Whoops, sorry - realized it's been a bit long since I last posted! I'm finally back in the UK, after a whirlwind month and a half of traveling to the US for interviews for Pharmacology PhD programs. I first did a weekend interview at UM to interview with the PIBS program, then flew back to London for three days before hopping on a plane to San Francisco to start a 2 1/2 week trip all around the States. I interviewed at UCSF, went home for a few days, and flew to Philadelphia to interview at UPenn. From there I went to Madison, Wisconsin where I stayed with some friends from water polo and interviewed at UW, then I flew down to North Carolina to visit UNC. I flew back to London and was back for a whole 10 days before taking another weekend trip, this time to Northwestern. I returned (for good) on last Monday, so now I'm back to enjoying all that London has to offer. Also, I've decided on UCSF for grad school (the Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacogenomics program) so though I know I'll be extremely sad to leave London this summer, I know I can look forward to moving to San Francisco and I'm very excited about joining that program!
Speaking of America, I stumbled across this list of "Americanisms" a while back and had a thoroughly fun time reading through the list. Some of them ("my bad", fanny packs, "I could care less") bother me just as much as the people who wrote in. Others were truly amusing to me, such as #29 "The one that always gets me is the American need to use the word bi-weekly when 'fortnightly' would suffice just fine" (really? 'fortnightly?') and #36 "Surely the most irritating is: 'You do the math.' Math? It's MATHS!". Most British people are quite used to having Americans around and generally understand most Americanisms (if you ask for the "bathroom" or "restroom" in an American accent, no one ever looks surprised), but every once in a while a word that seems completely normal to me will elicit blank stares from my British friends, and vice-versa. For instance, I've learned that a "gilet" is a vest and a "dummy" is a pacifier, and I've taught my friends what a "sidewalk" is (they call it "footpath" or "pavement") and what it means to "scrimmage" (I'm very happy to say that this one is catching on with my water polo team). The one phrase I have a very hard time remembering has a different meaning here is "pants". In the UK, the term "trousers" refers to everything that would fall under the heading of "pants" in the US (got that one, not too hard) - but "pants" only means "underpants", which leads to some amusing situation when I forget to say "trousers" and say "pants" instead.
In another striking difference between the US and UK, when I set up my bank account over the summer, I received a letter from my new bank telling me not to choose a PIN number that's easy to guess, like 1111 (ok), 1234 (of course), or 1066 - I guess thieves in the UK are well-schooled in their history. I have a hard time imagining Bank of America warning me not to choose "1776" for my pin number based on the historical significance of the date. I've been thinking a lot about Britishisms vs. Americanisms over the time I've been here, and while I've found that I have quite consciously tried to replace some American phrases with their British equivalents (lift instead of elevator, take-away instead of take-out, half one instead of 1:30), I'm not as good at noticing when a particular phrase or comment sounds very American. It's funny the things people just assume because of how we've grown up: when I brought back some Girl Scout cookies from one of my interview weekends to a rugby game (one of the girls said "Oh wow, I saw these once on an episode of Friends!") it reminded me of how much we take for granted other people will know about our own culture, as my excitement over a hot cross bun (I had no idea they were real and actually existed outside of a nursery rhyme!) highlighted for my British friends as well.
Ta ta, off to write more essays. Only a week and a half left of classes, shockingly - we finish on March 23rd!
Speaking of America, I stumbled across this list of "Americanisms" a while back and had a thoroughly fun time reading through the list. Some of them ("my bad", fanny packs, "I could care less") bother me just as much as the people who wrote in. Others were truly amusing to me, such as #29 "The one that always gets me is the American need to use the word bi-weekly when 'fortnightly' would suffice just fine" (really? 'fortnightly?') and #36 "Surely the most irritating is: 'You do the math.' Math? It's MATHS!". Most British people are quite used to having Americans around and generally understand most Americanisms (if you ask for the "bathroom" or "restroom" in an American accent, no one ever looks surprised), but every once in a while a word that seems completely normal to me will elicit blank stares from my British friends, and vice-versa. For instance, I've learned that a "gilet" is a vest and a "dummy" is a pacifier, and I've taught my friends what a "sidewalk" is (they call it "footpath" or "pavement") and what it means to "scrimmage" (I'm very happy to say that this one is catching on with my water polo team). The one phrase I have a very hard time remembering has a different meaning here is "pants". In the UK, the term "trousers" refers to everything that would fall under the heading of "pants" in the US (got that one, not too hard) - but "pants" only means "underpants", which leads to some amusing situation when I forget to say "trousers" and say "pants" instead.
In another striking difference between the US and UK, when I set up my bank account over the summer, I received a letter from my new bank telling me not to choose a PIN number that's easy to guess, like 1111 (ok), 1234 (of course), or 1066 - I guess thieves in the UK are well-schooled in their history. I have a hard time imagining Bank of America warning me not to choose "1776" for my pin number based on the historical significance of the date. I've been thinking a lot about Britishisms vs. Americanisms over the time I've been here, and while I've found that I have quite consciously tried to replace some American phrases with their British equivalents (lift instead of elevator, take-away instead of take-out, half one instead of 1:30), I'm not as good at noticing when a particular phrase or comment sounds very American. It's funny the things people just assume because of how we've grown up: when I brought back some Girl Scout cookies from one of my interview weekends to a rugby game (one of the girls said "Oh wow, I saw these once on an episode of Friends!") it reminded me of how much we take for granted other people will know about our own culture, as my excitement over a hot cross bun (I had no idea they were real and actually existed outside of a nursery rhyme!) highlighted for my British friends as well.
Ta ta, off to write more essays. Only a week and a half left of classes, shockingly - we finish on March 23rd!
