Student Bloggers

Currently Studying at: Arcadia in Rome, Italy

Homeschool: Temple University

Have you ever studied for weeks for a big exam and when the big day arrives, you feel like you are going to take over the world, you walk out of class feeling like you got at least a 95. Two weeks pass, your teacher hands you your exam face down. Moment of truth. You get a 77. You are bummed. You don’t know what went wrong.

Other than the fact that that exact situation happened to me today in my Economic of Organized Crime and Social Innovation class, I completely understand. It happened to me countless time since being here, but not just academically. I recently had my spring break. I was able to travel to Paris for four days with one of my roommates. During this excursion, you could say I stepped foot in a place that was completely different than, not only, Rome, but also the United States. I was going through attempting to order food, take the metro system, and even walk down the street properly. I thought I had done enough Google searching on the “do’s and don’ts of visiting Paris” and yet, I was a fish out of water. I was sure I would fit in, I would be able to pronounce my entrée with the perfect inflection on the right syllables. Oh, boy was I wrong. Luckily every time I swiped the wrong way or pronounced the vowel wrong, the worker chuckled and simply corrected me; that didn’t take away my embarrassment, as I hoped it would.

When I came back to Rome, I thought my luck was changing, I am back in the place that I had already been studying in for two months, until now, and I knew Italian conversationally. I go to my Italian class Monday morning and they tell us that this class, and continuing for the rest of the semester we would converse with Italian students learning English at the same rate as we were learning Italian. Again, I thought I had studied enough every night, practiced enough with baristas from the café across the street from my apartment. I am sitting in front of this student, nervous to the point of sweating, thinking of questions to ask him. I thought I knew all of the basics:

‘what is your name?’ ‘how old are you?’ ‘where are you from?’

Of course, while typing now I can think of so much to say and how to say it, but at the moment, I was stuck and flustered. I could tell he was as well. I was trying to pronounce certain things and, similar to the waiter in France, he chuckled and corrected me. Needless to say, the rest of the conversation was very choppy, but also had a lot of laughs and long pauses while we switched from English to Italian to get a basic understanding of what we are trying to say.

Being flustered and wrong is okay. No matter how much I prepared for a real conversation with an Italian student, how much I did Duolingo on the weekends, I have to be okay with having a series of trial and error. It is scary. It is embarrassing. However, more than likely the other person in the situation feels the same exact way or has been in that position before. Just take a second, breathe, and ask your question. I had to realize that I am in a brand-new environment that I am constantly learning in. This can be for a new school, a new job or study abroad in a new country. It just takes time.