Letter to Future General Course LSE Students

A student from Macaulay who was recently accepted into the General Course program at LSE emailed me and asked a few questions. This inspired me write a general letter. Also I am clearly procrastinating right now but would you really want to write a paper answering the question :Have security factors taken a new importance in the foreign economic policies of states since September 11, 2001? Discuss with reference to at least two countries. I thought not. Although if anyone has any ideas or suggestions, I welcome all. Getting back to the point, I would like to preface this post by conceding that despite my complaining, I really do enjoy being here and would not trade this experience for anything.

Dear Future Student,

Congratulations on being accepted to the General Course program at the London School of Economics. I bet that you feel quite accomplished having gained the right to study at a top UK university for a year. I can almost guarantee that in the US (by US I actually mean North America or Asia but don’t worry when you come here everyone will assume that you are American) you study some form of economics and cannot wait to study at the preeminent institution for the study of economics, it must be because there is the word economics in the name. At this point you are probably convinced that you are an Econ expert. If someone were to wake you up in the middle of the night, you would be able to recite Y=C+I+G+X-M and explain price elasticity and its derivation. Guess what, everyone else here can do the same thing and they are probably better at it than you. Even if you are not particularly interested in Economics and choose to study International Relations or Anthropology, don’t worry there will be some econ thrown into your studies.

I know that while applying people probably told you that the workload is intense, but you thought, I am smart I can handle it and anyway, I would be bored if I didn’t have a lot of work to do. I can tell you that during orientation week the Dean told us that we should remember that we are full time students and that people who work full time average about 40 hours of work at least and we should use that as our base of how much to study. Each lecture has different requirements. My qualitative classes average about 400 pages of reading each and quantitative classes require problem sets each week. I think that the extra killer is that they expect you to read supplementary work. For instance, in my international political economy class, they recommended 4 different textbooks to brush up on necessary skills. After a while you get used to spending insane hours in the libary. You are bound to find an area in the library that will become your second home, and by second home I mean that you will spend more time there than in the actual dorm room that you are paying for. In fact, there are showers and bean bag chairs if you need to take a short break from reading/writing/procrastinating on sporcle/having a nervous breakdown/procrastinating by reading the New York Times or the Financial Times/Facebook. In Lent Term, you will develop a close relationship with the overnight security guard who comes around after midnight to check LSE ids.

Also, you may be looking forward to studying at LSE because you are anxious to meet and interact with British students. I am sorry to tell you that LSE is not the place for this. The school prides itself on being international which means that no one is actually British. I have gone days without hearing a British accent. In addition, as a GC student, the majority of your friends will also be from North America (and at least one of them will be from a D.C. University but my bet is GW). You may meet a few non-Americans if you choose to join societies, but it is likely that there are post-Grad and think that it is cute that you are trying to get involved.

I am sure that the other reason you chose to study abroad in Europe was to travel. Thats great but there are a few problems. One, you chose to study in England, the only country in Europe that is seperated by water. So any European adventures require travel on a plane, adding an extra expense. Also, LSE classes are held 5 days a week and you have very little control over when your classes are held. This leaves only 2 days to travel over the weekend but it is likely that you have a ton of work so this makes traveling over the weekend impractical. The one benefit is that unlike in the US, the entire teaching period for the entire year is only 20 weeks and you will be here for 10 months. This leaves a 4 week Christmas Break and a 5 week Easter Break. But, once you come here you learn that in fact, the Holidays at LSE are meant for studying and you do not want to fall behind your classmates. I guess that you could always travel once finals end in July, but that only leaves a few weeks before American Universities begin at the end of August.

You are probably also excited about meeting new people (or given the population I have observed at LSE maybe not). You will be around people who have similar interests to you. In the past, your college friends have made fun of you when you went off on a tangent discussing the value in probit testing and ANOVA or the different personalities of all 100 Senators. Given LSE’s focus on the social science, you are bound to find other people who are interested in those things. There is one problem with this logic, everyone here is interested in things like that. This means that everyone is as quirky (which really means strange) as you are. At home, you are able to masque this characteristic but it will truly blossom at LSE.

You are probably also excited about studying in London. There will not be the language barrier that would have existed had you chosen to study in Madrid or Berlin. Unfortunately this is not the case. At LSE, it is likely that only about 1/5 of the people you interact with on a daily basis should count English as a language in which they have fluency. Other British people in London will pretend to not be able to understand you even though we clearly speak the same language. Each time you ask for a coffee ‘to go’ at Starbucks the Barista will give you a strange look until you correct yourself by saying ‘take away.’ Also there is no sun in London. I am convinced that true Londoners must have a Vitamin D deficiency. As of March 10, I can name all of the sunny days in London. But don’t worry, good weather would only distract you from going to the library so this point is actually moot.

Start counting down the days until Orientation Week.

Love,

Steph