So, after much thought, I’ve decided to save the “Psycho Roommate” post for another day. A day that will probably not come until I have been long gone from this country. I mean, really, who wants to start off this blog on such a negative foot anyways? Besides, I have decided that since Adventure Italiano began at such a late period in my time here, it would continue for some time into the future. At least, until I’ve exhausted every and any subject about the American student’s experience in Italy that I have come to observe.
I decided this post will be a little background on myself and the program I am in.
So, most often, you hear about a student who studied abroad in Italy for a semester or over the summer and took language, culture, and/or cooking classes, right? Well, my program is not like that. Mine is a full-blown, yearlong, cultural immersion program in which I and several other students are thrown into an italian university, left with no resources save for an occasional UC representative, a couple years of language courses under our belts, and the fact that we are from California to help us. Not for the faint-hearted, the immersion program is extremely difficult.
With the semester of cultural/cooking/language classes, you are surrounded by other American English speakers in a tourist-driven city such as Rome, Florence, or Siena. Classes are taken in a building owned by the UC’s with other American students and not with Italian students at an Italian university. You almost never even need to speak Italian for anyone to understand you and therefore will rarely be looked at as the foreign being that you are to other parts of this country. Also, because these programs are the most popular and attract upwards from thirty participants per semester, they are very well-funded. Meaning, they have resources galore – including a full-on study center where they can go whenever they have a problem.
Now with my program – the yearlong cultural immersion program – there were originally nine Californians (all girls), including myself. We were put together in the Copernico dorm for the month of September at the start of our program. During this time we took an additional language course with a teacher who never allowed us to speak English to each other while we were in class. This was surprisingly harder than it sounds. This was also the only time we were in a class made up entirely of Americans. Near the end of the month we started school at the University of Padova where we attended classes with other italian students. All lectures were in Italian, all reading was in Italian, most of the students were Italian. It’s actually quite exhausting going to lectures. Also, our finals were all in Italian. They were oral exams. Now before you go sticking your head in the gutter (I see you going there!), let me explain. When I say “oral exams” I mean instead of the written or multiple-choice exams one usually encounters back in american universities, we have to sit down face-to-face with the professor and spout off all facts, knowledge and interpretations we have acquired for each respective course. Honestly, this would probably be a walk in the park for me had I been back at home spouting facts in my mother tongue. I mean, seriously, you just answer a few of the professor’s questions, maybe analyze a movie for them (if you are a film major such as myself) the whole thing lasts between fifteen and thirty minutes and you are out of there with your grade. I feel like if we did this back in the States, a lot more of us would have significantly higher GPAs. I think the only reason I got decent grades was because I was both a girl and a foreigner. Rumor has it Italian professors never fail a female. 😉
Now I know what you’re thinking, “Cyndi, didn’t you just say you took a couple years of language courses? Doesn’t that make it easier to live in a foreign country?” Why yes I did, and no it really doesn’t. At least, not for me anyways. I’m sure in reality it did help out tremendously, because when I came here initially, I was able to understand maybe fifty percent of the words that were being spoken to me. Which is obviously better than zero percent. Anyhow, I think the whole language part deserves it’s own post
Adventure Italiano 