Meet London Allen: A Freshman Who’s Diving Right In
Meet London Allen, one of our newest student bloggers to join the HawkTalk team. Although she is only a freshman, London is already super involved on campus. She plays trumpet in the Marching Band, is a member of the Black Student Union (BSU), and recently joined the student blogger team at HawkTalk. That’s not all -- she’s also a student worker at Coffeehouse, taking on shifts that keep her working pretty late into the night. But if you ask her, she doesn’t mind at all. “It’s cool,” she says. “It’s nice to get work done in a nice setting without too many distractions.”
London is an English major, and loves to read whenever she can. She is passionate about playing the trumpet, and played in all the school bands in high school. Like most college students, she also enjoys binge-watching Netflix when she’s not too busy. Back home, she liked going on long walks with her friends, and tries to incorporate that into her daily routine at Wagner.
Name: London Allen
Year: Freshman
Major: English
Hometown: Baltimore, Maryland
Extracurriculars: Marching Band, Black Student Union
Fun Fact: She plays the trumpet
A Baltimore native, London says she both loves and hates her city. “I think a lot of people have a love/hate relationship with where they’re from,” she says. London laughs about the many tourists she’s seen. She says there are a lot of cool places to go once you know the city, and that she’s well-versed on Baltimore’s ins and outs. She also reflected on the unfortunate reality of crime in the city, but more than anything else, London is attached to the people of Baltimore -- all of her closest friends live in the city.
While looking for colleges, London knew she was interested in a small liberal arts school. She loves small, tight-knit communities, and was very into the idea of knowing her professors personally and having a connection with them. In fact, her high school was very similar in size to Wagner’s undergraduate class size. Another factor that made her decision easy was knowing that she wanted to be near a city, as she personally feels like there are more opportunities for her that way. She loves New York, and her main goal was to go somewhere in the city during college because she has plans to travel after graduation. “There’s people here for everyone,” she says. London thinks she’s adjusting pretty well to college life. She hasn’t been home all semester, so she’s excited to see her family over the holiday break.
When asked what her favorite thing about herself was, London said that she loves that she is self-motivated. To be truly productive, she claims her motivation has to come from herself, and no one else. “If I’m gonna do something, I’m gonna do it,” she laughs, “even if it leaves me in tears at 3 a.m.”