While riding on public transportation in London it can be expected that a person is quiet. I noticed this while I was riding on the overground one night and a group of younger girls were laughing and talking loudly and a person next to them asked them to please be quiet. I was shocked by this exchange because we were in a public setting, and I was under the impression if you were not screaming it is okay to be making noise on the tube. This honestly made me scared to talk while I was on the tube because people would stare and after seeing this exchange some would even tell you to stop talking. But the more I thought about it I realized that most people would ride on the tube for sometimes over an hour after work and with my internship it would take me around forty minutes to get back home and I was tired and wanted silence. I begin to understand that this is a common feeling among a lot of people who live and work in London. I even brought this up to one of my co-workers and they said that it is an unspoken rule between most Londoners due to how much time a lot of people spend on public transportation. I also noticed that almost everyone has headphones that also block out sound. My supervisor told me that she does not listen to music through her headphones, she just wears them to block out noise on her journey home. I also noticed that British people tend to be quieter naturally my co-workers and other people I have met who are British were more reserved and tend to be softer spoken. This exercise encourages me to not only think back to my experiences but also put myself in another person’s shoes and try to understand from that point of view. This encourages critical thinking skills which are key to navigating a multicultural world.
