LSE NEWS
STUDENT LIFE by James Strong (MRes Political Science 2009, PhD International Relations 2012)
“I’m from about 13 miles”, I point south, “that way.” It’s an odd thing, coming to LSE from London. Relatively few of us do it, and yet for me it was entirely logical, as well as necessary. It was necessary because that’s how I paid for my PhD, by living at home with my parents instead of having to rent somewhere without an income. It was logical because the rest of the world already comes to LSE. Why go elsewhere, when people from every part of elsewhere are already here? With my fellow master’s students I traded stories of how we’d learned about each other’s countries. Yes, Minister for the Americans, The West Wing for the Brits – this was before Borgen. I taught one class in which we had the entire UN P5 represented, alongside Brazil, Germany and two African states; there were 13 of us. As a sub-warden I learned a mid-Atlantic strain of international English, riding elevators instead of lifts and hunting down vacuum cleaners instead of hoovers. I did my best to enlighten my overseas compatriots on the many uses of the word “sorry” in proper English English, and on the superlative implications of “quite” (as in “quite good”) when deployed by an otherwise reserved Brit.
It is apparently a universal truth that there are only two places on the LSE campus where students have conversations: doorways and staircases. One cannot spend any time here (and I’ve been here four and a half years, and counting) without getting trapped occasionally behind a multinational, multilingual gaggle unable to conclude their urgent exchanges anywhere other than in the middle of a busy thoroughfare. Frequently I find I cannot even eavesdrop, because the language in use is not English but Spanish or Mandarin, Arabic or Urdu – possibly even Xhosa. It’s fantastic. It’s what I wanted when I came here, and what I think most striking about the place as I reflect at the end of four years of study, still shamefully monolingual. We all benefit hugely from the vibrancy, the excitement, the colour, and the range of perspectives and views on big issues that this smorgasbord of cultures represents. We need Brits, too, of course. It would be odd to come to London, despite the city’s unparalleled diversity, and not to meet any Londoners. But I stayed in London to experience the world, and I was not disappointed. James Strong is now Executive Officer to the Director of LSE.