Arcadia England

Center-based students have access to clubs and societies at UCL Union. Grinnell students Sarah Evans and Grace Wagner made the most of their membership and joined the UCL Run Club!

This semester, we joined the University of Central London run club. Although the two of us had experience running on our own, neither of us had done so in a social environment prior to this semester.

Every Monday, we attended a social run, which offered a variety of different paces and the ability to meet others who are also passionate about running. Some of these were themed — for example, on International Women’s Day, we attended an event hosted by Adidas featuring glow sticks, music and lots of fun. Also, in preparation for a varsity competition, we attended a school spirit-themed social where everyone dressed in school colors. On other days, the weekly run was simply a way to meet people in a relatively low-key setting.

Some weeks, we went to after run socials at a campus bar. Aside from half priced pizzas, these gave us the opportunity to make friends with students from UCL. One thing we noticed was that everyone was really open and willing to make friends. We expected to have to take initiative in speaking to others, but instead, we were approached at the very first run by a variety of different people, who all wanted to know who we were, where we were from, and what distance we planned to run that day. We met people also from America, people local to London, and people from all over the world! One highlight of our semester was spending time with them at a boat ball on the River Thames!

Going into this program, one concern we had was that we would only be interacting with other American students. Joining this club gave us the opportunity to branch out and meet local students. We would highly recommend joining a UCL club if you are interested in doing the same!