Lindberg's London: Honors professor takes students abroad to see sights mentioned in literature class

This May, honors professor Laurie Lindberg will take her 12th trip to London. Five of those trips will have been with students in the Honors College in conjunction with Lindberg’s colloquium classes. 

Her travels have allowed her to befriend Phillipa, a certified London tour guide with whom Lindberg always arranges to take her students around the city. She wishes the groups could stay longer than a week, but costs keep increasing.

“I’m in love with London, and here I get to take people who want to go and show it to them,” Lindberg said. 

Lindberg said she plans activities that relate to her class’s curriculum, but it would be a shame to be in London and not go to places such as art galleries and Buckingham Palace.

Last year, the group saw Prince Charles coming home, and some group members got up at 5 a.m. to see the queen on her way to church. 

“We always take the Tube down to Trafalgar Square and we come up from the Tube station from underground and there [is the city] spread out in front of us,” Lindberg said. “Everybody just gasps and we [are] all so excited and I’m excited for them, because it’s the first time they’re seeing it, a lot of them, and I’m excited for me because I’m so glad to be back.”

Lindberg said it is fun for her to see how different students she has gotten to know through her class react to experiencing London and the places they visit.

“Some of my best times in my life have been some of these times in London with students,” Lindberg said. “There’s just nothing like it, you know, there’s just some kind of magic, I think, if you’ve got the right group,” she said.

Lindberg said she likes to make connections between London and what she’s read in books about the city and being where the characters were. 

She said she fell in love with the city during her first trip there in 2002 when she was invited to go by the former associate dean of the Honors College, who was organizing a group trip to London.

At the time, Lindberg was only teaching in the English department but had gone to graduate school with the dean. There was an extra half of a hotel room open, so Lindberg checked her bank account and went.

“I’d always wanted to go but didn’t have the courage to on my own, so I went with the group,” she said. “That was the perfect way to go the first time.”

Lindberg said she does not experience any culture shock since she has gone so many times, but she does notice differences between the U.S. and London. 

She said London is a diverse city. and while walking around, many languages are spoken, which gives her a sense the world is both a bigger and smaller place than she previously realized.

“People are more relaxed in London, and people aren’t afraid of people of other colors, they’re used to people of other colors,” she said. “Some places will have a Chinatown … but in London, you don’t have to go to one of those particular areas to see people from all different countries because they’re just everywhere.”

Maddie McGarvey, a junior public relations major, has taken four of Lindberg’s classes and went on the 2015 Sherlock Holmes trip, which she called an unforgettable experience.

“It was something I’d looked forward to for a really long time. [The trip] was something that worked out really well with a professor I really liked,” McGarvey said. “It was really fun because she was really enthusiastic about every little thing in the city. … She was just excited to take us there, so I had a lot of excitement going into it knowing that she ... loved all these places.”

McGarvey said by looking at Lindberg, you wouldn’t think she was a traveling professor, but once she starts talking about it, her familiarity with the city comes through. 

“[Lindberg] is probably my favorite professor at Ball State. She’s a really warm-hearted, inspiring, quick-witted, almost like nurturing kind of professor,” McGarvey said.

Ellen Wagner, a junior microbiology and genetics major, also went on the “Sherlock Holmes” trip. She will be going back to London in May with Lindberg’s current class.

“I really want to just see the world, and this has been a great opportunity because I get to take a class that’s really fun, and then I get to go to London as well,” Wagner said. “London had been my No. 1 stop to go to.” 

The group ate at the Sherlock Holmes pub for their first and last meals in London and went on a walking tour about Holmes.

Wagner loves “Sherlock Holmes,” but said her favorite book in the world is “Harry Potter.” It had been one of her dreams to take a class on “Harry Potter,” so when the opportunity for this year’s British fantasy literature class came up, she decided to take it.

“The [class] has really helped me think more critically about these fantasy books that I’ve been reading and a lot of the books I’ve read before, and so I can kinda take a new perspective as I look at them,” Wagner said. “[Lindberg] loves London and you can tell she just wants us to enjoy it too. She loves everything we talk about, which is so much fun, and it makes the topic a lot more interesting.”

Marco Leon, a junior speech pathology major, also went on the “Sherlock Holmes” trip and loved the chance to be able to learn about Holmes and the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The trip was Leon’s first trip outside of North America, and he said he saw how the culture had been influenced by the work.

“To see the lasting effects, basically, was just really amazing, and to do it with people that I had been studying with and talking with, like for an entire semester, then we were just halfway across the world all of a sudden, it was a really awesome experience [and] a very enlightening experience,” Leon said.

Leon likes how Lindberg guides the discussion by taking what students have said in the class and drawing it back to the greater picture.

“She’s definitely someone that tries to hear everyone’s points of view and sort of connect them all in a way… even if you might not necessarily agree, you kind of still understand,” Leon said. “She’s just an overall really nice person, definitely cares about her students and really wants to push them and challenge them, which I think is a lot of attributes of a good professor.”

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