Learning How to be Jolly Good: Living Life the British Way

By Lauren Gellatly, Undergraduate Student in the RTA Production Program, Faculty of Communication and Design

Did you know that, in England, you have to pull the door handle up before you can lock it? My awesome fellow Canadian housemate and I did not. We tried for half an hour to lock our door and, when we gave up, we locked it from the inside and broke out of our own backyard like any intelligent, resourceful, and independent young women would do when faced with this problem.

I didn’t find there was a lot more than this level of culture shock in England. As a people, they’re pretty similar to us – a little more sarcastic and way cooler in terms of accents, but they also say sorry excessively and love talking about the weather.

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Transferring Knowledge Across Academic and Cultural Borders: My Practicum Experience in Chile

By Sofia Puente-Duran, PhD student in the Psychology Program

My international practicum placement was set in Chile, a country defined by its 4,300-kilometre range of landscapes, spanning from the northern Atacama Desert to the southern Antarctic land. While living in Santiago, I worked in the Department of Psychology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Measurement Center, MIDE) – a department responsible for large-scale evaluation programs, which work toward the investigation and improvement of the Chilean Education System at a national level.

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