Final Reflection

Visiting London: A Guide to Hopping Across the Pond

I will start by saying that pursuing this senior project was nothing like I expected it to be. It had ups that I didn’t expect as well as downsides, but overall it was an enjoyable as well as educational experience. 

     First and foremost, I gained many life skills from this experience. During the planning period, I had to quickly develop the skill of budgeting and using my time efficiently. I had a lot to do in that first week so I made a schedule of what I was going to plan each day and made sure I didn’t get too behind. I was unable to do work one day so I made sure to catch up completely the next day. Keeping myself disciplined like that really paid off when it was time to leave for London because I had a great itinerary. Whether or not I decided to follow it exactly, I was able to leave comforted by the fact that I would never be there with nothing to do, wasting time. When I arrived in London, the skill set completely changed. I quickly realized that I was on my own and therefore responsible for navigating public transportation if I wanted to go anywhere. I downloaded a tube map app for my iPhone and dove in headfirst by taking the tube by myself my first night there to get a milkshake in SoHo. I learned which busses went where I needed to go, how to know which train lines went to what stations, and that everything moves at lightning speed and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll choke and everyone will know that you’re a foreigner and it’ll be embarrassing and stressful. Needless to say I became independent and competent very quickly and honestly, once I figured it out, the transportation was very easy to navigate. Another skill I developed while I was in London is focus. It would have been easy to get caught up in the adventure of the city and not take notes or photos or get any good material for my travel guide, but I made sure to keep my eye on the prize, aka the travel guide. 

     I also encountered some challenges while pursuing this project, which is to be expected. Some of the things I wanted to in London ended up being seasonal and not offered when I was there. Other things were too expensive and didn’t seem worth it to me. The main struggle that I worked through was the fact that it was impossible to stick to such a specific itinerary. I made all these great plans of things I wanted to do and places to eat which would have led to a very full travel guide, but when I was actually there, I realized that I couldn’t do that many things in a day and I also found things that I would rather do. This put me in a tough place because I knew that the itinerary I turned in along with my proposal was a “graduation requirement” but I felt that I couldn’t get the most out of my trip by sticking to it exactly, so I made a judgement call to use it as guidelines for my activities but not to feel pressure to stick to it completely. This was a good call because it allowed me to have the energy to really focus on what I was doing and spend more time at each place taking pictures and notes. This taught me that in the future, it’s better to make a list of things you would like to do and do as much of that as you can rather than making a day by day schedule because you never know how you’ll feel or what you’ll want to do. Treating my itinerary like a list of possibilities made me always have something to do but took off the pressure of trying to run through London and speed through everything just to get to the next thing. 

     Overall, I’m very glad I did this project. I learned a lot and I hope I’ve made something that others can use to travel and get ideas of things to do. I hope to do something like this again in the future for a different location.