During the fall semester, I had the privilege of studying neuroscience at University College in London (UCL), England. For me, it was an opportunity to gain perspective not only with system in another country but also with another culture.
Though there are numerous similarities between the United Kingdom and the United States, there plenty of differences that ranged from how lecture were taught to how people spent their time outside the classroom. One of those differences were the heavy dependence on writing papers as a form of assessment. The three courses I took while at UCL were Drugs and the Mind, Perception and Attention, and the Neural Basis of Learning and Motivation. For each course, I was required to write at least a couple papers that each had a mandatory word length longer than my senior thesis.
The basic knowledge I had learned in introductory and intermediate neuroscience courses at UAB made me more prepared, whether it was the extensive background knowledge of the nervous system in class or the papers I had to read while working in a research lab. However, the biggest way UAB neuroscience prepared me for UCL neuroscience came in the form of presentations.
Frequent exposure to presenting in front of my peers and faculty at UAB made me very confident when having to make a presentation at UCL because it not only got rid of my poor presentation habits but also gave me to tools to develop an effective presentation. Though I missed my UAB family at times, I ended up making a home away from home in London with friends that made my London experience very enjoyable and are people who I still frequently communicate with even after I left London.
I feel that people who rush to graduate are so concerned with the destination point that they forget the journey and will ultimately miss the many opportunities they were given while in college, and though I am looking forward to graduating in the spring, I hopefully can look back at my four years of college whether in Birmingham or in London with no regrets.
