A Love Letter to a Place I Don’t Fully Understand Yet
Semester Abroad: Exchange at Penn
Elle, one of the Exchange at Penn Correspondents, shares her experience here at Penn during the Spring 2026 semester. Follow along with the group of correspondents on our blog and look out for their images on the @pennabroad Instagram feed.
Dear Penn,
Before I arrived, you were a fantasy that only resided in my dreams.
You were yellow school buses on street corners, football games under stadium lights, red cups at frat parties and roaring crowds. You were the America I had absorbed through cinema during my childhood: saturated and golden, where autumn leaves fell on cue and diners refill your coffee without you having to ask. You were grocery carts brimming with things I’d only ever seen on screens. You were excess and capitalism in the best way possible.
I remember walking through fluorescent-lit aisles for the very first time, in something close to disbelief, starring at the towers of Gatorade in colours that were exempt from nature, whole shelves devoted to Boomchica Pop, and bags of Jolly Ranchers glowing like stained glass. Everything felt aggressively American: supersized, sugar-injected and unapologetic.
And then it snowed.
Snow days aren’t typically a personality trait for London. I think the last time I remember having a snow day I was probably about seven in primary school back up in Newcastle. It had been a long time since I saw snow settle like that, never mind it causing a disruption to my classes.
But here, the campus softened overnight. Students building lopsided snowmen, sledding, making snow angels and drinking hot chocolate. It all seemed so magical in such a month of bleakness which I associate with January.
But the fantasy also has its edges.
Classes here are unlike anything I’ve known in the UK. Back home, academia can feel like a narrow bridge, something carefully pinpointed and tightly structured. Here, it feels like an open field. Professors ask what you think before they ask what you know. Opinion is not an afterthought; it is the assignment. There is a kind of creative liberty that feels almost rebellious, granting us the permission to bring yourself fully into the room. Discussions are lively and even humorous, getting side tracked is a positive, it’s truly all so different. But good different.
I’ve sat in AI Creative Writing classes where we debate whether machines can feel. I’ve attended Art classes held inside the echoing halls of the Barnes Foundation, discussing colour, line and brushstrokes while standing inches from them. Student wellbeing woven into syllabi. To be honest, I prefer it.
And yet, for all that expansiveness, some days still do feel small.
Like the fantasy and romanticisation of American life slowly fades after the first three weeks of the semester. The food becomes average, the supermarkets: mundane, everything settles into normalcy or maybe you settle? Still figuring that one out.
Starting in the spring semester is a peculiar thing. It feels like arriving at a party where everyone else already knows the music. Friendship groups are established; inside jokes are mid-sentence. No one else is new. There are afternoons where I eat lunch alone, evenings where I have no plans, stretches of time that feel too quiet. It’s a strange in-betweenness like I am in “freshers mode,” but no one else is.
I’ve learnt that independence here is both gift and test. There is so much unstructured time, like time to organise my week, to decipher syllabi, to adjust to a timetable that demands far more presentations than I’m used to. I am learning when to work ahead, when to rest, and when to let myself wander. I am learning how to be alone without feeling lonely, even though I don’t always succeed, I try.
But gradually, I do feel the shifts.
Someone asks if I want to grab coffee. Someone else invites me to a watch party for the Olympic ice hockey. A DM enters my Instagram inbox about going to church on Sunday. A seat beside me in class is saved. The days are stitching themselves together in small, quiet ways.
Next week will be my first Spring Break, and luckily the weather is warming up too.
The other day I was sitting in 1920 Commons near the window and saw the trees all stark and some branches bandaged with snow. It made me curious as to when I’d start to see flowers blooming again and days extending beyond 6PM.
I also wondered that if by the time spring comes around and the cherry blossoms are all in bloom, how much will I have changed?
I return to that question often.
Because the America I imagined before arriving was bright and amplified. It was cinematic and cohesive. The America I am living in is quieter and more complex.
But ultimately, if the fantasy of you is fading, I don’t think it’s because you were ever false. Rather, that you’re becoming real.
Some days still feel lonely. Some evenings are unplanned. But perhaps that is what it means for a place to begin to belong to you. Not when it dazzles you, but when it allows you to see it clearly. When it stops being an idea and starts being somewhere you wake up, buy groceries, hurry to class, speak your thoughts aloud, and quietly change.
I don’t fully understand you yet, but I’m hopeful that maybe one day soon, I will.
Yours truly,
Elle x