The Two-Week Perspective

So, all of two weeks in, what do I think of life at LSE? In a word, great! This must be the quickest I've settled into anything new since about the age of nine- it took months of missing the junior department, missing secondary school, and missing university before I could settle into the senior school, UCL, and Japan respectively. But this time, I'm loving it from the word go.

This might have more to do with it being a university than it being this particular university- I can fit happily right back into the student lifestyle because I've already done it once at UCL, and it's basically the same thing in different surroundings. And of course the differences between here and UCL are small compared to the differences between either and teaching English in Japan. Whatever, I'm really enjoying things, and am just sorry it's only for one year.

A little more about those differences: though both are basically redbrick universities, with town centre campuses not spacious enough for vast grounds with rolling lawns, they are in a way inverses of each other: UCL, though it does have some outlying buildings across the road and even further away, is basically built in one street block, and the roads round this are not felt to be part of the campus; once one has gone inside through one of the various entrances, getting around is mainly via buildings- and the architecture reflects this, with for example a prominent feature being the Cloisters, which are two very wide corridors running along the main part of the original building: North Cloisters, then the octagonal hall with stairs down and access to the library, then South Cloisters. They have window seats along their length and tables and chairs to work at, and still have room to sometimes host exhibitions of artwork. There are various enclosed courtyards dotted through the block; and while it is possible to go the whole length out of doors, entering a sort of yard called Gower Court from Gower Place, and going from courtyard to courtyard, finally exiting at Malet Place, it's actually more complicated going this way, and involves going down some dark and narrow passages that hardly look like places one is supposed to be in, so that the inside route (again possible from the Maths Dept/ Students' Union at 25 Gordon Sq to the south wing of the main building, exiting onto Malet Place, if not right to the other end of Malet Place where it opens off Torrington Place) is more natural and convenient, in spite of it requiring one to climb a flight of stairs at one end of the main building and descend again at the other. This, for example, was the only way I knew of getting from one end of campus to the other for my first few weeks, in spite of being convinced there must be a way that didn't involve those stairs, and getting lost searching for it before finally working out that you had to go along the dark passage behind the Bloomsbury Theatre if you wanted to avoid them, and concluding it wasn't worth it.

LSE, in contrast, does not occupy a street block at all but rather has colonised a selection of little back streets behind Aldwych. Though there are some 'sky bridges' linking some of the buildings across streets, they are very hard to find in terms of locating the entrance (right floor and right bit of building), and in my first two weeks, I haven't yet worked it out- it is just simple and obvious to use the streets. Even for buildings on the same side of the same street, it seems you mostly have to come out again and walk down the street. There are three towers next to each other and seeming to touch in one part, but as far as I can tell, if you want to go from one to the other you have to come right down, go out and in to the one you want then go up again. In consequence, the streets really are a part of campus, though officially public rights of way, and almost everyone you see on them is a student; Houghton St, where LSE's main entrance is, is pedestrianised, and during Freshers' Fortnight, had many stalls advertising student societies or selling newspapers such as the Guardian with student discount, and the walls were covered with A4 posters. There are some inside parts, such as the Quad cafe, accessed via the LSE shop or through an adjacent set of doors, and which leads on to Alpha Books, the second hand bookshop, as well as some other things I haven't checked out yet- but it took me a while to find it, and it is not the norm.

All this means that in LSE, when you're on the streets, you feel open and unfettered, with the way ahead straighforward, and inside, you feel that you have entered one of many small and disconnected labyrinths, whereas at UCL, it is inside that you feel as though you're on the main path and just have to follow it to go where you want, while outside you feel cut off from everywhere else in a maze. And at LSE it is the streets which have the benches and tables, but at UCL, the corridors.

In other comparisons, UCL beats LSE's catering into a cocked hat. UCL has (or had 2 years ago) nicer sandwiches for better prices (I would expect to pay £1 to £2 for a sandwich at UCL but £2 - £3 at LSE), and its refectory, while sometimes blazing a fearless trail in some unconventional directions that would perhaps be best left untrodden, did at least have a good range of hot meals (sometimes edible), baguettes filled to order, ready made sandwiches, jacket potatoes and puddings (again, a good range) all in one place, and with plenty of seating- and latterly, there was also a stir fry noodle bar; LSE has separated sandwiches and hot meals out, though you can get paninis or pizza in the same place as sandwiches, and none of its eating spots really has enough tables. And again, it's more expensive.

I haven't yet experienced LSE as a night time venue, so this is just conjecture- but I can't imagine it can be as easy to move between bars as at UCL, where there were three floors of eating and drinking places in the one building (though admittedly the Windeyer, with its big dancefloor, was a fair walk away, the other side of Tottenham Court Rd). And LSE only has one shop- that I've found- where UCL had two. The library is nicer to work in than either of UCL's two though, in spite of all that wasted space (ok, I admit it does look pretty nice).

LSE is also less well-defined than UCL- on the outer streets, you're not quite sure when you've left campus, and among the college buildings are several non-LSE businesses, including some pubs and a sandwich shop (some welcoming students, some, apparently not...)

The physical differences are easy, if time consuming, to set down, but the atmosphere is much harder, and I won't even try, especially not after only 2 weeks. Suffice it to say that I like both in different ways.