Me all dressed up to attend afternoon tea, posing in front of an iconic red phone booth.
Author: Kendele Kramer | Major: Biological Engineering
An hour after arriving, I stepped out of my apartment full of jet-lag-brain-fog from an overnight flight yet driven by excitement that I had really made it to London. I sauntered up to the crosswalk, stepped in closer to press the button, and then flinched back a full foot as one of the iconic, red, double-decker buses came barreling down the street, inches away from me, from the “wrong” direction. Just like that I was wide awake and learned the first lesson of my study abroad: you cannot rely on the way you have always done things in the US. Rather than attempting to retrain my brain to focus on traffic coming from only the right, I quickly developed the policy of looking both ways before crossing the street.
During the May Intersession, I spent three weeks studying sustainability initiatives abroad in the global city of London, England. My goals were to discover how the theoretical knowledge of sustainability I have gathered in previous classes applies in the UK, to gain confidence in my ability to thrive independently, to get lots of good stories and photos to share with family and friends, and, of course, to earn three credit hours towards completing my degree in biological engineering. I chose this program because, on top of being offered at a time that would allow me to come back and complete a separate summer internship, I wanted to learn about sustainability initiatives in England, which has much less land area and more urban density compared to the US. This scenario makes it especially urgent for the country to plan out how they will meet increasing energy demands and deal with growing waste streams in coming years.
On the first day of classes, I would find out that my course only had six students enrolled, including me. This was a very different experience from my classes so far at UARK, and it made it easy to speak up and have amazing discussions! We were all from different disciplines including environmental science, education, political science, literature, and, my background, engineering. Our professor, Georgia, also had a background in engineering, so I loved getting her perspective on the successes and failures of different sustainability frameworks. She took a holistic approach to the course, examining impacts of London’s sustainability and regeneration projects not only on the environment, but also on people original to the area and the economy. My studies so far have mainly focused on technical areas of sustainability and improving environmental quality. I had not considered how important the role of the surrounding community is in the adoption and success of these projects or how the affordability of new, state-of-the-art technologies that seem to be “perfect” sustainable solutions is a vital factor affecting how widely they can be adopted. Several field trips enhanced our experience. We visited the Stratford Olympic Park, site of the 2012 Olympics, and learned about the planning efforts that went into ensuring the facilities were sustainable and could be converted into community spaces and affordable housing after the games. We also visited Kew Gardens, which not only boasts beautiful green spaces, but is also a leader in preserving biodiversity for the next generation through partnering with developing countries to create vast seed banks. Georgia led discussions comparing London’s situation to the US, and we discussed how while the US currently still has the option to spread out further and develop more of our natural areas, London is already forced to work back inwards, regenerating declining areas and revamping existing structures to make them more sustainable. This was my favorite part of the course, and it inspired me to think that cities like London can one day be used as a case study for the United States when we do eventually face resource scarcity. As a future engineer, I am happy that I will be at the forefront of developing sustainable solutions, bringing my technical knowledge as well as my newly-gained understanding that the best approaches come from interdisciplinary discussions.
Outside of class, my five classmates and I developed great friendships in such a short time together. On top of squeezing in all the touristy attractions like Big Ben and the Tower Bridge, we visited many of London’s museums together, my favorite being the Natural History Museum with its dinosaur skeletons! We also were able to experience London’s variety of global cuisines at Camden and Borough Markets, where there are dozens of street food carts selling everything from spicy curries to traditional fish and chips. We took a weekend trip over to Paris, too, via the underwater Eurostar tunnel (which I still find mind boggling), and got to see the Louvre and Eiffel Tower. I had a lovely time exploring London and look forward to returning one day.
Studying abroad was such a challenging and rewarding experience, and I would highly recommend it to everyone who has the opportunity. I was surprised by the variety of new opinions and viewpoints that I was exposed to, even in three short weeks in another primarily English-speaking country. Many lessons can only be learned outside the classroom, and what better way to learn them than while simultaneously experiencing a new culture?
So, like I mentioned at the beginning with my bus story, I learned in London the importance of looking both ways before I crossed the street. Based on the knowledge I gained from my course abroad, I will advocate for the United States to start taking a similar approach to sustainability. We, myself included, have not begun to feel the true urgency of climate change and have not been raised to recognize the unsustainable behaviors we participate in every day. It is clear to me now that if we do not take the time to start looking in another direction, reexamining what we can regenerate and how we can behave differently moving forward, it will be too late to avoid serious danger to our communities, economy, and planet.