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A Cavalier Freshman Falls in Love With London
A Cavalier Freshman Falls in Love With London
By Ali Patusky
This fall, I completed my first semester as a freshman at the University of Virginia. I did it in London, not Charlottesville, one of 22 UVA students who applied and were accepted for the program.
When I told people I was going there, I received reactions from “That’s so cool!” to “Why would you not want to be on campus for your first semester?” It’s a valid question, but after living in the Middleburg area most of my life, I was excited by the new scenery and experiences a global city could offer.
In London, I took five courses, the two most influential being “Democracy in Crisis” and “Engaging Aesthetics/Differences.” The democracy course was a main reason I applied for the program. It was taught by a member of Parliament, Lord Stewart Wood, who offers the class exclusively to UVA students.
It was a crash course on the British government, and, as an American, it was fascinating to learn how the United Kingdom government basically is upheld by a few statutes and the principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty.
At times, it was hard to wrap my head around how one of the most historically powerful governments in the world had existed democratically for so long with such flexibility of interpretation of its powers.
However, Lord Wood explained it well.
“We generally don’t assume our politicians will become corrupt even if their powers are unbounded by law,” he said, adding that the system’s flexibility is arguably both its biggest weakness and strength.
The aesthetics class was taught by Michael Levenson, the UVA professor who started the London First program. It combined in-class readings, films, and discussions with excursions into the city to view various art forms as a way to explore how themes of race, gender, religion, and culture exist within our own lives and how they apply to a more global context.
We looked at political messaging in the vibrant street art scene of Shoreditch; pondered the meaning of life while viewing Samuel Beckett’s play, “Waiting for Godot”; examined a form of modern day slavery in Britain with the short story “Embassy of Cambodia”; and visited Sadler’s Wells to see Hofesh Schecter’s “Theatre of Dreams,” a modern dance performance.
I also explored London and loved the view from Trafalgar Square down toward Big Ben. I loved putting in my AirPods, walking all around or being on the Tube, with its complex tunnels, inconsistent gap size between train and platform, and the number people it efficiently transports.
I loved carrying a few readings and some money in a hip bag to run to One Shot cafe in Camden to study. I loved the quiet moments in Regents Park where my university was located. Surrounded by the green space, it felt like home. I loved traveling, with whirlwind weekend trips to Cardiff, Wales; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Vienna, Austria.
I also loved the fiery chestnut horse, Dante, I rode in Hyde Park, who leaped a couple of times in response to skittering leaves and reminded me of my own horse, Prince.
Those rides through Hyde Park, including the famous “Rotten Row,” frequented by upper-class Londoners during the 18th and 19th centuries, were one instance of a physical connection to history that made studying in London so unique.
It’s a city that proves how tradition and innovation can coexist despite being objectively conflictive. I didn’t just read about the Romans’ settlement of the area, I actually touched their original walls from 200 AD, then took a photo of them with my phone.
I climbed to the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral and looked at a skyline shared by the Tower of London, built in the 1070s, and the Shard, built in 2007 with over 50 percent recycled material. I watched a production of Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” in the iconic Globe Theater also performed in sign language to increase its accessibility.
In London, I lived in the past, I lived in the present, and I lived in the future.
Time now feels more like a tangled ball of yarn instead of a straight line. As Professor Levenson said,
“There’s always a birth. We always have to figure out what to do with our energies.”
In William Blake’s poem, “London,” he refers to “mind forg’d manacles.” Entering 2025, I am trying to continue to take life by the horns, with no manacles of what I think I can or cannot do to limit me.
Ali Patusky has been writing for Country ZEST since her sophomore year at Fauquier High School.
