe that England has an advantage in this respect because it makes students think outside the box and look at all things for what they are and not for what the text says they are. Another thing that makes England different are the accents. All the professors have accents and they are sometimes quite hard to understand. Also some of the words are spelled differently here. For example, organization is organisation and honor is honour. At first it was all quite weird but after a couple of classes I got used to it.

Me in bimolecular science class...

As far as the tests go, there aren’t any! Instead of tests and quizzes they have two or three essays due through out the term. Now this sounds great and at first I was thinking “Oh yea! I don’t have to do any work except for this!” but I was wrong once again. In order to do well on these essays, you have to do your homework on a regular basis and keep up with lectures, homework, etc. It’s not that hard to keep up though, as the class sizes are quite small. The thing is, the lecture is split up into two parts. The first is the lecture, which is in a group with everyone. The second is the seminar, which is where the big group splits into little ones consisting of about 10 to15 people.

Labs at Roehampton University...

The history classes were the hardest for me to understand. It was hard for me to grasp the fact that all the history that I had learned at home was one country’s point of view. The history here is all about the European ways and past, while all I really ever learned in history class was, well, all about America and only America! I always find myself either completely lost when the professor brings up a subject, or arguing about what the professor saying by replying “but in America I learned….” That’s just one of those subjects that was drilled into my head all these years. I didn’t think about the other side of things until I came here to England.

All in all, this trip was an eye-opener for me. I now see what makes America so unique and why we are still considered to have some of the best colleges in the world.