There is a game I play with my friends; if you get to play it too, know that you are blessed. It’s called “Top Five Cities,” where you rank what you think are the best cities in the world based on your first-hand experiences with them. We would play this game after every weekend trip during our time studying abroad. Playing this game taught me two things. The first is that I’m one lucky person to have even been to more than five international cities. And second — New York is just like all those other international cities I used to dream about. It may be hard to realize it since we are so used to living here, but if you are a student at Fordham University, you automatically have one major city in your top five.
The truth is, living in London wasn’t that different from living in New York. Yes, the cities speak differently, eat different food and look different from one another, but the things they had in common stood out the most. Both are places filled with people from a variety of different backgrounds where everything you could need or want to see is nothing more than a subway (or tube) ride away. That is to say, if you are someone who loves the hustle and bustle of living in New York, you would also thrive in London. And Paris. And Rome. And Lisbon. (Those were my top five, by the way). Living in New York makes us adaptable, and being adaptable is the number one required skill if you are preparing to study abroad.
That being said, just because there is commonality between living in New York and living in other places, that does not mean that it is not worth it to study abroad. In fact, I believe living in New York City makes Fordham students more equipped to study abroad than your average college student. If you are considering it, you definitely should check out your options. I will be honest, I don’t think I used a notebook or pen the entire time I was at Fordham London, yet I believe I learned more in that one semester than I ever had; not just compared to Rose Hill, but in my entire life of schooling.
That is because the Fordham London sets students up in a way that prioritizes learning through experience. One thing I wasn’t expecting when I got there was the sheer amount of field trips we went on. Instead of a Theology lecture, we went to local Jesuit centres and walked through almost all the churches nearby. One thing about Europe is there is a church every 20 feet. Instead of writing an extra essay in Philosophy, we sat in on a conference in Parliament. In my history class, we once spent a whole lecture period walking through Notting Hill, where my professor took us through the history behind each step.
When we were in the classroom, we spent a good portion of our time talking about our weekend trips to other countries, and our professors would give us advice on what to see and do. On those weekends, I learned how to plan a trip in one day and then hop on a plane the next. I learned how to navigate through different train systems (sometimes in other languages) and how to make the absolute most out of the 48 hours we call Friday and Saturday.
That’s not to say every day abroad was always the best day ever. In fact, the whole experience was one great challenge for me. Consistently being thrown into new environments with new people and figuring out how to move through them is not as glamorous as your friends’ Instagram posts lead you to believe. And while it is fun, it is not just a four-month vacation like some people will tell you. You learn how to live without the comfort of a campus or the familiarity of your friends and family being so close. But there are lessons here that I believe can be learned only through traveling the way one does during studying abroad; lessons that I am a better person for having learned.
So if you are a sophomore figuring out whether you want to spend one of your semesters at Fordham in London, Granada or elsewhere, I cannot urge you enough to take the leap and go for it. You will be better for it. There was never a point where I thought that all of the time, effort and money I spent wasn’t absolutely worth it. Even afterwards, my skills and experiences still prove useful for my life in New York, as I’m sure they will continue to be useful wherever else I may go in the future.
Isabella DeRosa, FCRH ‘26, is a psychology major on a pre-law track from Wayne, New Jersey.
