If you think that I'm done blogging about the past four months of my life, then you're terribly mistaken. As long as I have free time, I will most definitely be updating this throughout the summer when I come across something that seems blogworthy that I can relate back to my experience abroad. Now, at the great suggestion of my Aunt Mary, I'd like to go back and revisit my goals that I set for myself at the beginning of the semester and see how they turned out. If you want to read about them as I originally wrote them, scroll down to the Blog Archive section on the right and click "I miei obbietivi" (although it's posted in April I actually typed them up first for a class in February).
Okay, so the semesters over and I'm as far from that life as you can get. I'm sitting on campus at UMD right now, drinking Dr Pepper from Chick-fil-a and burning in this 90 degree heat despite being in air conditioning; all things I couldn't do a few weeks ago. But before I get started on my feelings about being back in America, I'll follow through with revisiting those goals.
So the first goal from that past blog post that I set for myself fell under the 'personal goal' category and it was to expand my worldview. By this I wanted to learn more about Italian culture, my American culture from a European point of view and learn how to understand and view other cultures throughout the world. I think that I definitely achieved this. At the language exchange that I went to every week, I learned so much about Italian culture from actual Italians and I also learned what they thought of Americans, especially after big events like our entrance into the Libya conflict and the killing of bin Laden. This all helped expand my worldview in a way that enabled me to see things from other cultures points of view on a subjective basis. I know this is a hard one to judge objectively to see if I accomplished it but just from talking to friends already back here and reading through my past blog posts I have a good feeling that I made significant progress in this category.
Next was my professional goal for the semester which was my desire to leave Rome with a better understanding of what I wanted to do with my career. This, of the 4 goals, is probably the one that I succeeded least in, but I'm not saying I didn't succeed in it, just that it's the least of the 4. As I mentioned in the first post, I loved my business law class, and that really made me want to pursue law school like I've been planning since I entered college and probably in the corporate law field which was the main focus of that course. Additionally, I have good news - I got accepted into that Terrorism Studies Minor that I applied to so I'm extremely excited to start those courses this Fall. This just kind of clouds my path though, I'll need to make a decision if I want to pursue something counter-terrorism related which I think I would really enjoy or stick to my law track that I've been planning. Maybe I can find something that incorporates the two of them? We'll see what happens, but at least I've narrowed down what I think I want, tough decisions ahead.
My third goal was academic in nature and was to get straight A's. Pretty straightforward goal and I'm proud to say I achieved it, with the exception of my 1 credit online "Connecting Across Cultures" course that isn't finished until mid June so I don't know my grade in that yet. But as far as academic courses in the classroom at AUR, this goal was a success.
Lastly was my cultural goal of being able to carry on a conversation in Italian with a local and not have them immediately know I was America. Now, I'm going to say that I won this one on a technicality, but nevertheless did make good improvement in my Italian skills. Fooling a local Italian into thinking I was also Italian was a high goal to reach, granted how many obvious tell tale signs I have of not being a native Italian (clothes, linguistic ability, looks, accent, hairstyle etc). That being said, I do have a couple stories that made me feel good about my Italian skills (which I probably already have blogged about). First off, early in the semester, there was an American couple who asked me for directions in broken Italian but I responded in Italian anyways and they responded by apologizing in English saying that they couldn't understand Italian actually and wanted to know if I by any chance spoke English. After I gave them the directions in English they told me I had the best English accent of all the Italians they had come across so far. I hope I do, I'm American, idiots. Anyways, I don't think I should get much credit for fooling American tourists though. Second noteable story was on the tram when two elderly Italian ladies asked me which stop San Giovanni di Dio was. I told them in Italian when it would be and said that it was right after mine so just get off one after I do. They complimented me and said I spoke very good Italian (already realizing that I wasn't actually Italian) and then asked me my thoughts about the Royal Wedding earlier that day. Well, turns out they actually thought I was British, buttt since that's at least in the EU, I consider that more of a win than the other stories. In general and in all seriousness, most people did compliment me on my Italian skills as the trip progressed so I'm very happy with where my Italian got me (I even use Facebook in Italian now!).
So overall, I can say that I'm pretty happy with my job on those goals. Of course I'm not judging the past 4 months by the success or failure of those 4 things. As everyone can probably tell, I loved and enjoyed every single second of my time in Rome but I think those goals did play a good part in that enjoyment.
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