Florence, Italy: Thinking About Abroad (Article)

Last night I wrote an article (with the rest of the TCU students) to the Daily Skiff, our university newspaper. Hopefully they’ll publish it! Here it is:

Headline: Thinking About Abroad
We arrived in Italy five weeks ago and only one of the eight TCU students had studied Italian. We placed ourselves in a different culture with a different language and all of us had different ideas of what we were expecting. We all had prepared differently as well: one of us had been planning this semester for 2.5 years before signing up while another had only decided two weeks before the deadline. All of us, however, took the plunge and decided to try something new.

Why should someone at TCU consider studying abroad? Some answers are obvious while others are hidden gems we discovered once we arrived. The classes are relevant to the surroundings: there’s nothing like studying Art History and looking at the actual work before your eyes. The culture is ripe for exchange: with everyone (not just those over 21) allowed to drink alcohol, interactions both with other American college students and the native Italians is guaranteed. Location is everything: all of Europe is within hours via plane or train.

Beyond all of these benefits, our experience is wonderful because our group didn’t know each other before we came. All of us are TCU students but we weren’t a group before this. We didn’t have the inside jokes that we’ll now have forever; we didn’t have the connections. More than anything we could have done to “expand our horizons” at TCU, Florence (and truly any of the study abroad programs) offered us the chance to take adventures and try something even better than Ft. Worth had to offer. Preparation can make the experience easier, but studying abroad planning doesn’t have to be elaborate to prove successful.