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• 1 2019-05-05T10:38:53-07:00 Perception of Great Britain 8 Megan Schlag plain 2019-05-22T14:24:12-07:00 Before my trip begin, it is important to reflect on my previous assumptions over what it is like to be “British”. Growing up, I had a lot of exposure to British media and culture. To start out, my grandma was a huge anglophile; she loved everything England had to offer and made sure we knew just how special it was. My grandfather was an air force doctor in the 1950’s and consequently, my grandparents and family lived at the Royal Air Force Base in London, England, for about 10 years. During this time, I heard loads of stories from my family regarding their time spent in England. These ranges from stories about two of my uncles hopping the fence and riding the Queen’s horses, to another one of my uncles clogging the entire sewer system at the base. My mother was born at this time, and of course inherited a different kind of love for Britain being it her birthplace. These connections to Britain were found in everything my family had to offer me. Growing up, whenever I visited my grandmother she would show my cousins and I an antique I had never seen, a jewelry set from a small shop in London, or photo from her years there so through her I learned the emotional connections Britain makes.
  
  Not only did I have my family’s ties to London, but I was also very into British media. I went through a phase in the seventh grade, where I would listen to the BBC Radio 1 every morning. Radio 1 gave me the pop culture of Britain; I was able to hear the recent news and the popular songs when I listened, and I loved knowing who the hosts would be talking about next. Along with the Radio 1, I watched many shows like Doctor Who, Skins, Sherlock, Love Island, and more. The shows I watched however, gave me this representation of Britain that confused me. Each show had a different group of people portraying Britain in a different way. Skins was a show that revolved around a group of British youth going through secondary school and preparing for university.
  
  This gave me this representation of what it was like growing up in Britain and gave me a couple presumptions about British life. The first being that you walked or biked everywhere, the second being that every student had a uniform, and the third that drinking was a part of the culture. Unlike the States, there is no need to get a license and drive in Britain because of the walk-ability and the public transportation available. The school uniforms were something I noticed that was very different from my experience since back home it was strictly private schools that would have uniforms. Lastly, the drinking culture was something very different from what I was used to. This had to be from the fact that the drinking age is 18 in the UK vs our age of 21. I saw so many scenes of friends sitting around drinking a beer at a pub which made me think that being British is something I may truly not experience until I could sit with my friends and share a drink. However, when I watched the shows centered around British adults it was a completely opposite spectrum. British humor was dry, the adults were always serious, and Britain was always rainy. These factors were all thing I assumed was true, it was something so easily seen on the media that it assured me of these facts.