For the first semester of my junior year, I spent 15 weeks studying at Universita Roma Tre in Rome, Italy. I took several classes including Food Studies: Art, Culture and Society; Waterways and Walls: Urban Planning in Ancient Rome; Economics of Organized Crime and Social Innovation; and Sport, Identity, and Nationalism. These classes went toward filling two open global studies general education requirements as well as one open elective in my economics minor.
While I technically went there to complete courses that fulfilled requirements in my degree plan, the biggest learning experience I had occurred through the readily available opportunity to travel. Throughout my time there, I went to 10 different countries as well as numerous places throughout Italy. Each place I traveled to opened my eyes to different lifestyles, customs, and daily practices. I found myself being fascinated by the fact that so much of the world’s population had a very different experience growing up compared to what I lived in the United States. As much as I thought I had a globalized view of the world due to the fact that I have family living in other countries, I came to realize that it was much more naïve than I initially expected.
One of the great opportunities that Arcadia provided us with was a program where we were matched with a Roman family. Every Tuesday, I would go over to my host mom’s apartment and eat dinner. Her name was Carla and she also had two kids: Sarra, who was 13 and Matteo, who was 11. We would eat traditional Italian meals that Carla would cook, they would help me with Italian, and Carla would give me recommendations on places to go on my upcoming trips. I was also there to help them with their English. Carla was pretty well-spoken, and we could communicate easily, but the kids were still in the process of learning.
There is a large push right now in the Italian school system to have children know English by the time they are finished with school. This is due to the fact that Europe is such a small area with a huge diversity of countries, languages and practices. With the existence of the EU, the ability to travel and work outside your own country is relatively easy. English has now become the universal language amongst all these countries and learning it has become a vital part of the educational upbringing of European children.
Outside of Italy, I met a wide variety of people from all walks of life. This experience made the world feel simultaneously smaller and bigger at the same time. Smaller in the sense that it was quite easy to find similarities in our lives. I met students who were studying to enter a career they were passionate about, people who worked to provide for their families, backpackers who just wanted to travel. Yet, there were small things that stuck out to me. The nature in which people went about their everyday lives was different—the language they spoke, how they did their grocery shopping, the things they did for fun, the fact that everyone asked me if I was from New York City. Part of this is most likely due to the fact that I was living and visiting cities, whereas I grew up in the suburbs. However, the fact still stands, the differences were there, they just weren’t as obvious as I initially expected.
I have come to the conclusion that four months was the perfect amount of time for me to be gone. I felt like I had the appropriate amount of time to settle in and absorb was it was like to be a citizen of Italy and do an adequate amount of traveling, but when the time came to say goodbye, I was excited to come home. I had missed my family, friends, and dryer. The one thing that never dulled was my desire to see more—new places, new experiences, new people. It’s been almost a month since I have arrived back home in the United States, yet I can still feel that ember of curiosity burning inside me. The difference is now I feel incredibly capable of doing it again in the future. There is a sense of capability and trust within myself that was not there before, and I am excited to bring that confidence to all aspects of my life.
