An Intro to Pembroke King's Programme 2018 @ University of Cambridge

It has been a while since I blogged, and I have finally found the motivation to start again!

In December I applied to University of British Columbia's Go Global program for a second time (I did an exchange at UC Berkeley the previous year) to University of Cambridge's Pembroke King's Programme Summer 2018. About a month later I got the confirmation from Go Global to go forward and apply, and fast forward, here I am!

I arrived on July 7th, 2018 via a 3-hour long coach ride with National Express from Heathrow Airport. I was dazed and a little lightheaded from sitting down for such a prolonged period of time. Upon arrival at about 7pm I quickly grabbed my keys to my room from the Porter's Lodge, settled in, and attended a small welcoming buffet reception. My nerves were jittery as the thought finally sunk in, I was going to be studying at CAMBRIDGE for 6 weeks!!!

All PKP students are required to choose 3 courses for the duration of the program, or 2 courses and 1 supervision, which allows the student to study a topic of his/her choice with the help of a scholar in the field. I chose to take 3 courses: Employability, Self-marketing, and Personal Branding; Cyber-security; and Lego Robotics Workshop. For the first half of PKP I am studying Employability, Self-marketing, and Personal Branding, and the other two courses are in the second half. All of these courses have credits that can transfer back to UBC, which is fantastic as this program can also help with my degree.

PKP students have the privilege of living on campus, and we have the option of living in two of the colleges, King's College and Pembroke College. I chose to live in A Staircase in King's College and, wow, what a view I have everyday I wake up!

the staircase to my room

the view outside my window

the view outside my bathroom XD

floor kitchen

where King's students eat - known as the Servery (or to me, my cafeteria)

I have connected with many of the PKP students (there are about 350 of us) prior to the program on the official Facebook group and it was awesome being finally able to attach names to faces. I had an amazing first day of class meeting new friends, programming assistants, and lecturers (more on my classes on later blogs). The night of the first day of class was our first formal hall, and I felt like I was living my childhood dream of dining in Hogwarts.

This wasn't my first time in Cambridge but what I did not realize was that Cambridge is a big tourist attraction and the surrounding area has many businesses, restaurants, and shops to support the influx of visitors. I have had the chance of wandering around the beautiful little town and tasting local flavours. Oh boy, there is so much to do and so few weekends (and so little money)!

I feel so blessed to have been given this opportunity and study abroad. I have been having an exceptional experience so far, making so many incredibly kind and adventurous friends around the world. Stay tuned for more blogs in the upcoming weeks and explore Cambridge with me!

Signing off,
Ariel