Jessi Wright [junior double major in English: Professional Writing and English: Literature, Class of 2019]: I discovered Literary London when I was looking for different alternative programs, and that fit exactly with what I was doing. I was a newly declared literature double major with my professional writing, and it satisfied a lot of requirements, and it was stuff that I was genuinely interested in.

I was there for six weeks, and probably about every week after the first one we saw a Shakespeare play, and we went to some plays. We went to like Stratford-Upon-Avon, we went to Bath, we saw Shakespeare plays in the Globe Theatre, which is a replication of his original theatre, and we saw like the Rose Theatre, and it was something that really just brought everything to life.

There were three classes offered; one was Shakespeare, one was Jane Austen, and the third was a creative writing course. I wasn't extremely interested in Shakespeare. I was more so inclined to my [Jane] Austen class that was there, but once I got there and started to actually experience it, I was more excited about the Shakespeare portion of our program.

On Mondays we worked for internships. On Tuesdays we had class, and then we would probably go to a museum or something around London. On Wednesdays we usually travelled to places like Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath or wherever else we could find. On Thursdays we’d have class again and do something after that. And then on Fridays we interned again.

I interned at This is London magazine, and it was basically a tourist magazine for London-goers. It was interesting because they assigned me, as a foreigner to London and England, to go out and gather brochures and deliver things, but I also did the fun stuff like edit the magazine and try to get buyers and go to press releases. So it was a little bit of everything; they tried to make sure I had a very round experience. I even wrote a couple things for them.

I submitted one of my pieces for them, and they said, "This has a lot of Americanisms in it!" and I was like, "Americanisms?" and they're like, "Yeah, we don't do some of these things." So it was fun to see that, but they were also very interested in what it was like here, what home looked like for me, and different things about that. They just thought I was a cute American — it was funny!

These two professors and advisors and programs and classes have given me so many opportunities that I otherwise would not have, and they've shown me how to take leadership in different roles, whether it's like planning a symposium or directing an interview series or learning how my job is going to be like in the future, being a copy editor, an editor, a publisher, seeing what it's really like to live in a big city, and try to manage all the demands.

[February 2018]