My Third Week in London

The time to add and drop classes is over. Luckily, I was not one of the people who needed to add or drop a class. My UH study abroad advisor, Allison, did a fantastic job getting my classes scheduled before I got here.

On Mondays I have Project Management. First, I go to lecture for an hour in the afternoon, and then I have a short break before going into seminar for two hours where we split up into groups and work on small-scale projects using the concepts we learned in lecture. Today we talked about the stages of team development and started forming ideas for our final project. There is an interim assessment coming up in a few weeks so my group has a lot of work to get through before then. We are going to use some aspect of the building of the London Zoo for our project but must research further before we solidify our plans. Because it opened in 1824, information may be limited. There is a recently completed project dealing with the expansion of the lion’s enclosure that looks promising. 

On Tuesdays I have People and Organizations. Again, lecture first, short break and then a two-hour seminar. The set up is very similar to Project Management; however, we have not been given our final assessment yet. It may be a project; it may be a paper. Hopefully we'll find out soon. 

Wednesdays I go to my required history class, taught by Marcus Daniel, the University of Hawaii professor who came to London as our advisor. He is from London and the information about the city and country he shares with us has made the transition painless. I am taking his Black Britain history class and I love it. Currently we are reading the book The Zong, by James Walvin and it is fascinating. It goes into great detail about the business of slave trading between Africa, the UK and the Americas, but also touches on the business versus moral side.

Thursday is a fairly easy day. I have Intro to London Theater for two hours in the afternoon. This is the London Studies class I chose for my culture and I absolutely love it! Every week we go to the theater to see a live production. Each production is different from the others. In class we discuss the play we saw and also different ways in which the theater, as a whole, runs. The business aspect of the theater interests me more than the acting part, so I focus my studies on that. For our final assessment we have to write a research paper about the theater and I already have my professor's permission to write about the business side of things versus the stage perspective.

Last week I saw three performances! The first was with my theater class and called Nine Lives, written by Zodwa Nyoni, directed by Alex Chisholm, and performed by Lladel Bryant. It was a one-man show about a gay man who fled from his home in Zimbabwe due to intense homophobia to seek sanctuary in the UK. It was an intense production, full of emotion, but definitely not my cup of tea. I am not an extremely "artsy" kind of person. My classmates all agreed this was an "artsy" type of play.

Next I saw The Phantom of the Opera, with music by the immensely skilled Andrew Lloyd Webber, and directed by Harold Prince. It was an amazing piece of theater! The study abroad social program at the University of Roehampton put on this outing.

And finally, to end my unbelievably wonderful week, I went to the Cambridge theatre with a couple of my flat mates to see Roald Dahl's, Matilda. Matthew Warchus directed this play. He did a fantastic job bringing the book to life on stage. The kids in the production were extremely talented!

The best part about London so far is everything. I am so thankful I get to study business abroad, not only in my business classes, but also in my history and theater classes. So far I've touched on concepts I previously learned in my honor's leadership class, statistics, business finance, and economics classes at the University of Hawaii. I am eager to see where in the future my knowledge from London comes into play.

My Second Week in London

Has it been two weeks? Has it been two months? I feel like I've been here forever when I look around and savor the comfort and normality of my surroundings. However, when I attend class, I realize I've only been here two weeks. It's a perception conundrum.

I've taken a boat cruise down the Thames, explored Greenwich, saw In the Heights at King's Cross Theater, joined the trampoline team, and feasted my eyes upon the grandness of Kensington Palace. I also finished my first week of Project Management and People and Organizations, the two business classes I'm taking while expanding my university horizons. I loved these classes. It was refreshing to sit in a room full of people from all over the globe and discuss business. While there are differences in the way different countries consume products and services and market those products and services, the daily grind of business is essentially the same. I look forward to delving into these classes further throughout the semester.

I'd like to turn your attention to the local superstore, Asda. Peter and Fred Asquith, and a group of Yorkshire farmers formed Hindell's Dairies in the 1920s. In 1965, Asquith and Dairies joined forces to become Asda. In 1999, Asda was acquired by Walmart, and in recent years, has grown to become Britain's second largest supermarket. One of the best things about Asda is they DELIVER! Yes, that's right folks, deliver! I can go to their website, put items in my shopping cart, chose my delivery date and time, and check out. On the date and time selected, I walk to the gate just around the corner and collect my goods. Food, toiletries, homewares, clothing, school supplies, whatever. If it's on the Asda shelves, it will be delivered.

This whole process makes me wonder why Walmart in the US doesn't offer this service. I'm positive, with my busy schedule full of school and children, I would use this service. I organized a small group of students on campus, some local, some international, and had a short tete-a-tete on the subject. The two biggest theories as to why Walmart in the US doesn't offer this service were agreed upon. First, logistics. London is a fairly large city compartmentalized into zones. In the US, Walmart in larger cities would have an easier time coordinating delivery, but the ease of organizing a delivery service in more rural areas would be a challenge. The second speculation, and the one with the most enthusiastic assent was based on the subject of marketing. There is intense study and highly educated theories about consumerism in department stores. Everything from item placement to lighting to the smell of the store. These procedures are put in place to maximize the spending by the consumer. The question I posed to the group after hearing their theories about marketing was, if consumers had the opportunity to shop online and receive their product without stepping foot in the store, would the amount of sales drop or would they rise due to the ease of shopping from home? Most decided sales would drop. I brought up Amazon.com and the fact that it is strictly an online store worth nearly $60 billion. The discussion then turned to the Amazon website and how it presents itself to consumers. Clearly, the web has as many marketing tricks as brick and mortar stores.

There was no concrete reason as to why Walmart in the US doesn't deliver, only these two theories. We all agreed it is a service we would most definitely take advantage of. I think this is a subject worth exploring and maybe some day, when the madness of classes, quizzes, homework and exams withers away, I'll reconnoitre.

My first week in London

The last six weeks have been filled with holidays and travel preparations. And now I'm here!  In London! Sometimes I have to look around and remind myself that I am really here. It has been a very busy 5 days. I flew into Heathrow last Wednesday, waited a short time with the rest of the Roehampton Study Abroad students from all over the world for a coach to drive us to Roehampton, and went directly to check-in to get my room key, kitchen pack and bedroom pack. They gave us basic kitchen utensils, a duvet, a pillow and a fitted sheet. I was shown to my room and left to unpack and get settled. I was happy for the peace and quiet, but hungry. Nobody told me where the food was and in my excitement, I forgot to ask. The next three days were filled with orientation. We had meetings, a campus tour, and the most fun event...Photo Frenzy! We got into groups of about six and were given a packet with our group number, instructions, and 10 clues. We had to solve the clues to find a location somewhere in London and then make our way around public transportation to get there and take a group selfie.  It was the perfect way to get a small taste of a magnificent city while getting comfortable with busses and trains.
Today was the first day of instruction. Project Management lecture went from 1:00 - 2:00 and the seminar from 4:00 - 6:00. The way classes are run here is very interesting. Lecture is just what it sounds like, a lecture. There are seven different seminar times which split the lecture class into seven groups. There were approximately 25 students in each seminar. Here we got an overview of the class expectations, discussed what was talked about in the lecture, and went into groups of four to start dialog about what project we would be interested in researching for a presentation and paper. This will be our only grade for the class. There is a suggested reading list and the books are located in the university library. No books to buy!!  I am looking forward to my class tomorrow; People and Organisations (yes, that's an "s," not a "z"). This class also has a lecture and seminar. I know both of these classes will be instrumental in my business studies and I am so excited that I get to take these experiences back to the University of Hawaii!
Stay tuned for more flummery...