Some Firsts

Yesterday I had my first day of class at the Ithaca College London Center! To be honest, I was not really excited. My first class was a sociology course called British Youth Culture. I have never taken a sociology course, so I was not sure what to expect. From a first glance at the syllabus, I was even more put off by the class.

Our professor came in and class started about ten minutes early, and people kept wandering in without seats. This happened at least five times and he seemed unimpressed. Then while taking attendance, he realized once he got to 'Goldenberg' that he was calling us by our surnames and had to start over again. However, then the class started right away, and we dove into taking notes within the first hour. I'm convinced 'syllabus week' isn't a thing in London. We started learning about how youth culture started and went through some British and American history, and I realized this class was actually the coolest class I had ever taken with Ithaca (outside of journalism ones, of course). We listened to "A Day in the Life" off of Sgt. Pepper's by the Beatles...and I actually understood it once he explained the song. I've had all the Beatles albums on my iTunes, but never really took the time to listen to them all through. Now I'm totally going to, especially since that's what part of our class will be about. We ended 45 minutes early because even in London, the Ithaca wifi network still blows. 

After class, I took the tube by myself for the first time. It was so easy, I'm starting to get less and less afraid of going out on my own. They have maps everywhere, and if you know where you should end up, it's pretty hard to get lost...unless, that is, the tube gets delayed and you might need to find another way home. Once I arrived in Angel, I walked up and down Upper St. until I finally found the cafe, Tinderbox, where I was going to meet one of my internship supervisors. By the time I was halfway through an Americano, my supervisor found me and we got to talking about what I would be doing at Newspepper. She told me the background of the place and founder (a lot of which I already knew from my background research) and then what me, the intern, would do. 

I get to present (report), produce and edit my own ten part web series about anything that I want, somehow related to tech news in London. Did I mention that my work will be tweeted out by the founder and CEO, Hermione Way, who as of now has around 22,000 followers, and on the Newspepper twitter has around 800 followers. So...I can potentially get quite a bit of recognition!

I will have the chance to be a presenter for other events, meaning I will be directly featured on their websites...which is super cool. I'll know how to explain this all better once I start doing things next week, but for now it seems like I'm going to have the best time doing this! 

After my meeting, I successfully navigated my way home. I'm getting the hang of this whole London thing.