Weekend trip in Brighton at the brightest beach
Author: Ramsey Ghaleb | Majors: Biology and Political Science
My name is Ramsey Ghaleb; I am in the Fulbright Honors College and am pre-med, completing an undergraduate double major in Political science and Biology. I chose the Frontiers in Human Health Course to receive a holistic understanding of global health. I knew that participating in a course like this would ultimately allow me to better understand the international part of global health from a new perspective. This course put me in a state-of-the-art lab, and all classes were taught at the world-renowned St. George’s Hospital. In only a month, I was exposed to both international perspectives regarding global health policy and state of the art research labs.
Every day, I had a new instructor from different countries that worked either in the hospital or in the medical school. They were all so nice and with such little time showed me how important educating us future doctors meant to them. With that being said, our schedule was intense, with class starting at 10 A.M. every day and ending around 5 or 6 P.M. With only one exam, we were given the essay question to our final exam on the first week of school which was a lot different from courses taught here at the University of Arkansas.
The course structure itself was unique; the first two weeks were spent discussing how to respond to a pandemic, antimicrobial resistance, pandemic ethics, and learning lab techniques. Going to class learning something completely new everyday was very exciting. The last two weeks, we got to decide between two research projects. The one I chose to work on was an exploratory research project that attempted to characterize the cytokine production of Fetal Liver Alveolar Macrophages compared to those in human lungs.
The culture in the United Kingdom when we arrived was truly unique. I could genuinely write a book about everything I saw and did, but for the sake of space, I will describe “the first day.” On our fifth day at the St. George’s Hospital dorms, our quarantine ended, and we had a couple days before class. That day was the Wimbledon men’s singles championship game which started at ten in the morning and was only a twenty-minute bus ride away. At Wimbledon, we decided we were going to Wembley, about an hour away by Uber, for the Euro Cup final match between Britain and Italy. Although Britain lost, it was a truly surreal experience. They had not been that far in the tournament in over fifty years.
Honestly, my main advice is if you are on the fence about committing your summer, semester, or school year in another country, do it. As soon as I spent my first day in the United Kingdom, I felt like I did not have enough time there. Standing there in Chelsea by Kensington palace; on the Sunday of my last week, I thought back to how I have never once heard from students that had studied abroad “I was there for too long.” No matter what cherish every single day you are abroad whether you are there for a month or a year. If you are already committed make sure to really get to know your advisor for your program, doing an external program I had an advisor for all United Kingdom programs that the American Institute of Foreign Study conducted. My British mom, my advisor, was able to help me when I was sick, ordering groceries during quarantine, and even getting me tickets to a West End theatre show!