- If you could go back a few weeks, what would you tell your old self to better prepare for the trip? What specifically would you do differently, and why?
As an anxious person I tried to overcompensate for all the new things that were to come by staying within a certain bubble of preparation, by which I mean, I tried to isolate myself to preserve energy. I assumed that it would all be out of my hand and that I would have to follow the pace of a clearly defined pathway. This turned out not to be the case at all, in fact the majority of the experience was oriented around what me and my friends wished to do and there were only a couple of hours within the week during which we had to comply with the class requirements which were still extremely enjoyable. All that being said, what I would really like to tell myself a couple weeks ago is that “everything will go much smoother than you think” and “it won’t be draining because it’s a self-paced adventure”. Specifically I would let myself buy more things to bring home because, again, I had extremely anxiously under packed and feared that I would not be able to bring everything home and turned out to have a lot of space left in my suitcase. I would also like to warn my early London-self to not rush through everything and go into the places I wanted to even if it meant stopping the group I was with in order to voice my opinion. Overall, just enjoy yourself, you’re in a different continent, and don’t let others take away from your experience.