I’ve mentioned this a few times in the past, but one of my goals was to live in London one day. This is precisely why I came back to do an internship here; I figured work experience in my possible place of residence would offer me a realistic look into my future. After four months of working in London, here are my thoughts:
- I have become less sure of my desire to live in London. There are so many factors that contribute to a smooth life here, factors that you don’t realize until you can’t turn back.
- I’ve never missed my car so much in my life. The public transportation is wonderful here as I have mentioned before, but I 100% prefer a car.
- I do love the city life. To what extent? I don’t know. It becomes exhausting after a period of time. I miss everything being in close proximity. I was never a huge fan of the location of my college; it’s solely a small college town. But after these 4 months of being a busy city bee, I’ve gained a new appreciation for places such as my school. I look forward to places being in close proximity.
- I still love London. It will always be one of my favorite cities and I do want to come back again. I’ve had 2 experiences here: one of them (the first one) was incredible. This time around I had way more complications than I anticipated and it made for a very stressful semester. I believe that is what influenced my changing thoughts. I don’t want to completely rule out the idea of living in London based off of one bad experience.
This brings me into the next reflection: the internship. I’m torn on how to speak about this. I want to be honest and I want to give genuine insight to others who are considering internship programs in London. I figure that honesty is always the best policy, so here’s what I’ll say:
If you are considering interning in London, I would recommend organizing it independently. I had problems upon problems with my program. Most amenities in my housing location were broken and were never fixed despite multiple texts and conversations explaining the issues. Organization and communication were lacking from the internship provider, which therefore negatively affected me in multiple aspects of my program. My internship was not what I anticipated and I won’t go too deep into this, but for the price I paid, I expected my experience to be significantly different. I ended this program feeling immensely defeated, sad, angry, and unsatisfied. I am not the only intern in the program who shares these feelings, so I do think it’s worth taking into account.
I don’t know how to close this blog. I wanted to end it on a happy note but honestly I can’t think of one. I am disappointed in how things went and that is just the truth.