Long Study Tour: London, England

This past week I went with my Positive Psychology class to London, England. The thing that really drew me to studying with DIS was the fact that traveling is incorporated into their curriculum. From my research, there are no other study abroad programs that can offer this. The past week taught me invaluable lessons about Positive Psychology that I could never have learned in the classroom. I also got to know the other people in my class and my teacher on a whole new level; for that I’m very grateful.

Day 1: Saturday, March 23

We had to be AT the airport at 5:30 AM, which was a bit of a struggle. However, it was nice leaving so early because we got to London at 8:00 AM. We were greeted at the Gatwick airport by a Mercedes-Benz bus…thanks DIS! This took us to our hotel, Thistle City Baribcan, which was situated in East London. After we settled in at the hotel, we went on a walking tour of East London. This was a more ethnic part of London that I did not get to see the last time I was here. My favorite parts were the Spitafiled Market and all the street art we encountered.

Spitafield market

“Love Locks”

Street art in East London

Street art

After the walking tour, we had dinner at an Indian restaurant on Bricklane. This was my first experience with Indian food and I loved it! The rest of the evening we had to ourselves.

Day 2: Sunday, March 24

After receiving a spectacular breakfast at the hotel, we went on a tour of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

The theatre still performs Shakespeare’s plays almost every night in the summer.

The next stop was the National Portrait Gallery where we learned about different paintings that symbolized British history. Afterwards, we were given a map and different landmarks and were told to go out and explore. My group decided to see Big Ben and the London Eye.

London Eye

Big Ben

That night, DIS provided us with dinner at Jamie Oliver’s restaurant (he is apparently a famous chef for those of you who were not aware…I had no idea!) The food was INCREDIBLE!

Friends from my class

Appetizers

Prawn Linguine

Day 3: Monday, March 25

Today started our first day of lectures. We went to the London School of Economics where Miriam Akhtar spoke to us about Positive Psychology Interventions. Miriam was one of the first people to graduate with a Masters Degree in Positive Psychology and likes to bring well-being into different communities. One topic she talked about that I think everyone can benefit from were the “5 Ways to Well-being”, which are: connect, learn, be active, notice, and give. All five of these things are crucial to living the good life.

The second lecturer was Bridget Grenville-Cleave, who is a founder member of International Positive Psychology Association and an author of three books. One interesting topic she talked about was the effect of praise on children. After lots of research, it has been shown that one should praise a child for the amount of effort he/she puts forth, not his/her intelligence. For example, you should say “You got 8/10 right, you must have worked really hard” instead of “You got 8/10 right, you must be really smart”. This is because children then attribute failure to their intelligence and deem themselves “stupid” if they do not do well, rather than think they are capable of doing better and must just try harder next time.

Bridget also talked a lot about the importance of people’s strengths. She firmly believes people become great by focusing on their strengths rather than their weaknesses. We also discussed the importance of having vital friends in our lives. There are 8 vital friendship roles:

1. Builder (they invest time in helping you develop)

2. Champion (a personal promoter)

3. Collaborator (relates to your passions, has similiar interests)

4. Companion (always there for you in good times and bad)

5. Connector (helps you get what you want)

6. Energizer (a fun friend who always gives you a boost)

7. Mind-Opener (expands your horizons and encourages you to embrace new ideas)

8. Navigator (guides, advises, and keeps you heading in the right direction)

Perhaps you can take a second to reflect on the people in your life and what vital friendship role he/she provides to you.

After our lectures, we had a guided tour through the Tate Modern museum. It was by far my favorite museum that I’ve visited so far. I have come to appreciate surreal art and learned the importance of taking my time when looking at paintings in order to see the message the creator wanted to get across. After the tour, I grabbed dinner with one of my best friends from home, Laura, who is currently studying abroad in London. It was SOOO great seeing her 🙂

Day 4: Tuesday, March 26

After another delicious breakfast at the hotel, we left for our lecture with Charlotte Style, a life coach. She was my favorite speaker of the trip because everything she talked about related directly to our lives; it was like having our own session with a life coach! She stressed the significance of living to our values. She believes that “living authentically beings when we live to our values. Find what you value and your life becomes fuller, happier, and lighter.” She had us perform exercises to draw out what our purpose in life was and what makes us happiest. It was a great time to reflect on how much the past semester has changed me and it made me excited for the wonderful adventures that are yet to come.

In the afternoon we did an activity called random acts of kindness. We got into groups of 5 and each group was given $5 to spend however they pleased (that would benefit other people of course :-)) My group chose to buy two bouquets of flowers and hand them out to people in Green Park. Sounds like a great idea, right? Well…..I would say about 80% of people looked at us like we were crazy and wouldn’t accept the flowers. Not going to lie, it was kind of a downer to have people reject a nice gesture. However, the smiles on the people that did accept made it worth it.

After that activity, we needed a little pick me up. Thank goodness we were scheduled to have high tea at Flemings Mayfair. It was unreal how posh and elegant the whole setting was. Besides tea, we were given tons of little finger sandwiches (with the crust cut off, of course), macaroons, biscuits, brownies, cheese, etc.

High tea

That night some of us decided to get last minute ticket to a show. I chose to see “Once”, and let me tell you, it was INCREDIBLE!!!!!!! The music was out of this world. Think Mumford and Sons/acoustic/folksy. Click here to see the trailer for it.

Day 5: Wednesday, March 27

Today marked our last full day in London. after yet another wonderful breakfast (can you tell I really enjoyed the buffet breakfast that the hotel provided?) we went and visited with the CEO of Mindapples: a super cool organization that “encourages people to look after their minds through engagement services, and provides learning and development programmes to help people learn how their minds work to improve their resilience and mental performance.” I encourage you to look up the organization for yourself to learn more. Put extremely simply, the basis behind it is that everyone has different ways of maintaining their well-being, so why not compile a list of them all to give other people ideas? We were asked to write down our 5 “mindapples”. Mine were: music, spending time alone, working out, yoga, and spending time with family/friends. Other people’s ranged from eating chocolate, to singing in the shower, to indulging in one thing once a day, etc.

After this talk, we had lunch in Borough Market. It was an outdoor market that had tons of different vendors with food from all over the world. I had coconut pancakes from Thailand, Italian gnocchi, and a freshly made cookie. Yuuuuuummmmmmm.

Next, we met with Christopher Samsa, who talked about the neuroscience of Positive Psychology. This was particularly interesting to me since I am a Neuroscience major. He had us perform different tasks that raised our levels of specific hormones to see the effect on our cognitive abilities.

For our last night, we had a traditional English dinner of fish and chips at a great restaurant called Hung Drawn and Quartered (a little gory if you ask me). After dinner, we went on the infamous Jack the Ripper walking tour. It was pretty crazy to be standing somewhere and have the tour guide say “this is where Jack killed one of his victims”. We got to play detective/psychologist and come up with ideas for why Jack did what he did and reasons he may have suddenly stopped killing. For those of you who know my obsession with Criminal Minds, you probably already guessed I really enjoyed this activity. 🙂

Day 6: Thursday, March 28

On our last day we met with the author of our textbook, Dr. Kate Hefferon. She gave us a lecture on resilience and post-traumatic growth (becoming better rather than letting a situation destroy you) which was interesting. Some indications of post-traumatic growth are:

-perceived changes in self

-improved relationships

-change in life philosophy

-changed priorities (nature, health, time, school)

-enhanced spiritual belief

We then had some free time, so I went to Camden Market with some people in my class and shopped around. It was a very quirky and fun market to go to, I’d highly recommend it!!

We left for the airport later that afternoon and got back to Copenhagen at around 11:30 PM. I was so exhausted that I slept for almost 2 days straight! All in all, I had a fantastic time learning more about Positive Psychology. Again, I do not think I would’ve learned this much just sitting in the classroom, so I am grateful DIS incorporates this into their program. The environment also allows you the opportunity to get to know the people in your class really well. I have made great friends that I anticipate keeping in contact with even after we all go back; it’s fun to have friends from all over the US now!

I have taken it easy this weekend by sleeping and relaxing. I didn’t have school today because yesterday was Easter. Since I don’t have class Tuesday or Wednesday I don’t have class until Thursday…I must say I am pretty excited to have almost another week off 🙂

Another piece of news that I forgot to mention was that the head of the Psychology department from my school came and visited right before I went for London! He sat in on my Positive Psychology class and was so intrigued with the topic that we went and had coffee afterwards to discuss research ideas for this summer! I think we will investigate the effects meditation and nature have on memory. I find it so cool that I’m able to go home and apply the things that I have been learning to real-life.

Research buddies 🙂

Two other faculty members came with him, so one night they took all of us St. Thomas students out to dinner. It was fun telling them about our experiences and hearing about what’s going on back at home.

This past week has reminded me how blessed I am to be studying abroad. I truly am having the best experience I could have ever imagined. I can already tell the things I’ve learned and the experiences I’ve had have changed me so that I am not going home as the same person that arrived in Europe in January. I wish everyone would be able to have an opportunity like this.

Anywhoooo…if you’ve managed to read through the whole thing without skipping to the end, I applaud you! Sorry this was such a long post. Now that I’m not traveling for awhile I will be better at blogging more regularly.

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter & thanks for reading!

Caitlin