Heritage and Inheritance: Two Words to New Worlds

Sometimes love affairs can begin in the unlikeliest of ways. You can go on living for years and years without knowing that there was a deep-seated passion stored away in the fibers of your being. Until the moment comes when you realize that there is something else out there for you, you have no idea just how small your world has been. In my case, even though these seeds took more than a decade to sprout, discovering where the fresh vines would take me was worth the wait.

In 2007, a friend and I decided to plan a trip to London, England. Visiting London was on my bucket list, and I wanted to see it before I turned 40. So off we went to the magical land of palaces, castles, and stately homes.

Being there for the first time was like finding the twin sister I never knew I had. With every step I took along the ancient cobbled-stoned streets, I was getting to know a life-long friend, a new confidante who understood my secret wishes long before I did. London introduced me to a rich history of beauty – one that she proudly wore on stone façades, inside art galleries, and in every ripple of the River Thames. The sights and sounds of the city streets pumped in a new song into my longing soul. The “Old Smoke” rescued my failing desires and brought me out of the mundane and back to the land of the living.

I knew then that I absolutely had to come and live there. I had no idea when, why, or how I would do it, but I felt it deep in my core. Unbeknownst to me, in 2016 the plan began to reveal itself. Words to new worlds were being released but I did not know it then. No matter where I went or what I was doing, I kept running into two words: heritage and inheritance. I would find them in catalogs, hear them in sermons, or read them on billboards. Those two words were seeking me out in print and in the air ways. I heard them, but I didn’t understand what they meant.

Two years later, I began to apply for jobs in London, but I did not get a single positive response. It had occurred to me that it might be easier to move there if I went back to school. Since I had managed programs in the nonprofit sector for many years, I figured I could obtain an MA in Project Management and then get an internship that would eventually lead to a full-time position. When the time came to start learning about graduate school, I typed, “Best MA Project Management programs in London,” into the Google search bar. The first one to appear was called, “Heritage Management.” Until that day, I had never heard of heritage management, but when I clicked on the link and read about the program, I said out loud,  "Lord, forget about project management, this is what I want to do!”

Heritage Management focuses on preserving a society’s heritage to make it accessible to the public. It comprises of identifying and protecting tangible and intangible items such as historic, natural, and cultural resources like buildings, parks, artifacts, and art. The link that I had clicked on was for a joint program with Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) and Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). I learned that students would be placed in practicums at Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Palace, and the Tower of London. Classes would be taught at Hampton Court by HRP Directors and at QMUL by various professors. The program had only just started that year. Should I have been accepted, I would have been in the university’s second cohort.

“London?” they asked, “Why are you moving to London? Where are you going to live? What about your house here? Are you going to have to start at the bottom in a new field at YOUR age? And what about the debt? Do you really want to go back into debt again for ANOTHER degree?” These were just a few of the questions I was asked, but I didn’t care. While I could not answer all these questions, I did not see these things as obstacles, so I applied and was accepted.

I left Los Angeles on September 13, 2019, and moved into QMUL’s graduate dorm the next day. I was one of 24 students that had been accepted and at the age of 52, I was the oldest in my cohort. Had someone told me that one day I would be going to school in London to study palaces, I would have thought they were crazy, but here I was. And oh, the things I saw!
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Stay tuned next week for Part 2!​

Submitted by Anna Emerald