Jacob Wyborski
Education Abroad
My STEP Signature Project was the FCOB Industry Immersion Global Lab: Italy. This trip combined company visits with cultural activities and free time across the northern Italian cities of Padua, Venice, Verona, Turin, and Milan.
This project not only changed my world view, but also changed who I am. When I first applied for the trip to Italy, the only other country I had been to was Canada. Traveling the world was something I had wanted to do one day when I had a good job. With the help of STEP, this moved the start of my traveling ahead to May 2018. However, due to a surprise with being selected for the Kakehashi Project in Japan during Spring Break, my world traveling started even sooner. Both of these trips not only showed me that traveling the world was something I wanted to do and was possible, but also the importance of slowing down and living in the moment.
Noticing differences between the culture in Italy and the U.S. first made me think about what I do and why I do it. First, the pace of life was slower and didn’t have the rush of going from one stage in the day, week, year, or life, like in the U.S. This stood out several times, such as when I met with students at the University of Padua. People go to university a few years later in Italy and did not seem to be like me and many other Americans in a rush to get a good job and advance their career. With meals, except for some Pizza places, a meal was an hour to several hour long activity where we had to ask for the bill instead of having the restaurant rush us in and out to get onto the next group. Finally, how Italians treated me stood out. I was treated much better in Italy than I am treated in the U.S. People were willing to go out of their way to help with anything from restaurant recommendations to helping me order by speaking English or pointing when my use of Spanish and broken Italian did not work.
Living in the moment throughout the trip was a major reason for me to take a look at myself when the trip was over and going on. In general, I am usually living in the past, thinking about the future, or distracted by my phone or something else that isn’t meaningful when I am living in the present. With the long days with busy schedules filled with things I had never seen or done before, I was forced to focus on what was currently happening and only use my phone for pictures. This also led me to become friends with everyone on the trip as we experienced things for the first time from a driving simulator, making wine, palaces, gondola rides, to seeing a tornado outside of our train. I also often found myself thinking that I didn’t want the trip to end because I was having one of the best weeks of my life.
Relationships ended up being one of the biggest takeaways from the trip. To start off, the trip would not have been the same without the great group that went on the trip with me. I was only friends with one person on the trip going into the first class in preparation for the trip and by the end of the trip, I would consider everyone a good friend. Not only did we build relationships through having fun on the trip, but we continue to talk after the trip and are building out plans for when we all come back to campus. I had countless conversations with Italians during my trip, but my conversation with the owner of a restaurant in Verona was the most memorable. The owner delivered each dish and as he was handing out food, he explained the history of each part of the meal and what each food was. He then spent a lot of time getting to know us as we ate and talking about the city of Verona, Italy, and his restaurant. Finally, meeting and talking to several people in Italy may have changed my potential career and life paths by opening the door to starting my career in Italy. Until these moments, I had never considered living and working in Italy, but each day it becomes more and more of a possibility as the idea grows on me.
This change and trip was valuable to me because it will make me happier in the long run. Now, I am looking forward to a successful future, but am enjoying the path along the way while looking for balance between hard work and free time. The trip to Italy reinforced the idea of Ichi-go ichi-e (once in a lifetime) I took away from a Japanese tea ceremony during my time in Japan. Being with another great group of friends on an international trip for a limited amount of time reminded me to continue living the idea because we will never all be college students in Italy having the same experiences together again. If I decide to start my career in Italy, my life path will be completely different than anything I could have imagined just one year ago. No matter where life takes me, I know I want to continue traveling.
