London Journal: 5 Grinnell Swimmers Hop the Pond

By Taylor Brien, Swimming World Intern

College is a time of great adventure and excitement, with many students choosing to study abroad during their time at school. Grinnell College of Grinnell, Iowa offers a study abroad program for their students in London, England. Students participating in the Grinnell-in-London exchange become immersed in the culture through school courses, internships, and field trips. Last fall five swimmers from the Grinnell Swimming and Diving team traveled to London for the semester of a lifetime. Austin Cote, Collin Kramer, Danielle Phillips, Emily Twedell, and Ben Vaughn missed the 2013 portion of the 2013-14 season, but were able to travel back in time for their training trip and the remainder of the 2014 season.

When asked about their classes abroad compared to classes at Grinnell, all five noted that they were expected to produce the same quality of work abroad while also integrating them into the culture. Collin’s neuroscience class took field trips to museums and a day trip to Cambridge.

“ I enjoyed the co-curricular trips [because they] added to my more worldly education,” Ben said. “It was almost like we were able to put practical aspects into our studies when we took trips.”

Part of the Grinnell-in-London experience can also include an internship. Collin, Emily, Danielle, and Ben each had internships within the London community, while Austin joined a local water polo team.

Photo Courtesy: Emily Twedell

Collin:

Over the course of six weeks Collin was able to immerse himself into the London culture through his internship with Healthwatch Camden in London. During his internship Collin completed three different projects. One allowed him to go undercover.

“They had me do a ‘mystery shopper’ operation where I visited all 39 clinics in the borough of Camden and asked to make a complaint on behalf of a family member and gauged how they treated me and how they directed me to proceed,” Collin said. “This was a really cool project to partake in because I got to be a bit devious and was encouraged to integrate myself into the English population.”

His other projects included conducting a survey in North-London Borough, a poorer area, to see how residents felt about the local healthcare and mental healthcare services provided by the NHS and then compiling and analyzing the data. Being a newer organization, Collin’s final project required him to compile data on how the organization was able to address or re-direct requests sent to their office.

“This was important because our organization was newly commissioned by the government and needed to prove that it was being productive in order to have its existence renewed,” Collin recalled.

Emily:

Emily’s internship was with an organization called AgeUK, which makes efforts to help the elderly with battling the early stages of dementia by providing them with services and day-to-day activities around the London area. According to Emily her “normal day involved spending time with the clients at one specific day center. I would talk with them, play scrabble or darts, knit, and make many cups of tea.” She noted that one of her most memorable moments was when a regular at the center pulled her aside during crafts and handed her a mosaic tile she had made, telling her it was “something nice that will help you to remember me.”

“At that moment, I was really touched with how nice everyone had been to me at the day center… It was moments like this that helped me to realize I had gotten a lot out of my experience – more than I had anticipated!” reflected Emily.

Danielle:

With a plan to pursue medicine after graduation, Danielle was fortunate enough to get an internship with the National Health Service (NHS), the British healthcare system. Her internship tasks involved attending NHS meetings, preparing documents, updating the contact databases within the NHS, and calling on local NHS offices to check in with them about certain topics. According to Danielle, “experiencing another country’s healthcare system gave me new perspectives on how healthcare functions and taught me that there are going to be positive and negatives to any system no matter how you slice it.”

Ben:

Ben was able to secure an education internship with Stonewall, an organization with offices in England, Scotland, and Wales that aims to promote and ensure equality and justice for the LGB community. While there Ben was able to do two individual research projects for the organization. The first allowed him to research and analyze school inspections required by Her Majesty’s school board looking for the number of schools working to combat homophobia and how they were working to achieve that. That information was then used to discuss the lack of consistency in the reports conducted by the school board.

For his second research project Ben was able to look internally at Stonewall and research their expenditures and resource usage. “With this information I constructed a comprehensive paper reduction strategy for Stonewall that would reduce the amount of resources like paper, electricity, and time that were spent,” Ben noted.

When asked about his most memorable experience, Ben recalls that in his first week as an intern Stonewall held their 2013 Stonewall Awards at the V&A Museum. This event gained a lot of press from London and national celebrities, politicians, and activists.

“To prepare for this, I had to brief myself on the guests there since I knew nothing about British pop culture and would not have recognized any faces.” Ben said. “At the event, it was my role to engage in small talk with the VIP guests.”

Austin:

While Austin did not have an internship he was able to immerse himself in the athletic culture while abroad by joining a local water polo team. This was not a new activity for Austin having played water polo for the last nine years.

“The polo team was my favorite part of being abroad. I got to meet Londoners and other Europeans, and see a vastly different lifestyle.”

Photo Courtesy: Emily Twedell

On swimming abroad:

Conveniently there was a local YMCA located not too far from their flat and the five were able to get some training in between all their other activities.

“Many students bought a membership [to the YMCA] because they had a decent rate for students,” Ben said.

All five swimmers noted that they tried to get some swimming or weight lifting in a couple times each week to be in shape for their upcoming Florida training trip.

“I was training for the remainder of the 2013-2014 season as our team was going on our training trip very shortly after I returned to the US,” Danielle said. ” While I wasn’t in as good of shape as the rest of the team was at the beginning of training trip, swimming in London was definitely a necessity for me to survive the training trip.”

All five went on to have a successful end to their season.

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