Lindsay's London Flummery: My Ninth Week in London

There are only three weeks left in this semester. It is now time to collaborate all of the concepts I’ve learned in the last nine weeks. My understanding of each concept taught will be displayed in the final assessments due in three short weeks.

In project management I must, with my group, expound on the information given in our presentation a few weeks ago and add to it the new concepts we’ve learned since then. Our presentation was on Isles of Wonder, the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremonies and we earned a 75%. In the U.S. this would equate to a C, in the UK, it’s an A, or “top mark” as they call it. The report on Isles of Wonder will be well researched and very concise. We have a 4000-word limit and an extensive amount of information to include. Not only must we explain the project itself, we must also include the theories behind the decisions made during the project. Thankfully it is a group project so there are four of us to check, double check, triple check, and quadruple check the work.

The People and Organizations final assessment is a research paper. I need to find a problem in the work place, and it must be a real documented case, describe the problem, collect information and analyze concepts learned in class as they pertain to this particular case. I have found a few gender discrimination cases that look promising but I have not yet decided on a case. This is on my to-do list for tomorrow after lecture. We’re not having seminar tomorrow because the instructors want to give us ample time to research and work on our final assessments.

This week in theater class we’ll be getting the “low-down” on our final assessment. I know it will be a research paper, but I don’t know the specifics yet. This holds true for my black Britain history class taught by the University of Hawaii professor. There will be a research paper due on a specific subject, which must be a specific length, and due by a specific date. I hope to get that information this week in class.

I mentioned it last week, but I think it’s worth mentioning again. I LOVE the style of teaching and assessing here. I feel like I’ve really learned the concepts taught. I LOVE that they stop teaching new concepts a couple of weeks before the final assessment is due so I have time to focus on what I’ve been taught. I LOVE that the assessments force me to research and understand the concepts. It’s all piling up now, but I have three weeks to get it done without the pressure of new concepts.

In other news, I went with the social program to Scotland this past weekend and had a fantastic time. We took a four and a half hour train ride to Edinburgh and went on a walking tour of the city. It’s a beautiful place and so interesting. It’s a city that is built on three levels. Imagine standing on the third floor of a building and looking down at the other two levels. This is what it’s like to look at Edinburgh from the third level. My favorite part was walking around the old graveyard behind George Heriot’s School, where J.K. Rowling’s kids go to school, and according to our tour guide, was her inspiration for Hogwarts. In this graveyard I saw the grave of William McGonagall, a very bad poet and inspiration for Rowling’s character Minerva McGonagall, and the grave of Thomas Riddell. His is the most photographed grave of a non-famous person in the world.

On Saturday we boarded a coach and headed north to St. Augustus. On the way we toured Doune Castle, which is where Game of Thrones, Outlander, and my personal favorite, Monty Python were filmed. We made a few stops in the ever beautiful, and extremely cold Highlands on the way to our destination. Sunday morning we were up, fed and loaded on the coach by 8:30 to check out Loch Ness, have lunch in Piclochry, take a hike to majestic water falls in Macbeth’s Burnham Wood, and end up back at the train station in Edinburgh for our trip back to London. I fell in love with the nature in the Highlands. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

This weekend I’m taking a trip to Wales to see an old friend from North Carolina. She has plans to take me to a few old castles and to a local pub to watch the Wales vs. England rugby match. I don’t know anything at all about rugby, but I will assume it is a bunch of men running around with a ball, a stick, or both, kicking, throwing, or hitting said ball with their feet, hands, or said stick. I guess I will find out Saturday.