A Glorified Walking Tour of London, My Favorite Course This Semester

As I wrap up my semester in London, I wanted to take the time through this blog to highlight one of the classes that I took through IES Abroad London this spring, Architecture of London. While I thoroughly enjoyed all of the course content and being able to explore so much of London through a more academic lens, I really want to first highlight and share my appreciation here for my professor, Jon Wright. I adored the class itself for a variety of reasons, but having Jon as a professor was certainly the best part of the course and is a huge driving factor behind why I feel so inspired by the course and feel that I’m taking so much away from it. He always came to class with an immense amount of passion and knowledge about anything and everything related to London’s architecture, and he consistently presented the information in a way that felt completely digestible and incredibly engaging. I came to class each week feeling excited to learn more about the city that I was lucky enough to study and live in from someone with a seemingly endless bank of knowledge on the city. Jon and his class were an absolute of my time in London, and his passion and care for his students is something that I will always remember when I look back on my time studying abroad.

Through the course, I was able to see so many different parts of London, many of which I probably wouldn’t have been able to find the time to visit on my own, and even places I never would have known about outside of the class. While there were certainly days where walking around the city for two and a half hours in the freezing London gloom wasn’t exactly the most appealing or exciting thing in the world, I always walked away feeling like I had really learned something that allowed me to have a newfound appreciation for this incredible city. Aside from discovering new places and seeing buildings and sights I never would’ve looked for myself, it was also really exciting to be able to learn more about some of London’s most well-known pieces of architecture. Being able to learn about the history of iconic buildings that have become symbols of the city, like Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and Royal Albert Hall was truly fascinating and gave me an even stronger appreciation for some of the history that London has been built on.

One of the best ways that some of my friends have described this course is a “glorified walking tour,” which sums it up very well. Imagine being able to go on free walking tours of London once a week for almost four months! Architecture was never a particular interest of mine and never something I would’ve been likely to study or take a course on, but I was so pleasantly surprised by my experience and everything that I learned in this course. And Jon Wright, if you’re seeing this, you truly made this course everything that it is and I’m incredibly grateful for everything that you’ve taught me.